Each time the concept of sex and sexual pleasure would come up—whether in sessions with my patients where I could sit and discuss it with them, or through a direct message on Instagram—I’d encourage those who shared to trust their feelings, to honor their instincts, and to abide by the schedule that felt right. It was rarely straightforward, of course. Some were afraid sex might lead to another loss, which oftentimes led to feelings of guilt that arose over abstaining from intimacy with their partners. Then guilt would compound further, as they found themselves swirled up inside a narrative that was wholly destructive: Stricken by the loss of a future they’d envisioned and immobilized by the bone-shattering grief that ensued, they believed that they were somehow to blame for what had happened. That these unthinkable circumstances had come about as a result of something they’d done. Or not done. That their bodies had failed. If they couldn’t trust their bodies to carry out the very thing they were purportedly designed to do, they reasoned, why should they allow themselves to feel pleasure?
The return of joy can take time, of course. Pleasure and grief, after all, might never have been considered mutually exclusive if not for the harmful cultural stigmatization surrounding pregnancy loss. Tapping back into our sexuality is certainly not the only way to reconnect with our deeper selves and regain confidence in our sensuality, but it undoubtedly holds the power to offer the comfort and encourage the connection that our minds and bodies so often crave.
Amelia confided in me via direct message that she cried the first time she had sex with her husband after her pregnancy loss. “It was about six weeks later, when we returned to penetrative sex. I cried right after because I finally felt really connected to my husband again. With my loss, I felt like I was on an island—water between me and everybody. When we had sex, I cried with relief to be connected to someone again. Because of that, I think that pleasure and grief must coexist.”
Surveying the emotional damage that can occur after a loss and realizing the extent of mental labor that must go into processing it, these women would oftentimes shelve sexual engagement until they could find their footing. And understandably so. Sensuality took on new meaning. And pregnancy too. So, no matter where a woman was in her grief process, my advice to her during our sessions would remain unchanged: “If you don’t want to have sex,” I would tell them, “then don’t. If you do, then you should.” And of course, this advice applied to nonpatients too. It certainly applied to me.
• • •
A month after my miscarriage, I returned to my obstetrician’s office for a follow-up appointment. She took a look at my uterus and cervix to be sure they looked normal, and we discussed whether Jason and I wanted to try again. Her recommendation was to wait three cycles before trying to conceive—if we decided to—and she otherwise checked in on my emotional state.
I felt a dozen emotions all in synchronicity when I got that first period following pregnancy loss. The blood: its color, its meaning. A flood of grief. That at-least-your-body-is-working mantra. Remembering the blood that indicated the beginning of the end. A glaring reminder that I was no longer pregnant. Starting again, maybe. Anticipation. Hope that there will be future pregnancies that last. Not knowing. No control. A surreal state of being. Loss of an identity you once knew and thought of as ironclad. Menstruation can mean so many different things to women around the globe, and for those of us who have miscarried, that first period post-loss can trigger unimaginable memories … and maybe even a little bit of hope.
That hope hurled me back into that space—the physical act of potentially getting pregnant again, the mental strength that must accompany a post-loss pregnancy, and the emotional toll that the magnitude of such a thing would take on my ailing mind. I was still reeling from the trauma I’d just lived through, but tucked in somewhere deep was a trust that this would not happen again. It just couldn’t. And so, we proceeded.
I could choose to wait out the months or years it might take to emotionally recover, or I could choose to try to conceive again. I couldn’t have both. I was forty by then, and Jason had just turned forty-one, so we were well aware time wasn’t something we had to waste. And so I (re)embraced my recently established desire for a larger family and went through the motions, because on some level, I knew I wanted to. I wanted to, even though I also didn’t want to. The fear of getting pregnant again was just as intimidating as not being able to get pregnant again.
And it was there that I found myself once again immersed in another aspect of a struggle I’d heard time and again, from patients within the confines of my office and online among other loss moms. Countless women had recounted to me their fears of sexual engagement, of conceiving again, of not conceiving again, reckoning with their altered sexual identities and sometimes suppressing their own desires altogether. And here I was, again able to empathize in a way that was only possible after experiencing such a thing firsthand.
10
“We are not going down on this note.”
“My friend Jasmine keeps pressing me—she won’t stop asking if I’ve started thinking about trying again,” Ella told me. She sat across from me, legs and arms crossed, head leaning on the back of the firm, brown leather couch. She plucked a Kleenex from the nearby box. “It’s just weird that something so private—so individual—is asked so nonchalantly. Like somehow my sex life is a public matter now,” she said, on edge. It was uncanny to be having this conversation with her, when people had been asking me the very same thing.
“You felt pressured to share something you weren’t quite ready to talk about,” I remarked.
“Yeah, it was awkward. But I told her that I had,” she replied. “I didn’t tell her that we’re already trying, though. I just said something about how we’ll get to it when the time feels right.” Ella continued, “She has two kids, and has some fairy-tale story—like, she got pregnant with both on the first try or something. No miscarriages, no pregnancy fears, no nausea, even, so she just doesn’t get it. I don’t know … I just wasn’t in the mood to talk about it with her. Wrong audience, or something—you know?”
