When a miscarriage goes from bad to worse

After three of my own, I consider myself an expert on the subject. Plus, happier things, like an easy Whole 30 recipe and Jeremy Allen White (you're welcome).

Went to CVS twice in one day this week to find a subtle way to cover my surgical incision for a trip to the office on Tuesday, and this is what I came up with. Needless to say the execution did not quite match my vision.

I got up early to write something to share here this morning, and really struggled to find something to say. I was consumed by work this week, which was a lot but also weirdly satisfying. I don’t know who this career-driven person is that I’ve become but I guess it pays better than when I was gunning to be on our local school board or herd cats as a Girl Scout leader.

I even started typing something late last night, sitting on the couch watching the series I’d started bingeing this week. I kept going round and round trying to think of something fun to write about but kept coming up short. With my kids now back to their own lives and spending most of the week alone at home working, it’s been a slow personal news week. Other than getting my stitches out from my Moh’s surgery wound alongside my nose (which is finally not killing when I try to rest readers on top of the site), I don’t have much to report.

But there’s one thing I can’t stop thinking about.

My news consumption is pretty limited nowadays. I turn on 1010 WINS in my car when I’m doing errands, which is New York City’s round-the-clock murder-and-mayhem station. It’s the same with local news stations on TV. I love a good local all-news-all-the-time where coverage is more of fires and people getting pushed in front of subways than national politics. Plus, I get the weather every 10 minutes.

I’ll turn on PBS Newshour sometimes when I remember because I like taking my medicine of national events from a news reader who makes me feel calm and not from one who is insinuating my sore throat is esophageal cancer. I feel the same way about NPR, which the numerous Alexas in my house are pretty good at connecting to and not asking a million questions. Also, when I get lucky and hear an Eleanor Beardsley report from France and she switches from her Southern twang — which reminds me of Holly Hunter in Broadcast News — to speaking French in a perfect accent, it makes my day.

I have both NYT and WSJ apps on my phone, which are on my internet scrolling greatest hits list, but I must admit that the Times gets me a lot more because I’m obsessed with Connections right now and my youngest daughter and I trade scores every day. It pisses me off how she often gets all the purple answers first or gets a perfect score and it took me many more tries to finish. It’s wrong when children are smarter than their parents. She also pays for her own subscription to the Times so she can play the games.

@elizlefebvreIve been victimized by Connections too often. #nytconnections #nytgames

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

One of the news stories that caught my attention recently, and I could not stop thinking about this week, was the Ohio woman who faced felony charges after have a miscarriage at home and disposing of it in a toilet.

Throughout my childbearing years, I had three miscarriages. Even though I had already given birth to healthy children before I lost three, and would go on to have more healthy deliveries, those pregnancies were devastating nonetheless. While all three occurred during the first trimester, I had heard their heartbeats and had already been thinking about them as babies. They were very real.

But it’s a very quiet grief, since nobody really talks about miscarriages or acknowledges them for the loss that they are. You’re supposed to quietly take care of things and try again. But apparently, they happen all the time. According to the Cleveland Clinic, about 10-20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriages.

My first miscarriage occurred between my second and third children in 1996 when I was only maybe 7 weeks along. I started bleeding on a Saturday and continued to bleed until I finally lost the baby the following Friday. I showed up at the hospital that morning, which also happened to be the start of the Memorial Day weekend, and no one seemed especially happy to see me and my emergency. I was a 30 year-old-woman with two children at home and made to feel like I was wasting everyone’s time trying to get medical attention, when I just wanted someone to stop the bleeding and save the baby. Instead, I was told to go home and let it run its course. I spent that entire holiday weekend in bed crying and watching TV and waiting for it to be over.

Weirdly, exactly one year later, on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend, I gave birth to my third child. How’s that for timing?

The second miscarriage came after I had that third kid, I was about 34 or 35, and really wanted a fourth child. Like, I said things to convince my husband then that I needed that baby to “complete me.” I literally said those words to him. Obviously, I was on a journey.

During that miscarriage, I don’t remember how I found myself in the radiology department of our local hospital, which was located in the building’s basement and gave Soviet Bloc vibes, with cement brick walls and tiny rooms that with dark interiors. I remember being so cold in my flimsy hospital gown waiting for someone to come in and tell me what was happening inside me.

