My sister’s friend lost her father two weeks after I lost my fourth pregnancy. He developed a relatively rare cancer, and though he fought valiantly, died much too young. I felt so sorry for her. I am close to my father, as was she, so I could easily imagine her heartbreak. I also felt like she was more entitled to grief than I was. Afterall, she was grieving 30-some years of memories of her father. […]
Many women struggle to talk about their experience of miscarriage, in part because many women don’t share the news of their pregnancy before the loss. But I also think it’s because as humans, admitting we’re in pain puts us in a position of vulnerability, and that feels uncomfortable and threatening. I felt isolated and ashamed. Nobody within my immediate circle had lost a pregnancy so I constantly wondered if I’d done something wrong. My close […]
My husband and I have been together a long time. We met in college and got married when we were 26. We were ambitious young professionals who enjoyed our independence. We traveled a lot on the weekends and socialized a lot in the evenings. We didn’t want to be young parents. Besides, people in our generation were having kids later these days anyhow, right? Right??? Sometimes I wonder if I had known then, what […]
I had dinner with a cousin of mine some months after my second loss. She was incredibly compassionate towards me, having lost her first pregnancy at 11 weeks, essentially right after she told the whole family about it. But in addition to having a high emotional intelligence quotient, she also has a dark humor which I greatly appreciate. She told me to watch the Garfunkel and Oates music video “Pregnant Women are Smug.” The first […]
I showed this image to my husband and it triggered a completely different set of feelings for him than it had for me when I drew it. He thought about times like our second pregnancy when, over the course of a week, we were told that my hormones were too low and things didn’t look good, then, after seeing a heartbeat on the ultrasound, told to progress as if things were normal, and ultimately told […]
Adventures of a Misbehaving Uterus 