"It is time to stop standing at the edges of rooms. Hugging the walls. Living in my head... if I don't poke my head out of my shell and show people who I am, all anyone will ever think I am is my shell." Shonda Rhimes
New Year's means new beginnings. New diets, new commitments, sometimes even a new lifestyle. It means for many people, in the words of Shonda Rhimes, saying yes. Many mothers find this difficult—to say yes to who they really are and the layered lives they lead. Social media often involves an onslaught of picture-perfect family images, all smiles and sweetness, free from the frustrations of everyday parenting. Motherhood is not always so blissful. It includes challenges, hardships and sometimes tragedy.
Christine Serdjenian Yearwood, the founder of UP-STAND, was reading Shonda Rhimes’ Year of Yes while coping with such a tragedy. Coincidentally, I had recently read this book and it inspired me to take a more active role in my own happiness, including attending the momtrepreneurs meetup where I met Christine. It inspired her to speak out about her experience.
Like her first pregnancy, Christine did not have difficulty getting pregnant a second time. A cycle into trying, she felt pregnant—vivid dreams and all. But every pregnancy test she took came back negative. When she got her period, she thought she must have been mistaken. But the bleeding continued for another week, then two weeks. In Maine visiting her parents for a vacation, Christine called her doctor. The doctor asked if she had taken a pregnancy test and instructed her to take another one. She did and this time it was positive. Her family and husband (in New York at the time) were overjoyed. But she knew something was wrong.
On her doctor’s instructions, she went to the ER. Since Christine’s mother needed to watch her daughter and her father was at work, she went alone. An ultrasound revealed she had an ectopic pregnancy. She was taken by ambulance to another hospital where the specialist helped her through the experience. With so much internal bleeding, it could become septic. If the fallopian tube hadn’t ruptured, she was told they could make a small incision and take the embryo out. If it had ruptured, they would have to remove her tube. It had ruptured. They said there was no way to save the embryo; it could not survive. While Christine had known something was wrong, she didn’t think her life was in danger or that she might have part of her body removed. Her father joined her at the hospital. Her doctor was going back and forth to another room, delivering twins. She left the hospital, only a few hours after surgery, by her own choice to return to her daughter. While her doctors were not worried about her health at that point, it was a too-short stay for such an experience.
Soon after this tragedy, Christine and her husband had a scheduled trip to Italy. The trip had been planned, before this second pregnancy, as a kind of celebration—in part for their anniversary and for their freedom together after having gone through the first pregnancy and over a year of breastfeeding. They had always enjoyed traveling together and now with their daughter older, they could again. After the loss, the trip naturally took on a different feel. Having that time together in such a beautiful place after something so emotional helped them heal. But when asked about her Italian vacation after returning home, often in public or group settings or via text message, Christine would hesitate and reply, “It was so nice to have the time together” and “Italy is a beautiful place.” It can be hard to navigate how and when to share something like this, even when you want support and sensitivity.
At times when she felt comfortable sharing her loss with friends and family members, some responded with well-meaning phrases like “Well, you only have to wait one cycle and then just try again” or “Just be happy you’re alive.” To Christine, that sentiment represents a bare bones kind of existence. Another woman responded, “Oh I’m sorry, but life goes on.” All these responses lack an awareness of the emotional intensity involved. Pregnancy loss is a traumatic event. Even just Christine’s surgery which included the loss of a body part is traumatic. Such experiences inflict a kind of PTSD that doesn’t simply go away.
I know because I also experienced a loss. When I was 20 weeks pregnant with my first child, my water broke. I went to the hospital, hoping to save my baby, but I had developed an infection and was induced. My daughter was stillborn.
While pregnancy loss is not uncommon (over 20% of pregnancies fail), talking about it is. The majority of losses occur in the first trimester. When I started spotting at 18 weeks, the doctor on call told me not to worry since miscarriage was highly unlikely that far into pregnancy. The chance of your water breaking early (preterm premature rupture of the membranes) is 1-2%, oddly about the same chance as having an ectopic pregnancy. Experiencing such an unlikely event is an especially frightening feeling. It removes the comfort of having numbers on your side in the future. Anytime some bad thing is unlikely to happen, you know it still could.
No matter how far into a pregnancy, the pain of loss is still poignant. Even in the early stages of a desired pregnancy, hopes and plans have likely already begun. From that first positive pregnancy test, many expectant mothers start thinking about their future child, imagining what they’ll look like, how to decorate the nursery, the things they’ll do together. Even prior to pregnancy, many women start this planning process. That is partly why failed attempts at pregnancy or a failed IVF cycle can feel almost as devastating. The loss and grief still exist.
Pregnancy loss is both a highly emotional and physical experience. In my case, I went through a painful labor and held my baby in my arms. In Christine’s case, she experienced a life-threatening condition and lost a part of her body in addition to the baby she hoped to have. On top of the intense emotional pain of losing a wanted child, there is also a feeling that your body failed you. For someone as athletic as Christine, the physical element of loss plays a large role. When you depend on your body operating at a high level and something goes wrong physically, especially with such unlikely odds, you can feel like your own body has let you down.
When people have no experience of such tragedy, they don’t always understand the magnitude of grief involved. Just be happy you’re alive, you’ll have more, everything happens for a reason. All those well-meaning platitudes often have the opposite of the intended effect. If you know someone coping with loss, don’t try to make them happy. It will almost certainly fail. Just be there for them. You don’t know what to say, say that. You don’t know how to help, ask. Offer food. Offer support. Offer love. Don’t offer empty promises of future happiness or health that cannot be guaranteed and do not hold much appeal to someone suffering. Grief is important and necessary. To make someone feel that they should not be grieving is the very way to make them feel worse.
Christine started her company as a way to help other women. She is sharing her experience for the same reason. No one loss is the same and everyone grieves differently. But knowing that others have gone through something similar, that a community exists that understands this grief and that you can talk about it, can help. It definitely helped me. It is the reason why I am open about my loss and choose to share my story. Because if we can be bravely honest, if we can share ourselves and support each other as we struggle through these unlikely tragedies, they will be just a little easier to bear.
We have all experienced some kind of challenge or loss. As the year begins, let us say yes to being a community of mothers who support and do not judge. Saying yes to who we are takes courage, but it is easier if we do it together.
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