“I understand,” I said. “And trying again—how do you feel about the prospect of that? Are you feeling ready?”
“You know, I really do, actually,” Ella replied. “I finally got my period, and I’m just so ready to get back into a good place again. Less bogged down. I’m tired of feeling like my loss is what defines me. I just want to be pregnant again.”
“That makes sense. Feeling reduced to a loss is not a good feeling. You are more than your loss. So much more, of course,” I empathized.
“Thank you. I think so. My life is about so much more than grief. It’s got to be. And I think being pregnant again will bring some much-needed hope to our household. I’m curious, though, how easy it’ll be this time around. Or how hard. I’m in this private women’s group on Facebook, and I asked how long it took each of them to get pregnant again after they’d miscarried.”
“What were the responses like?” I asked, admittedly at least partially curious for personal reasons.
“They were varied, but most people got pregnant again within a few cycles, give or take. One woman said it took her nine months. This frightened me to no end. It had better not take me that long. I don’t think I could handle that: The ongoing, unrelenting disappointment. The reiteration of loss through negative pregnancy tests. That grief. Getting my period again and again would feel like loss after loss, I think.”
“I can understand why hearing that would spike your fear,” I said. “It can be tempting to compare time frames, but everyone’s situation is unique, and it can sometimes hurt more than help when we survey what other people have gone through.”
Silently, I hoped that it wouldn’t take long for Ella, and by proxy, myself. I also considered how challenging it can be to not have access to answers. To simply not know. And while Ella never asked me how long I imagined she would have to try before getting pregnant again, so many women do. “Do you think I’ll
get pregnant again?” they’ll ask in angst, and it takes everything in me not to automatically respond with a guarantee about a future I cannot adequately predict. I want this for these women if and when they want it for themselves. And because hope is vital, I hold it almost always, at least for those who need it. And because uncertainty is such a tough place to live—within our psyches, and within our bodies—I want to shout yes from rooftops: you will get pregnant again. But I don’t know. I just know that not everyone does get pregnant and so I mustn’t say a thing. I resist the reflex to enthusiastically say yes, as I know not what the future holds.
• • •
I understand this too well: The yearning to bypass trial and error. To just know—to find out somehow—what will come next, with some degree of definiteness. No one, of course, could predict if I’d get pregnant again, but I will admit, I searched high and low for answers. In those desperate moments of disquieting uncertainty, I turned to places I never thought I’d go. Grasping to glean insight, I turned to, of all places, a psychic. Vivian.
Vivian’s office was just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, west of the street on Camden Drive in the heart of Beverly Hills. Since her office was only about a twenty-minute walk from my own, I arrived early and apprehensive. I’d never done this before—search for answers in the metaphysical. Vivian greeted me with the air of someone regal as I glanced around her space to get a sense of her. A mix of faux flowers in dusty glass vases, stuffed animals, and several photographs of famous people in Lucite frames sat on the paint-chipped windowsill. Did these people really come here? We sat down around a thick walnut, oval table and she began shuffling cards. “Tell me when to stop,” she said. “Okay … Stop.” I was just playing along. I didn’t have a clue what we were doing.
She flipped the card over. “Do you have a son?”
“I do.”
Then, more shuffling. “Stop!” I exclaimed again. I was getting the hang of this now.
Vivian flipped another. “And you have a daughter?”
I hesitated. I was there for answers—not hide-and-seek—so rather than wait to see if she could guess what I’d just been through, I decided to share. “Maybe you’re picking up on my recent loss. I had a miscarriage, in the second trimester. It was a girl.”
There was a pause. A pregnant pause.
“No, no. No, that’s not it. You will have a daughter,” she said without hesitation.
“Really?” I said, perhaps a bit too skeptically.
I found her confidence fascinating, if not a little troubling.
“Why would I tell you that you were going to have a healthy daughter if you weren’t? This wouldn’t benefit you or me to tell you this if it wasn’t true,” she announced, her voice at once haughty and benevolent.
She had a point.
“And this girl has your eyes almost exactly, darling. Green and open wide, taking in the world with poise, just like you.”
Silence sat between us as I ventured to digest the enormity of what she’d said with aplomb. And then it dawned on me that this interchange could surely get my hopes up (high, way too high) and how much more dashed they’d be if she was wrong. What if this is all just make-believe? And what if she’d said I wouldn’t get pregnant again? Would this affect my next move?
We held eye contact.
She continued, “Sometimes things happen to us and they deepen our work. They incite a metamorphosis or a deepening of something we’ve already started. I believe your loss will do this.”
She hadn’t been privy to my last name, so there was no chance she’d googled me prior to my appointment; it seemed eerie that perhaps she was alluding to my practice and specialty. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“This loss of yours will help you affect others that have gone through similar experiences—this could be through service or writing or public speaking or other avenues, but whatever it is, your impact is needed.”
She was way off on other things she covered in our time together, but the things that were spot-on left me chilled for days. She was so sure. How could she be so sure?
