A plea to end the silence on and abnormal pregnancies and early losses
Mar 13, 2021
The change room floor offers a cool comfort against my clammy bare feet. I’m pretty sure I’ve been steadily sweating for two weeks now. I stare at my naked reflection in the full-lengthmirror, cringing at what I see staring back at me. Defeated, I think to myself. I look utterly and totally defeated. I use a rough paper towel to wipe thick ultrasound gel off of my stomach. It’s my second time at a women’s clinic in downtown Toronto this week and I hope it’s the last. When I’m satisfied that my stomach is as dry as it’s going to get, I pause. Once more before getting dressed, I look at my exhausted and unhappy self in the mirror while lightly caressing my stomach with both hands. “What the fuck is going on in there?” I wonder.
2020 was probably the worst year in modern history. Everyone was hard hit in some way or other, so I guess I should have expected to experience a mysterious and rare pregnancy that posed serious health risks and completely shattered me emotionally… right? I mean, it just fits the theme.
When I realized I had skipped my period in November, I grabbed a handful of Dollarama pregnancy tests the next time I went out to run my weekly errands. To my relief, all the tests read negative, and I went on with my life assuming my skipped period was simply due to stress. Nevertheless, I did the responsible, adultlike-thing and booked an appointment with my doctor to discuss possible hormone imbalances and my mental health. She sent me off to get bloodwork done and, as luck would have it, I actually was pregnant. Now, some might say there’s a lesson in there about trusting dollar-brand pregnancy tests, but according to my doctor, the pregnancy hormone levels were super low and no matter how expensive a urine test I used, it wouldn’t have registered. In fact, because it was so low, my doctor had me get do more blood tests a few days after to make sure it was a “viable” pregnancy.
The weeks to come were a whirlwind of tests and appointments, pimples and tears, doubt and grief.
Two days after my doctor confirmed that I really was pregnant, I made the difficult decision to terminate and made an appointment to get a medical abortion. I probably cried more in those two days than I have in my entire life. I had no problem rationalizing my decision and knowing it was the right one for where I am in my life. I just wished so hard that I was ready. I’ve wanted to be a mom since before I can even remember. My own mother has memories of six-year-old, ridiculous me pleading with her and my dad to “make another baby” just so I could be a mom.Being a mom has always been my endgame, so I had always assumed that when I got pregnant, I’d be thrilled. But I guess I also assumed I would get pregnant when I was actually ready to bepregnant.
When I got to my appointment at the women’s clinic, a blood test indicated I was miscarrying naturally, so I didn’t have to go through with the abortion. You might think I got what I wanted, that this was easier, but it wasn’t. The choice I had come to regret was no longer mine to make.I felt betrayed by my own body. I left the clinic filled with grief and a tension that I can still feel in my neck, five months later.
Three days after that, I went back to my local LifeLabs for another blood test to make sure my miscarriage was “progressing normally.” As you should guess by now, reader, it wasn’t. I got a call from the reproductive health specialist at the clinic to come back in immediately. The results of my most recent bloodwork were typical of a perfectly healthy pregnancy… which big surprise, it also wasn’t.
When I decided to share my story, I reached out to a reproductive health specialist to learn more about early pregnancy loss. Dr. Genevieve Bois is a family physician with the Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay, and she told me that early pregnancy loss is very common, and between ten and twenty-five percent of all pregnancies result in miscarriages. “In most cases there is nothing ‘wrong’ and the woman doesn’t have a specific disease or condition, the pregnancy just didn’t work, whether for genetic anomalies or other reasons,” she said.
After more tests and my second ultrasound I was eventually diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy, meaning a fertilized egg had implanted itself somewhere outside the main cavity of my uterus. But… no one could find it. To add to the list of frustrations with this non-pregnancy pregnancy, the fetus was MIA, which meant I was experiencing a PUL or pregnancy of unknown location. This caused a lot of concern with my doctors because ectopic pregnancies have serious health risks. They are always destined to fail one way or other because the fetus can’t survive outside the uterus and if the fertilized egg ruptures it can cause internal bleeding, infection and even death.
According to Bois, ectopic pregnancies are super rare and ectopic PULs even more so. Ectopicpregnancies represent less than two per cent of all pregnancies, and while they can be very dangerous, most terminate themselves, like mind did. I wouldn’t call myself “lucky” in any part of this pregnancy experience, but if I had to find one part of this whole mess to find any shred of relief in, it was my eventual miscarriage. I bled heavily for 17 horrible days and then that was it. No more pregnancy. No more baby. Just complex grief and trauma I’m still barely dealing with.
My mental health has been something I’ve struggled with managing for most of my life. I’m blessed to have an awesome support group of friends and family, and access to my brilliant therapist. Still, with all these people to be grateful for, people I know wouldn’t judge me, I feel embarrassed when I talk about my pregnancy loss. I feel guilty and ashamed, even though I know it’s not my fault. But I also feel angry. My partner was only person I wanted to talk to about it, but there was no way he could understand. In his mind, he didn’t lose anything. He’s not ready to be a dad. He saw that I was lost, confused and angry, and he tried to empathize—but unlike me, he’s relieved that there’s not going to be a baby. And now, we don’t talk about it.So yes, I’m angry. Angry and alone in my grief. And as if I hadn’t been dealt a shit enough hand, now I have to face this huge, echoey, gaping hole in our relationship that is the discussion of children. But that conversation can wait. He can wait. For now, I’m focusing on myself, and this story.
Throughout and after my short but strange and complex pregnancy I realized there’s a lot we, as a society, ignore pregnancy loss and abnormal pregnancies. You probably know tons of women who have experienced a pregnancy loss—but you probably don’t know it happened. Losing a baby, no matter the situations surrounding that loss, can lead to social, emotional and physical complications. So, instead of keeping these lived experiences shrouded in secrecy, why don’t we instead share our stories? For too long, we’ve been forced to keep quiet, unwittinglycontributing to this perpetual culture of silence. But fuck that.
My name is Erin. And I lost a baby.
