As Julie Henderson and her husband were buying their new station wagon, she nearly told the salesman about her pregnancy. A home test had come back positive just a few days earlier. Even before they got the big news, the Hendersons were shopping for a new, bigger car. Now, with a second baby on the way, the timing seemed perfect.
The age difference between her three-year-old son and the new baby would be ideal. She would be off work at the same time as her pregnant friends.
But something held Ms. Henderson back from telling the car salesman, her co-workers, or her closest friends, for that matter. It was so early — she was just four and a half weeks along. And within days of taking a pregnancy test, she was not pregnant any longer. By the time she visited her doctor, she had lost the baby.
“My husband said, ‘You were never really pregnant, were you?” said Ms. Henderson, 32, who asked that her real name not be used because of fear her pregnancy plans will affect her career. “If I wasn’t actively trying to get pregnant, I would have chalked it up to not feeling good.”
This is the other side of the thin blue line. At least one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage, according to experts.
Years ago, many women miscarried before they knew they were pregnant, but the latest generation of pregnancy tests predict positive outcomes within days of conception.
But those early days are also when most pregnancy losses occur.
The risk of losing a pregnancy also rises as a woman ages. More Canadian women than ever are giving birth to their first children after they reach the age of 30. Women now grapple with the grief and confusion of an unexpected, inexplicable loss that previous generations may not have even registered, thinking their pregnancy losses were simply late periods, or not even noticing at all. The earliest pregnancy losses are often referred to as a chemical pregnancy, a missed miscarriage, or a blighted ovum. Regardless of the terminology, the outcome is the same: Couples who wanted to be pregnant are pregnant no longer. There is no baby to grieve, nothing to bury.
“People have a tendency to forget that this is a real loss. This is not a trivial matter,” said Anne Rosberger, director of the Bereavement and Loss Center of New York.
“These pregnancy losses and the feelings that go with them are certainly felt. People think it’s something that is like a blip on your life’s radar screen, an insignificant blip. But to you, it’s not. You have been waiting for this child. All these ‘unhad’ babies are precious. They are real. They are real to those parents.”
Technology exacerbates the problem. With ultrasounds available for women just a few weeks pregnant, the emotional attachment to a pregnancy can begin almost instantly. Seeing images of the baby developing inside makes the experience seem real, even before a baby’s tiny heartbeat can be detected.
Andrea Colman, an interior designer and mother of four in Holland Landing, Ont., has been pregnant nine times. Her most recent pregnancy loss was two years ago, shortly after she and her current husband began in vitro fertilization treatments. She was only eight weeks along when she miscarried.
With each miscarriage, Ms. Colman says she lost a bit of her soul. When she was in her 20s, her first husband would say they were so young, they should simply try to have another baby. Yet it was not another baby she wanted; she wanted the baby she had lost.
“When you miscarry before three months, you end up carrying that load by yourself because you didn’t tell anybody about the pregnancy,” she said. “Until you start telling people you’ve had a miscarriage, you don’t realize how many people have had them.”
Research has found valid reasons that parents are reluctant to talk about their losses; their feelings are often unappreciated or misunderstood by friends and family.
A recent study in the journal Women’s Health & Urban Life found the support offered to grieving women varies depending on how far along their pregnancies had progressed.
The researchers quizzed a group of female university students on their perceptions of perinatal losses. They viewed stillbirth as a more significant loss than miscarriage.
“When individuals do not view perinatal loss as a real life loss and instead view it as, for example, a routine procedure or failed conception, it is likely they will not have much empathy for the woman who experienced the loss and, in turn provide little support,” the researchers note. “It is likely that individuals provide varying types and amounts of support based on the meaning they attach to the loss.”
Tina Smith, a hospital worker who lives near Toronto, feels as though she is carrying around a shameful secret. For her, comfort comes from a “forget-me-not” necklace she ordered online. The pendant features a pearl, amethyst and ruby, the birthstones for the months of conception, due date and the pregnancy loss.
It was over by the time Ms. Smith went for her first ultrasound at nine weeks. After having six ultrasounds in the space of a week, Ms. Smith, who was then 39, learned that the baby had died.
“I’d lost the baby five weeks earlier and didn’t know,” said Ms. Smith, who also asked that her real name not be used. “I felt almost stupid, in a way, because I didn’t know, which is ridiculous. How, logically, could I know?”
Many of those pregnancies are still in such early days that women may have not yet revealed their news to anyone other than their spouses, making their grief all the more isolating. It is precisely
the fear of losing a pregnancy that keeps many parents from sharing their news during the first trimester. When Ms. Henderson miscarried, she simply told her boss that she was not feeling well — to have been completely honest would have tipped him to a possible maternity leave in her future.
She turned to an online message board for support, as more and more women are doing. The Internet provides some measure of anonymity, as well as an instant community of people experiencing similar losses. On message boards for parents and boards devoted to young women, the topic is so common that it often has its own category as a conversation thread.
“The thing I learned with what I went through is that from the moment you pee on the stick you’re a mom,” one woman wrote. “When you got that positive you imagined a life and what you’re mourning is not a ‘chemical pregnancy,’ but the loss of the vision you had for how your family was going to evolve.”
Many women say the best therapy for them will be holding a newborn baby in their arms. Despite their losses, they are still trying.
(National Post, March 2010)
