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Feb. 15th, 2008 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaOn Wednesday, someone from Mercy Hospital (where I had my D&C) called and left a message. She said that if I wanted to talk about my experience, she was there to listen. Yesterday's mail brought a sympathy card from the same person, who appears to be a nurse working in the pastoral care department. The card said that she was sorry for my loss and praying for me and my family daily. She hoped I was being kind to myself, and that I was being helped by support from family, friends, and God. She enclosed a little religious poem. (Not my flavor of religion (it's a Catholic hospital), but not offensive to me.)
It was nicely timed, I thought: two weeks after my miscarriage, a point at which an experienced counselor should be able to identify which patients are having a normal grief reaction and which ones are in real trouble. Also a likely point for someone with inadequate support to be feeling as if everyone's forgotten her loss.
Years ago I read a book about a woman who had a late second-trimester miscarriage. Afterward, none of the hospital staff - including her own OB - were willing to talk to her about what happened. They deflected her questions, avoided her eyes, refused to let her see the body. And my mother recently told me two stories. When she was a young married woman, my grandmother told her that she should never tell anyone she was pregnant until four months had passed - because that way, if it didn't work out and there was a miscarriage, no one would ever have to know. And a colleague of my mother's who also did maternal/child nursing once staffed a table on pregnancy loss at a community health fair. An 80-year-old woman came up and told my mother's colleague all the details of a miscarriage she'd had 60 years before. It was the first time she had ever told anyone at all. Sixty years later she was still burdened by her secret grief.
I am so grateful that it's not that way now.
Throughout this awful process I have been sustained by an incredible outpouring of love, support, and kindness. I've been stunned by the number of women who have quietly taken me aside to say that they too had a miscarriage, and that they know how terrible it is, and that I have their love and support. Instead of feeling alone, I've felt encircled by a large community of women, kind and gentle with me because they've shared this grief. Some of them are my age. Some of them are grandmothers or great-grandmothers. All of them survived, but none of them ever forgot.
I've also been sustained and upheld by all of you. It's touched me more than I can say to receive loving sympathy from my friends who are committedly childfree, as well as the ones who know what it's like to desperately want a child. To have people who barely know me refuse to walk away from the raw pain dripping all over my journal. To have repeated assurances of concern and support pour in again and again when even I have begun to be exhausted by my own neediness. To get presents in the mail: cookies, chocolates, more chocolates, an unpublished novel draft, a mix CD, cards with messages of love. It's been so much. It's helped so much.
I still feel sad and fragile, and I expect that I will for quite some time. But I also feel loved and cared-for. I'm pretty sure I'll be okay. For which: thank you.
It was nicely timed, I thought: two weeks after my miscarriage, a point at which an experienced counselor should be able to identify which patients are having a normal grief reaction and which ones are in real trouble. Also a likely point for someone with inadequate support to be feeling as if everyone's forgotten her loss.
Years ago I read a book about a woman who had a late second-trimester miscarriage. Afterward, none of the hospital staff - including her own OB - were willing to talk to her about what happened. They deflected her questions, avoided her eyes, refused to let her see the body. And my mother recently told me two stories. When she was a young married woman, my grandmother told her that she should never tell anyone she was pregnant until four months had passed - because that way, if it didn't work out and there was a miscarriage, no one would ever have to know. And a colleague of my mother's who also did maternal/child nursing once staffed a table on pregnancy loss at a community health fair. An 80-year-old woman came up and told my mother's colleague all the details of a miscarriage she'd had 60 years before. It was the first time she had ever told anyone at all. Sixty years later she was still burdened by her secret grief.
I am so grateful that it's not that way now.
Throughout this awful process I have been sustained by an incredible outpouring of love, support, and kindness. I've been stunned by the number of women who have quietly taken me aside to say that they too had a miscarriage, and that they know how terrible it is, and that I have their love and support. Instead of feeling alone, I've felt encircled by a large community of women, kind and gentle with me because they've shared this grief. Some of them are my age. Some of them are grandmothers or great-grandmothers. All of them survived, but none of them ever forgot.
I've also been sustained and upheld by all of you. It's touched me more than I can say to receive loving sympathy from my friends who are committedly childfree, as well as the ones who know what it's like to desperately want a child. To have people who barely know me refuse to walk away from the raw pain dripping all over my journal. To have repeated assurances of concern and support pour in again and again when even I have begun to be exhausted by my own neediness. To get presents in the mail: cookies, chocolates, more chocolates, an unpublished novel draft, a mix CD, cards with messages of love. It's been so much. It's helped so much.
I still feel sad and fragile, and I expect that I will for quite some time. But I also feel loved and cared-for. I'm pretty sure I'll be okay. For which: thank you.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 05:43 pm (UTC)I've found that underworld of bereaved women to be a theme too; it's almost shocking what a taboo it is to mention a loss to a happy woman of childbearing age, and how a loss brings those stories out of the woodwork.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 05:59 pm (UTC)That's so true. I've felt awful knowing that at least two of the women who have been reading my posts and being supportive are pregnant, and that two of my RL friends who have been very supportive are just beginning to try to conceive. I feel like the bad fairy at the christening feast.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 06:33 pm (UTC)And second sometimes people who are opening their hearts to having a child really are unable to hear it and really do give off 'please don't tell me this' vibes.
And all that is messy, and human, and real. But you're no bad fairy; they bring curses - not just themselves and their stories.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 07:08 pm (UTC)You are a woman dealing with a loss. You are not seeking out pregnant women to scare them, nor imposing your long-past horror stories on their announcement of joy. And everyone knows this.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-16 03:05 am (UTC)I think you shouldn't worry.