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By: Editors
The EPLA would like to wish all mothers a happy Mother's Day. One of our editors, Stephanie Gordon, wrote an excellent post on her blog about miscarriage and Mother's Day. Stephanie writes: "A lot of women don’t feel comfortable telling their stories. Countless women are scared to tell anyone they’ve had a miscarriage for fear of being judged, or that awkward moment of silence when someone doesn’t know what to say. Or they’ll say the wrong thing like, “It happens all the time.” I know, because I've been there. I've lost a baby and it was the most horrific and traumatic event of my life. Luckily, I had Matt, my parents, and close friends to turn to. They let me cry. They let me sit in silence. They didn't ask questions. They made me food. They hugged me. They held me. They let me be angry. They let me heal. They let me talk when I was ready. And each mother’s day I am reminded of my baby that is in heaven." Please go read the entire piece.
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By: Maria Servold, EPLA Editor  By: Nick Carrington EPLA Editor The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we comfort the grieving. This last week, a dear friend of mine lost his father to cancer. I care deeply for the entire family, a family who made me feel like one of their own. Because of the stay-at-home order in my state, the funeral was limited to a small number of people. I watched the live stream, wishing desperately that I could be there to share memories and celebrate this man’s life. To not physically be there was tough. Instead, I texted and wrote a letter. I prayed. I kept my physical distance, but emotionally and spiritually, I clung as close to the family as I could. Similarly, those who experience miscarriage during this pandemic will receive fewer visitors, fewer hugs, and fewer shoulders to cry on. That does not mean we can’t comfort them in other ways. For those who have a way with words, write. The empathy that flows through the words in a card are a healing balm for the soul. For those who work magic in the kitchen, cook. For the grieving, there is a morsel of peace knowing a meal will be delivered, one less thing to worry about. For those who have the resources, send gifts. A well thought out gift will reinforce the fact that a family has lost something of infinite value: a son or daughter. And there are many more things we can do. Be creative to overcome current challenges, but please, do not forget that loss parents will still mourn the death of their children and need help from their loved ones. Even when isolated, we can be together.
Nick Carrington is an Editor for the EPLA and Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at Cedarville University.
By: Maria Servold EPLA Editor For more than a week, the world has been turned upside-down. Many of us cannot meet up with friends, attend church, or host birthday parties. The disruption of most of our daily activities, though, does not mean that all things stop. Sadly, there are still women around the world going through the pain and loss of miscarriage. These women and their families are not only experiencing the loneliness and sadness that come from losing a child, they have to experience these feelings while also “social distancing.” Thankfully, in our social media age, it’s still possible to connect with friends, family, and even doctors electronically. Now more than ever, we are glad to be a part of the online community who helps care for women after miscarriage. If someone you know is suffering from a miscarriage during this pandemic, send them our website link and Facebook page. They can still reach out for resources, and we will still provide them. We seek to help all women and families, no matter the state of the world.  Maria Servold is an Editor at the EPLA, Assistant Director of the Herbert H. Dow II Program in American Journalism, and Lecturer in Journalism at Hillsdale College.
By: Nick Carrington EPLA Editor To remember the children lost to miscarriage, we must share about their short lives when given the chance. This practice does not mean forcing the conversation; we rarely jam in memories of other deceased loved ones when it doesn’t fit. We just need to treat miscarried children with the dignity they deserve. “When Aunt Andrea has her baby, she will have four kids”, my son declared as if we’d asked him a trivia question. Something rose up in my chest, my heart rushing words to my mouth. I could not leave it alone. “Yes, she will have four children, but she has had five kids. One died in her belly.” I had talked to Tucker about miscarriage before, but the concept still baffles him; he thought I was joking. As a five-year-old, he does not have a full grasp of death, and the idea that a baby would die without a discernible cause makes no sense to him. Tucker knows that babies form in a mama’s belly, but he sees the womb as a cocoon that ensures immortality. My wife and I tried to explain how prevalent and tragic miscarriage is: “Your Aunt Emily lost three babies. They were all your cousins and very special. We loved them all.” Why would we insist on telling him about his miscarried cousins? We want him and his brothers to know how precious life is at all stages, that we continue to mourn the loss of little ones even if we can’t play with them on holidays or send them birthday gifts. We want our kids to recognize the reality of miscarriage: a child was present, loved, and lost. We do not go into all the details; our little ones are not ready for that. But they will hopefully understand miscarriage better than we did growing up. As they get older, we pray they see and feel the tragedy of miscarriage so they can effectively come alongside the grieving, to both mourn the loss of those children and celebrate their short lives.