I can’t remember now if I’d started bleeding again or if I’d gone for a prenatal appointment and they didn’t hear a heartbeat. All I know is that I was sent to the hospital for an ultrasound and if you have ever had to have an early pregnancy ultrasound you know that it is done internally. Like, I’m not going to go into details but after having endured a number of these over the years, and always in crisis circumstances, I just want to ask why someone hasn’t found a better way to test early fetal viability than jamming a giant plastic rod encased in a condom inside of you. It’s humiliating, not to mention incredibly uncomfortable.

I remember after the technician finished, I went into the industrial bathroom across the hall to empty my full bladder. I sat on the toilet in my thin hospital-issued gown and could feel the blood gushing out of me and felt something larger pass into the toilet, but could not look. I quickly flushed the toilet and went back to put on my clothes and let nature run its course at home (which sounds very gentle and natural and was not at all what the experience was actually like).

The third miscarriage occurred a few months later, and maybe because I was a little farther along, I think I was about 10 weeks when we failed to hear the heartbeat, my OB scheduled D+C at the hospital. It was sad but far less traumatic than having to spontaneously abort. The event did not drag on physically and emotionally for days and weeks and I wondered, like, why couldn’t the other miscarriages have been treated like this?

I tell you all these things because I can’t stop thinking about that mom in Ohio who was arrested after she flushed a fetus that she’d miscarried down her toilet. This woman, who’d been to the hospital twice and been sent home each time, had been left to deal with everything on her own. And just to add to the trauma of her loss, she was arrested.

My miscarriages were terrible experiences with the medical profession. I remember it being very confusing and that there was a lot of, “Well, these things happen,” kind of attitudes from various healthcare professionals and not a ton of sympathy. If I had one now, as a much older and bossier person, I would have been a better advocate for myself. But I think of that 30-something mom, whose pregnancy was about 20+ weeks and how no one at the hospital wanted to get into trouble to help her, so she went home. Twice.

I don’t remember all the details around my miscarriages all these years later, but I can still feel how sad and scary the experiences were. How alone I felt. And helpless. Wanting desperately for someone to save my baby and being sent home to miscarry alone.

I’m not sure what else that Ohio mom was supposed to do. If she was anything like me, when it happened, she had no interest in looking at it. Especially in the moment, you’re not exactly thinking clearly. If it was anything like me, you’re scared and crying and bleeding like crazy, like a horror movie. You just want it all to stop.

So, that’s where I am. Sad that 20+ years later, things seem to have gotten even worse for women miscarrying. The medical community still doesn’t really intercede. And now, on top of the emotional fallout of losing a baby, whose tiny heartbeat made you start thinking of names and placing your hand protectively over your belly, you have to worry about getting arrested as well.

Maybe if we talk about our miscarriages more, I don’t know, maybe we help bring them out of the shadows and make them less worse than they already are? Maybe we find better ways to support women who are experiencing that type of loss?

We’re better than that.

sunday shares: watch + read + cook + buy

• I actually cooked something. Sorta. I am going to lead this week with a dish that required peeling, boiling and mashing, which has not happened in a while. My current meal prep era is cobble salads together or heat something pre-made in the airfryer. But I quickly whipped up the Whole 30 mashed sweet potatoes last night, which has unsweetened coconut milk as its liquid, and enjoyed with some pre-marinated steaks I picked up at Wegman’s. Delish.

• How people with ADHD consume books. I currently have four in rotation:

  • The Bee Sting/Paul Murray (audio)

  • The Quiet Life/Susan Cain (audio)

  • Inheritance/Dani Shapiro (actual book)

  • A Court of Thorns and Roses/Sarah Maas (kindle)

    

• Substack is either perfect or horrible for the easily distracted. I subscribe to so many newsletters, so much wonderful writing and thinking to be found. Some highlights from the week include Ashlee Gadd’s post on The Second Act about crushing it as a mom, Laura McKowen’s reflection on Dry January on Love Story, Joyce Wadler being her usual funny self imagining Jeremy Allen White arriving at her door in his Calvins.

• TV wasteland. During this dry era in television as we wait for new shows, I reached out to the Midlife community the week in our Asking for a Friend to see what everyone was watching. The group did not disappoint. Catch up and share what you’re into this winter. I started Slow Horses based on a couple of recommendations and am really enjoying it.

• Bada bing. After all the hype around the Sopranos’ 25-year anniversary, I went back to watch a few of the first episodes and BLASTED the opening credits of Tony driving out of the Lincoln Tunnel and down the NJ Turnpike and it brought me JOY. It’s absolutely iconic and all the Jersey haters can poop off.

See you next week. xoAmy