Nevertheless, Vivian’s assuredness came and left my weary psyche almost as quickly as it’d blazed in—and I was right back where I’d started. Will I get pregnant quickly again? Have another loss? Or might I not even get pregnant at all? Her certainty hadn’t fully assuaged my concerns, so I was back to square one. No amount of crystal balls, shuffled stacks of tarot cards, or sorcery could convince me. I’d have to brave pregnancy again if I wanted to find out for sure.
• • •
Are you going to try again? The question itself seems innocent enough—albeit incredibly personal—but considering it after experiencing pregnancy loss can be cumbersome. The question looms. It often comes from others around us—those closest to us, gently or not-so-gently prodding to see if we’re feeling ready to make another attempt, and those on the outside of our circles who are less informed, reminding us offhandedly that our older child(ren) seems ready for a sibling or that it’s “about time” we have a child. But it’s not always like this—sometimes we find it percolating primarily within ourselves. And though it seems like a simple question, the answer is not necessarily altogether straightforward. After all, a loss holds the power to alter the way someone feels about pregnancy for good. Not always, of course, but sometimes. With loss can come a greater awareness of vulnerability—mortality even—now knowing too well what it feels like to lose something once growing inside of us. If we choose to dive in again, how do we relinquish the control that we never had to begin with, but somehow thought we did? Will this newfound awareness of our lack of control haunt us as we consider trying again, and perhaps accompany us through the next pregnancy, if there is one? How will it feel to try? What if we don’t get pregnant? What if we do?
I’ve seen a wide gamut of reactions from women in my office as they consider this complicated next step. Some are paralyzed in their grief and, as I’ve mentioned, unable to contemplate sex, let alone think about another pregnancy—not yet, anyway. Some, as I’ve also described, are crippled by an erroneous fear that there is something wrong with their bodies in general or their wombs more specifically, and that loss will invariably happen again if/when they become pregnant. Some might become, as Ella seemed to be, fueled by an unconscious competitive drive or a game of comparing and contrasting. They unknowingly take stock of the women in their lives—who’s lost a pregnancy and who hasn’t, who’s gotten pregnant quickly and who hasn’t—and make some sort of unwitting goal to beat their competition in order to prove to themselves that they can. All these different reactions are common and normal amid the transition—especially when there is such a profound mismatch between what we want and what we sometimes do or do not receive.
• • •
Within the confines of our own home, the topic of expanding our family was one my husband and I didn’t truly contemplate until Liev was over three years old. I wanted to take things one step at a time: Start with one child and go from there. See how it felt. Parent for a while. Discover who Liev was and who I would be as a mother. And then, from there, decide what we wanted for our family.
When I was pregnant for the first time, it thrilled me to think about how both Jason and I would rise to the task of becoming parents, and how we’d undertake this as a team. What a playful and inspiring parent he will be, I’d think, and I, the practical and grounding force. We’d do this well together, I trusted, and could hardly wait to see a cooing baby in my husband’s loving embrace, and the eventuality of him coaching some sort of sport eight years down the road. Jason’s vision for our family was similar, except he has a twin and as such, he saw great value in our son having a sibling—and us as a couple being at the helm of a larger clan. For him, this was sort of automatic. For me, it was a process. He and his brother are so close—they work together, they consult with each other on decisions big and small, and they harbor a connection that’s both inherent and a result of intentional effort. Ja
son saw nothing but boundless benefits to being a sibling and therefore having one for Liev, and for us as parents too.
• • •
Getting pregnant with my son was easy. The subsequent months of his development were filled with surprising enjoyment, international travel, and wild anticipation of who this little person would be and what the journey of motherhood would feel like. I adored pregnancy—I relished my growing bump, the fetal hiccups, napping constantly, and daydreaming about the unknown.
As the years pressed on, I marveled both at how complicated mothering could be and how simple it was to love him beyond definition.
Soon, I became an avid proponent of having “only one” child. Why steal attention and focus from him by juggling two? I thought I was onto something novel, as if I had just realized I had a choice in the matter. I wondered, if I had more than one, whether I might invariably meld into an overwhelmed soup of mismatched ingredients by adding another personality to the mix. Why would anyone opt for that? I thought to myself on numerous occasions while glancing at harried moms with two children fervently running in opposite directions at the park. “One and done,” I enthusiastically declared whenever questioned about whether or not I’d be joining the multiple-children set. I spoke with a certain sort of pride and commanding resoluteness about focusing on my son, my work, and some version of a balanced existence between those.
And then I changed my mind. Or, perhaps more accurately, because my husband had envisaged raising two children, it was time for me to think through, in a more serious and nuanced way, what he wanted. What we wanted. What we felt we could handle. I took some months to marinate on the idea of growing our family in the context of my age and our imagined future. I wanted to excavate my decision-making a bit more, to delve a little deeper into what it might be like to rethink the family arrangement. Could I recalibrate the picture I had so firmly become used to in my mind of our thriving family of three? Would I have the emotional stamina to raise another human being? And if so, who might this person be, and who would the three of us become as a result of this change in dynamic?
I Had a Miscarriage Page 13