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By Carissa Caples EPLA Staff Writer Kelsy Dowd had just passed the 6-week mark in her pregnancy when she noticed she was spotting. Even though others brushed it off, she felt very concerned because she knew what was at risk. This was her baby. This was the child she and her husband sang to and prayed over. She’d already made a whole Pinterest board of plans for them, and she’d even handed her parents onesies to announce her pregnancy. Kelsy wanted to make sure everything was fine, so she contacted her OBGYN and her doctor to see if she could come in for a check-up. Unfortunately, she was told that they didn’t have any openings and that her symptoms did not qualify as an emergency. “I was like, you know what, nurses are going to advocate for you, they know what they’re talking about, and you’re not having any red bleeding or cramps, so it’s probably in your head,” Kelsy said. “[I thought,] ‘I’m worried for no reason.’” To Kelsy’s dismay, her 9-week appointment was when she and her husband, Lex, discovered that their baby didn’t have a heartbeat. “My body thought that I still had a viable pregnancy, but our baby just didn’t grow past 6 weeks and 3 days, which was really tough,” Kelsy said. Her grief was devastating, and Kelsy could barely handle the thought of telling her loved ones. But after shouldering the initial grief, Kelsy and Lex went and told his parents the grave news, then went to tell Kelsy’s parents and her little brothers, who were still very young. “Having such young siblings, that was one of the harder things,” Kelsy said. “A couple weeks after that happened, Zane asked me, ‘Where’s your baby?’ and then he realized, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have asked that question.’ You could see it on his face… 4-year-olds shouldn’t have to experience that.” To add to the pain, a few days later, Kelsy had to go in for a D&C so the doctors could remove the remaining tissue. Luckily, there was a bright spot in all her pain: Kelsy knew the importance of opening up about her trials, and because of her vulnerability, she was able to find the community she needed to heal. She reached out to women in her circle who were willing to listen and help her, and she discovered podcasts and other resources that proved to be instrumental in her healing process. After taking the time to grieve privately, she began sharing about her loss on social media. “It is actually really easy to find people who know what I’m going through,” Kelsy said. “25% of women have experienced a miscarriage… When you vocalize about it, there’s going to be people who have gone through it, so they’ll reach out to me.” Her friends, family, coworkers, and others in her life have been very supportive and helpful, and she truly feels that she had everything she needed to cope with her bereavement well. However, even with all that support, Kelsy put pressure on herself to get pregnant by her first baby’s due date, and every month that passed was a reminder of her childlessness and inadequacy in comparison to her expectations. “Now, as the months have gone by and we’re still not getting pregnant, I am just kind of confused,” Kelsy said. “Like, God, why was it so easy—we got pregnant within two months! Now it’ll be almost a year, and we still haven’t gotten pregnant again, so that’s more frustrating.” She tried to open up to her husband, but he struggled when he was reminded of the pain, so Kelsy and Lex just tried their best to mesh their coping styles together in a constructive way, being considerate of each other, yet making sure their own needs were met. Kelsy deactivated her Facebook, sick of looking at everyone else’s highlight reel, and when the due date arrived, she and Lex went out for a “staycation.” They rented out a hotel room, went out to dinner, and hoped that getting away for a while would help take their minds off the weight of that day. But still, every milestone—holidays with loved ones, monthiversaries of losing their child, and hearing about another family’s developments—brought tremendous grief. Now, Kelsy is in the “after” season, where the worst of the pain seems to be behind her, but she is still wading through the emotional aftermath as others in her life get pregnant. “It’s very interesting to me that grief and happiness can coexist,” Kelsy said. “Like, I don’t want people to tiptoe around me. If someone gets pregnant, I want them to tell me. I want to rejoice with them. I want to praise God with them, be there with them, and help support them every time they get to the next mark in their pregnancy… and I think that’s kind of hard for some people to understand… But at the same time, there are days where it’s like, ‘okay, if I see one more person announce that they’re pregnant, I’m going to be so emotional today.’ Each day’s a different day.” Grief is not straightforward, and she doesn’t always know exactly how she’ll feel about everything, but she mostly just wants people to reach out to her and show that they care. Over time, Kelsy has felt the support fade, and she feels hesitant to bring it up herself, fearing that she’ll ruin someone else’s day with her grief. She wishes others were more comfortable talking about her baby. “I would rather have people communicate with me and acknowledge that our baby was real, and that they were a person, and that they mattered, rather than tiptoeing around it and never talking about it,” Kelsy said. “I think, for me and Lex, our biggest fear is that people will forget that we have a child.” Kelsy explained that it doesn’t have to be extravagant, but she wishes people understood that grieving mothers still need support, even years down the road, and it can be small things, like reminder texts that others are thinking of them and praying for them. As she explained, “If people just communicated about it more, we would be able to find comfort in our grief.” In dark situations, greater support leads to greater healing.
