Healing from Miscarriage: Ideas and Strategies
This summer marks seven years since my miscarriage. I still mention it and bring it into conversation (even with strangers) as often as I comfortably can. In my opinion, miscarriage isn’t talked about enough. Statistics show that it happens with up to 1 out of every 4 pregnancies. In addition to miscarriage, there are many people struggling with infertility. I personally find that it’s comforting to share our difficulties with one another. I put together a free downloadable about healing from miscarriage in case it’s helpful for you or anyone you know. (Note: It’s two pages, even though the preview shows one.)
My miscarriage happened between my two sons. Henry turned eight in February, and Tate is about to turn six. They are two years and four months apart. This baby would have come 22 months after Henry.
I wrote several different posts about my experience while it was happening. I’ll re-share them in case it’s helpful:
Post One: Am I Having a Miscarriage?
In this post, I talk about how the midwife couldn’t hear the heartbeat. However, I still have hope that everything is okay.
Post Two: Probable Miscarriage
In this post, I talk about how a miscarriage is probable because of hormone levels. I still need to get a conclusive ultrasound.
Post Three: Miscarriage Confirmed
In this post, I talk about how the ultrasound confirmed that I did, in fact, have a miscarriage.
Post Four: The Bleeding Starts
In this post, I talk about how miscarriage feels like “giving birth to death.”
Post Five: Healing from Miscarriage Reflection
In this post, I talk about the one thing that helped me heal from my miscarriage. I wrote this post a month after my miscarriage.
Did you suffer from a miscarriage? If so, please share in the comments what helped you get through it (if you feel comfortable, of course). Or have you come across helpful stories on the internet? If so, please link to them in the comments so we can support others. Thanks so much!
9 Comments
Carissa
I admire you bringing up your miscarriage as often as possible in an effort to normalize it. I use to do that, probably the first year after it happened. It’s been three years ago that I experienced a miscarriage. What helped me the most was figuring out what story I wanted to tell myself and not letting anyone else convince me of a different story. For me, I believed and told myself that my pregnancy was made up of abnormal chromosomes, not a baby, and that my body was doing what it was suppose to. Leaning into science and nature. I was eight weeks at the time. I did not appreciate when my mother, and others, tried to correct me and say ‘no, that was a baby.’ Of course they each have the right to believe what they want about my body. But it was my experience, and I was not inviting others to tell me their beliefs. That is also why I find some of the legislation around anti-abortion laws triggering. In Indiana, for example, the state passed a law to require that the remains from an abortion or miscarriage be cremated/buried. How awful to tell people who experience pregnancy what needs to happen with the tissue or product from their own pregnancy. My four golf-size balls of mass went down the toilet of my house. And I want to be ok with that, because its what happened. I found it so triggering for lawmakers to tell me what should have happened to that. But that’s a rant for another day 🙂 Love and hugs to everyone who has experienced miscarriage, infertility, stillbirth, and all of the other difficulties with reproductive health.
Sara Cotner
Thank you so much for chiming in with your experience, Carissa, and for being willing to share with vulnerability! I love your quote: “What helped me the most was figuring out what story I wanted to tell myself and not letting anyone else convince me of a different story.” That is such a powerful life lesson that is so hard to learn. At the end of the day, we all want to be valued, loved, and appreciated by those around us and it sometimes leads us to do things/think things/believe things to make other people happy. And yet it rarely leads to true happiness. I’m inspired by the courage you showed to figure out what worked for you, regardless of what others thought. I was not aware of that legislation in Indiana. That’s awful. I still can’t wrap my brain around the fact that people fight so hard against a women’s right to choose (in an effort to “protect” a baby) and then turn around and refuse to “protect” actual children with things like universal healthcare, fair wages, quality education, maternal/paternal leave, fair taxation, etc. It’s baffling.
Nora
I agree so much with what the previous poster wrote. I struggled after having a miscarriage not because I believe I lost a baby, but because I was not treated respectfully in a hospital setting. In the few times I tried to talk about it, including with my therapist, the person said something along the lines of, “just be open to the idea that you’re grieving the loss of a baby.” I was open to that. And I really tried to listen to myself, and that was not the source of my pain. I believe (while recognizing others have their own beliefs) that my body passed out a nonviable fetus, and that is healthy, natural, and normal. I was sad because of my hospital experience.
My spouse insisted we go to the emergency room (it was a Saturday, my normal provider was closed). There, I was not allowed to go to the bathroom or given a pad (even though I was there because of a large amount of bleeding), so blood soaked all my clothes while doctors performed tests. The doctor started a pelvic exam but made me wait 20 min with a speculum in because he did not have forceps and needed the nurse to find them. Throughout it all, doctors and nurses fluctuated between statements like “well bum, that’s not what you want to have happen” and “you will be sad because you lost a baby” and “well are you feeling better now?” No one used consent-based language. And the dates of the ER visit were mischarted so that when I was pregnant with my daughter, it looked like I’d gone to the emergency room twice in the course of a week (I hadn’t) so the triage nurse refused to do an intake until I had an ultrasound and kept saying “it might not be a pregnancy, it might be leftover material from your miscarriage,” even though it had been 6 months prior, with normal periods in between. I then sat in the room with her waiting for the ultrasound technician for more than an hour, but she refused to finish the intake questionnaire. It was so palpably different from when the same nurse did the intake for my son’s prenatal care. I think we need to talk more about how women are treated in healthcare settings when they lose a fetus.