Nick Carrington is an Editor for the EPLA and Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at Cedarville University.
By Stephanie Gordon EPLA Editor When I went through my miscarriage, I didn’t share the news with the world until years later. I felt like talking about miscarriage was still a silent topic – even in 2012. When I shared the news with my 86-year-old grandma, Rosemary, she told me she, too, had lost a baby four months into a pregnancy. Her loss was something we never talked about until recently. In 1962, she became pregnant with her third child. Four months later, she lost her baby. At the time of her miscarriage, she had two healthy girls. “I didn’t talk to anyone about it,” Rosemary said. “Back then, miscarriage was kept a secret and wasn’t talked about. It wasn’t a good experience.” My grandma worked in a local school system at the time of her miscarriage. She made an appointment with her doctor before going to work one morning. She was experiencing blood loss, and wanted to determine if she was losing her child. “My doctor confirmed that I was losing the baby,” she said. “Back then, there weren’t options like there are today. The laws were different. I felt so helpless.” If you have experienced miscarriage, you know that there are options for mothers experiencing loss. A few options would be to pass the baby naturally, a D&C (dilation and curettage), or a pill, usually misoprostol, to help complete the miscarriage. My grandma’s only option was to wait to pass the baby naturally. To this day, she believes her doctor wished he could have helped more. She continued to work even though she was losing her child. She remembered crying to her doctor as she waited for her baby to pass. He again told her that he could do nothing to help her. A few days after bleeding began, my grandma passed her baby during the night at home. My grandpa stayed by her side as she delivered the baby. Apparently in the ’60s, it was common practice to be admitted to a hospital after miscarriage for close monitoring. “I stayed in the hospital for a day-and-a-half,” Rosemary said. “I felt so relieved that it was all over. I went home and it was fine.” My grandma went on to tell me that back then, women didn’t talk to their doctor, family, or friends about the things they do now. This was interesting to me. Was this a generation that just dealt with the situations they were put in with little support? Were they forced to bottle up their emotions and act like nothing happened? Sort of like an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality? It felt as though it was. After my grandma’s miscarriage, her doctor said that she wouldn’t be able to have more healthy children. I’m not sure what made him think that – maybe because she had experienced miscarriage. But, two years later, she became pregnant with my mother. She birthed one last healthy child, and I am so incredibly happy she’s here.
Stephanie Gordon is a paleo food enthusiast, wife, full-time SAHM of two girls with one on the way, marketing professional, and blogger. You can follow her on Instagram at @stephgordonblog.