Carissa Caples is a Senior Professional Writing and Information Design major at Cedarville University and staff writer for the Early Pregnancy Loss Association.
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By: Nick Carrington EPLA Editor In the core value series, the editors of Hope Blooms seek to show the heart of the EPLA by describing our core values. We encourage you to remember the children we’ve lost and stand with families suffering from miscarriage. Bearing Burdens Miscarriage is a traumatic event that affects families physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Research confirms that parents mourn the death of their child in the womb with a similar intensity and duration as they mourn deaths of other loved ones. This pain makes ordinary activities a burden for families. They need to make meals, care for their other children, do house and yard work, and work their jobs. Most loss parents have little to no respite, and the everyday demands of life only deepen the emotional and spiritual turmoil they feel. Many women also do not realize what their physical needs will be during and after a miscarriage. The entire experience is traumatic, including on the body of the mother. They bear a physical weight that is amplified by the pain within them. EPLA Response At the EPLA, we encourage a comprehensive response to the suffering of miscarriage. This response includes miscarriage kits to give mothers the supplies they need to deal with the physical effects of a miscarriage. We have created resource folders to educate suffering families as they try to make sense of the senseless. On our blog, we have suggested ways to encourage loss parents and help them with everyday needs. Bearing burdens will not “fix” the problem or make loss parents’ grief go away. But, hopefully, it will allow them to come up for air and breathe, to keep from sinking deeper into the depths that sometimes swallow us whole when we encounter trauma. Parents need time to work through their grief, and we as an organization and as individuals play a role in the healing. Stand with us as we seek to bear the burdens of suffering parents. They need our help; to carry their load is to offer them hope, and hope goes a long way as we grieve the loss of a child.
Nick Carrington is an Editor for the EPLA and Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at Cedarville University.
By: Emily Carrington EPLA Founder and President In the core value series, the editors of Hope Blooms seek to show the heart of the EPLA by describing our core values. We encourage you to remember the children we’ve lost and stand with families suffering from miscarriage. Affirming Life Early pregnancy loss is the loss of a unique and infinitely valuable life often bringing great grief to women and families as they suffer this loss. While it might be hard to perceive the life of an embryo without technology, we affirm that a mother is caring human life at any stage in development from fertilization on. The word miscarriage is often used to describe pregnancy loss in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Women who have experienced a second trimester miscarriage might have already felt kicks, started to show, heard a heartbeat, or have seen their little one on an ultrasound. Other women who have experienced a first trimester miscarriage might not have had any evidence of life other than the positive pregnancy test. Every pregnancy loss experience is different. Some women have been longing for a baby; some women are facing an unwanted pregnancy. Some women have suffered multiple miscarriages, some this is their first. Some women have had multiple healthy pregnancies before a miscarriage while others have had multiple miscarriages with no living children. For each of these women, when her pregnancy ended, so did a life. What does this mean? We want to help change the public script to allow space for grief following miscarriage. We believe that affirming life is the first step for giving this space. We must first understand what we are grieving so that we might grieve it properly. This does not mean we all will experience this grief in the same way. Or even must adapt the same rituals and ceremonies to process our grief. Just as we all experience other deaths differently, families will respond differently to miscarriage.
Emily Carrington is a freelance writer, wife, mother, and founder of the EPLA.
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