Sara Cotner
Oh, Nora. That’s really awful treatment. I’m sorry that our healthcare system is terrible in so many ways and that you went through this (in multiple ways, on multiple occasions).
I’m really grateful for your courage to share and your advocacy.
It’s also such a good reminder that we shouldn’t make any assumptions about what someone is feeling or what will be the most supportive to them. For me, I did feel like my “nonviable fetus” was a baby (even though the rational part of my brain understood exactly what you’re saying about how normal it is for our bodies to pass through nonviable fetuses). It was a baby in my mind and in my hopes and in my life. But that’s just me. And that’s the whole point.
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective! It’s so helpful to see something from someone else’s point of view.
I’m sorry again that you didn’t receive proper care. Wishing you all the best!
Luisa
I had a miscarriage during my second trimester, and like Nora’s experience, most of my negative feelings are around the medical treatment I received. At the hospital where I had my ultrasound after starting to miscarry while out of town for the weekend, the ultrasound tech did not get accurate pictures, so she had to do two separate (and painful, because she was not very skilled) vaginal ultrasounds, so I had to get undressed twice. When I went to the midwife to get the results of the ultrasound, I was feeling very sad, but also feeling acceptance about losing my baby. The midwife I saw told me I was “lucky” because I hadn’t experienced much pain in the process. !!!!! Intellectually, I understand what she meant, but I’m still appalled that she would use the word “lucky” to describe anything connected to a miscarriage. She then told me that everything had passed on its own, so I did not need a D+C or any further treatment, and to just let things run their course. My bleeding tapered off after about 4 days, and I thought everything was done.
A few days after that, I began hemorrhaging and having severe cramping with violent vomiting in the middle of the night while visiting my sister out of state for her 30th birthday party. It felt like my body was turning itself inside out. I had no idea what was happening, and I worried I was experiencing some kind of infection or other complication connected to the miscarriage. After about 5 hours of this, a grapefruit-sized blob came out, and I started to feel better immediately. I then called the midwife on-call (I couldn’t even crawl to the phone before that point). She looked at my charts and said, “I think you were having the miscarriage.” I was very confused and said, “I already had a miscarriage last week.” She replied, “I know you were bleeding before, but it sounds like you just passed the fetal tissue now. On your ultrasound, I can see the sac and it sounds like you probably delivered that. I’m really surprised they told you before that you had passed all of the tissue.” Even though I was feeling better, I then could not stop bleeding and had to go to the emergency room in a strange place (I would not have traveled if I had known that I still had to pass all of the tissue.) Thankfully, I received informative, compassionate care in the emergency room, and they were able to stop my bleeding, and I had no long-term physical health complications.
Of course the midwife I saw after my bleeding began initially would have no way to know for sure that I would have that exact experience, but according to the other medical professionals I saw, it was inaccurate of her to say that I had passed all of the tissue already, and given the stage of my pregnancy and the amount of fetal material that was still visible in my ultrasound (basically all of it), it was not unexpected that I would have the severe cramping and vomiting when I passed it later. It would have been helpful for me to know that there was at least that possibility, so I could prepare for it mentally and wouldn’t be so scared when the cramping and vomiting occurred. My hcg levels remained in the “pregnant” range for almost 2 months, so unfortunately, I had to go back to that office weekly for blood draws until they fell below the “pregnant” threshold…however, I got pregnant again 10 months later (due in September!) and you know I switched providers after that experience!
Sara Cotner
Thank you for sharing so much with all of us, Luisa! It’s so difficult when we don’t get high-quality medical care consistently. I, too, switched midwives after going through a miscarriage with one and not appreciating how she handled it. And congratulations on your impending birth!
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Meredith Crafton
Sara, somehow I am just seeing this. Thank you for bringing it up again on your blog. Just last month I experienced a miscarriage, it feels oh so similar to the experience you described in your posts- midwife not seeing heartbeat, confirmatory ultrasound, then the bleeding. “Giving birth to death”. Ooofff. Yep. The pain for me was unbelievably intense. I had contractions for hours and incredibly heavy bleeding that landed me in the ER needing fluids, anti nausea meds, and pain meds. It was all around awful in every way. It took a couple more days before I passed the egg sac. At which point I felt both grateful my body did it’s job, but also so so sad and lonely. The bleeding lasted another couple days and I just last week got confirmation my hormone levels are back to no pregnant levels and once I get my period I can try again. I feel an urgency (almost 40) but also want more time to emotionally and spiritually recover and to recover my relationship. It hit hard and highlighted some bad patterns in both of us that I want to work on BEFORE having a kid. Damn. It’s hard stuff. And So so so common. Thank you sharing. I truly appreciate you and your writing. Miss you all and want to play with your fam again soon! Lotsa love, Mere
Sara Cotner
Oh, Mere. Thank you for sharing so vulnerably. I’m thinking about you and wishing you well during this difficult time. And I totally hear you about the working on your relationship part (and, for me, it’s about working on myself, too). There’s so much I wish I would have processed before becoming a parent. But I’m also grateful that I still have things to work on because then I can model for my children what it looks like to always try and grow and evolve as a person. Please take good care of yourself as you heal from this, Mere. Sending big hugs your way!