{"id":3041,"date":"2015-03-18T11:07:02","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T18:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=3041"},"modified":"2015-03-18T11:07:02","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T18:07:02","slug":"my-miscarriage-memories-that-dont-fade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/18\/my-miscarriage-memories-that-dont-fade\/","title":{"rendered":"My Miscarriage: Memories that Don’t Fade"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"A<\/a>
A Lost Possibility: Women on Miscarriage<\/a> – by Ryan Alexander-Tanner<\/a>, from The Nib<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NOTE: In a newsletter,\u00a0\u00a0Nona Willis Aronowitz<\/a>\u00a0posted two\u00a0stories<\/a> about miscarriages<\/a>. \u00a0As I began to respond, this emerged:<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

My sons are 40 and 35.\u00a0 Between them I had a miscarriage.\u00a0 She was a girl.\u00a0 It was the first day I had told anyone I was pregnant and begun wearing maternity clothes.<\/p>\n

It happened on Election Night 1978 and I was in the studio producing the “house desk” results.<\/p>\n

When the pain got serious I raced home, lost most of the fetus in the bathroom, and called our OB. \u00a0We went immediately to the hospital; in the morning I had a D and C. \u00a0 It was devastating.<\/p>\n

Then came the reaction:
\nVP of News: \u00a0You work too hard.
\nSecretary to Pres of News: \u00a0What were you doing working all night?\u00a0 Didn’t you want <\/i>this baby?<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I also got notes from people ranging from my aunt to a colleague, all with the same message: \u00a0“I’ve never told anyone before but I had a miscarriage (anywhere from 1 to 30) years ago.” \u00a0The pain for each was still real.<\/p>\n

I was lucky though.\u00a0 My OB was from Czechoslovakia. \u00a0 He had a real (maybe European, maybe Socialist, maybe just father of daughters) respect for professional women and, as he had been in my first pregnancy was wonderfully\u00a0supportive. \u00a0He ran a cell test to determine whether there was a distinguishable cause (there was – a serious genetic issue – although we didn’t learn that for months, it has been a comfort.) \u00a0He\u00a0explained the D and C, urged us to take time to grieve but also reminded us that we were far from finished with efforts to have more kids, kept me in the hospital an extra day so I could pull myself together before I went home and had to tell our nearly-three-year-old son.<\/p>\n

He wanted to know where the baby went.\u00a0 I just couldn’t handle a literal answer so even though I wasn’t at that time religious at all I told him the baby was with God.\u00a0 I needed him to understand that\u00a0she was somewhere where she would be as loved as he was on 79th and Broadway.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Several years later when I worked at TODAY, with the support of our Executive Producer, \u00a0I produced a series about miscarriages. \u00a0The narrator was an OB himself, one of the TODAY stable of experts.\u00a0 I’m not naming him because this is what he told me (to his credit:) \u00a0 “Thank you so much for doing this series with me.\u00a0 I’ve been an OB for 25 years and I never realized the pain that this causes women.” \u00a0Seriously.\u00a0 I was grateful that he was emotionally available to admit this but can you imagine?\u00a0 Never realized.<\/p>\n

One more thing – partners are NOT sufficiently supported when this happens. They need FAR more\u00a0attention\u00a0than they usually receive. \u00a0My husband has said for years that he wished we could have had a funeral or some sort of service so he too could have a vehicle to grieve.<\/p>\n

NONA thank you so much for raising this and for the links to those powerful pieces.\u00a0 The graphic one was particularly evocative as it reminded me of small moments I’d forgotten.<\/p>\n

For the record – our second son was born 2 years later.\u00a0 Both my boys are fabulous men and exquisite spouses and dads.\u00a0 I am grateful for them both and the sorrow of our loss is not in any way linked to\u00a0how I define my unambiguous and grateful love of them.<\/p>\n

Even so – the fact that, 32 years later, the silence and shame and insensitivity remains is a travesty. \u00a0Please\u00a0share this with doctors, nurses, midwives, preschool teachers and others who are on the “front lines.” \u00a0Maybe we can help to break the chain.,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTE: In a newsletter,\u00a0\u00a0Nona Willis Aronowitz\u00a0posted two\u00a0stories about miscarriages. \u00a0As I began to respond, this emerged: My sons are 40 and 35.\u00a0 Between them I had a miscarriage.\u00a0 She was a girl.\u00a0 It was the first day I had told anyone I was pregnant and begun wearing maternity clothes. It happened on Election Night 1978 … Continue reading My Miscarriage: Memories that Don’t Fade<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,42,7,98,29],"tags":[1711,2312,2315,3215,3217,2329,3218,789,3214,3219,3216,54],"class_list":["post-3041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baby-boom","category-family","category-life","category-religion","category-women","tag-childbirth","tag-grief","tag-loss","tag-maternity","tag-medium","tag-miscarriage","tag-nona-willis-aronowitz","tag-parenting","tag-pregnancy","tag-ryan-alexander-turner","tag-the-nib","tag-today-show"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-N3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3041"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3367,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041\/revisions\/3367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}