Can Our Social Media Apps Facilitate Sharing, Connecting, and Healing on the Topic of Miscarriage?3/2/2020 By Stephanie Gordon EPLA Editor If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you know we touch on a wide range of pregnancy loss topics. I was having a bout of writer’s block last week when I was deciding what to write about. So, I reached out to my Instagram followers. I asked them what they’d like to learn about pregnancy loss. In a matter of minutes, responses were coming into my inbox. “Sometimes I feel like my husband is sadder than I am. To me, giving birth to a 10-week-old baby and holding it in my hand for three hours was some sort of closure. I’m not saying I don’t feel sad anymore, because I still have my moments. But now that I’m pregnant again, I have been able to start getting excited for this baby while my husband is just upset we don’t have the miscarried baby in our arms.” I received many messages like this one, and many wanted to hear a husband’s side of pregnancy loss. Some wanted to know how to support their husband during loss. Coping with loss was a popular suggestion. One person wanted to hear about a woman’s experience with a first pregnancy ending in miscarriage and not knowing anything about miscarriage. Someone asked me to write a letter to women who haven’t experienced pregnancy loss. “I’ve been shamed for not having a miscarriage and almost meant to feel unworthy (and like I don’t appreciate it enough) of having a child because I haven’t gone through something like that. I want to be sensitive to the topic because I couldn’t imagine the heartbreak, but I have a hard time talking about miscarriage because I feel like there’s a group of people who have miscarried hating on people who haven’t. There’s a disconnect.” I was surprised by the variety of messages I had received about pregnancy loss, just by the simple act of reaching out. There are so many different loss stories and emotions out there, floating around social media. If you are reading this and feeling alone, I can assure you that there is someone out there who has experienced a similar loss to yours or feels a similar way you do. “My wife just miscarried our first baby. With further digging, we found out the loss was due to blood type. She has an A- blood type and I have A+. The doctors said that it (the loss) was possibly from the baby being A+, and her body thought it was an infection. She was 11 weeks along when we found out.” By simply sharing a story on Instagram, I had people I could instantly connect with on this matter. I guess that’s the beauty of bringing awareness to this topic we are so passionate about here at the EPLA. With sharing and sympathizing, there comes healing. And for those who haven’t experienced loss, they’re interested too. Let’s keep fighting the good fight, because we’re all here out of love.
Stephanie Gordon is a paleo food enthusiast, wife, full-time SAHM of two girls with one on the way, marketing professional, and blogger. You can follow her on Instagram at @stephgordonblog.
By: Sarah Becker
Since the beginning of my junior year, I have led GOAL Community Health, a volunteer program for undergraduate students at Hillsdale College. Promoting student involvement with organizations such as the Early Pregnancy Loss Association has taught me three valuable lessons: 1. Serve as a community Whether I was assembling miscarriage support kits, writing letters to families who have experienced a miscarriage, or connecting students to marketing and social media projects with the EPLA, working for others has been most joyful and transformative when I have been able to work with others. The opportunity to collaborate with both students and community members has not only helped me see that my own perspectives are more well-rounded and my skills are most effective when they are combined with those of others, but it has also reminded me that I am interdependent and exist in a community. Not every woman or family experiences miscarriage, but each of us face our own individual sufferings and struggles. Learning that each of us relies upon the support, strength, and encouragement of others, even if in different ways, can be a difficult and humbling lesson. Yet it’s an important one, and I am grateful for the ways in which serving the EPLA within a community keeps that truth in the forefront of my mind. 2. Understand the needs of others Working with the Early Pregnancy Loss Association over the past two years has taught me that caring for others is never an abstract concept or theoretical idea. Instead, it is a practical, tangible activity that has the potential to transform the lives of real people. Serving those around me requires passion, ambition, and a desire to help, but it also demands that I be familiar with the genuine needs, struggles, and sufferings of those I aim to serve. The EPLA’s deep willingness to listen to the women and families it serves has always impressed me, and I am thankful for its witness to the fact that I can only serve others well if I first choose to embrace stories, needs, and sufferings that are sometimes complex to understand or difficult to hear. 3. Keep the person at the center Any successful organization like the EPLA requires efficiency and organization, yet even the most well-designed or well-managed administrative systems are never a substitute for the personal relationships they are meant to support. The ultimate goal of any non-profit should never be merely to solve an impersonal project or problem, but instead to serve people. Through my work with the EPLA, I am grateful to have learned that upholding values such as bearing burdens, loving people, and grieving together can require providing miscarriage kits or financial support, but ultimately must prioritize personal relationships, too. This spring, I am stepping away from my role with GOAL Community Health as I graduate in May and begin medical school in the fall, yet I am eager to take these three lessons with me. Working with the EPLA has played a role in motivating me to pursue medicine, but has also shaped my vision of what kind of physician I hope to become. Regardless of where my career takes me, I aspire to remember that improving the health of those around me is a project best pursued with others, with a recognition of the genuine needs of my community, and with attention to the individual people I aim to serve. By: Nick Carrington EPLA Editor Miscarriage is heartbreaking. Parents lose a child and will never see him or her smile, climb trees, ride rollercoasters, or go to prom. As a society, we struggle to affirm the pain this causes, even though studies show that parents grieve miscarriages as long and as intensely as other deaths. Our failure to recognize this grief has led to numerous challenges, including in the workplace. Additionally women and families are left to navigate this grief while experiencing the physical process of a miscarriage. A woman might choose to deliver the baby naturally, which is a process like any birth that has no clear time table and might take weeks to begin. Without appropriate leave a woman could find herself delivering the decease child in the work place, even in the case of an early miscarriage. If she does not want to wait for a natural miscarriage she might choose a D&C procedure, which like any surgical procedure requires time and healing for recovery. Our failure to recognize the grief and physical process of a miscarriage has led to numerous challenges, including in the workplace. When parents lose a child in the womb, they often get little or no time off work to recover. If they do miss work days, loss parents frequently do so without pay under the “Family and Medical Leave Act” (FMLA). Bereavement legislation is getting a new look in Europe, but miscarriages are typically ignored. Families may not have the luxury to take leave without pay if they have other mouths to feed. The prolonged grief of miscarriage can affect their job performance, especially in the days immediately following the loss of their child. Our workplaces need to recognize this and respond accordingly. Here are a few ideas to help employers navigate a difficult situation. 1. Discuss with your Employee How Much Time They Need Off Loss parents likely need time to deal with the physical and emotional turmoil that miscarriage brings. The amount of time away will depend on the person. Obviously, there should be limits to how many days an employee can take; organizations can’t be shorthanded forever. But employers should be generous with the understanding that a family has just lost a son or daughter. Those wounds do not heal with Band-Aids. 2. Consider Easing Loss Parents Back into Work If possible, create a temporary work structure that allows an employee to contribute but takes away some stress. This may mean allowing the bereaved to work from home a few days a week or giving them important but low stakes assignments. Loss parents will want to contribute, but they may not be ready to immediately begin making big decisions right away. 3. Show the Organization Cares When parents lose a child, they frequently want others to remember their children and recognize the magnitude of that loss. Employers and coworkers should consider sending flowers, a card, or other small gifts to show they care about the bereaved. Loss parents need support from multiple places, and a little thoughtfulness from an employer can help by making them feel like more family than indentured servants. Compassion That’s Not Compelled While no legislation exists that forces organizations to give paid leave to loss parents, we urge employers to consider the pain of miscarriage and respond with compassion. Parents mourning a miscarriage will usually grieve as they do other deaths in the family. They could use a moment to breathe before diving headfirst into the waters of everyday life. A little compassion can make a big difference.
Nick Carrington is an Editor for the EPLA and Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at Cedarville University.
By: Emily Carrington EPLA President and Founder Whether you or a loved one is suffering early pregnancy loss, there is support out there. Emotional and spiritual support is incredibly important, but so is physical support of the difficult days and weeks following a miscarriage. Unfortunately, many women and families are not prepared for the physical experience of having to deliver a miscarried baby. Here are some organizations that provide nationwide help with the physical needs of a miscarriage. What to Expect During a Miscarriage: Comfort Kits: Medical Kits for Home Miscarriage Burial Aid Materials Check with your local hospital, OBGYN, or midwife to see if miscarriage care kits are available. The items in these kits are often easily accessible. Please note, EPLA wants to connect women and resources. Inclusion in this list does not imply an endorsement of or relationship with the organization. We simply hope you might find them helpful. If you are experiencing a miscarriage at home, we recommend that you maintain communication with your doctor or midwife. In Hillsdale, Michigan where EPLA is located, we offer Miscarriage Care Kits in two sizes that provide items to meet both physical and emotional needs. Kits are available at the Hillsdale Hospital Birthing Center, Hillsdale Hospital Emergency Department, Alpha Omega, and the Branch-Hillsdale-St. Joseph Community Health Agency. We encourage other miscarriage support groups around the country to replicate our kits in their own communities.
Emily Carrington is a freelance writer, wife, mother, and founder of the EPLA.
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