Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Coming Out

In honor of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, I am going to briefly explain why this day has meaning to me.

After trying to conceive for about four months, my husband and I became pregnant in December of 2008. We were thrilled and immediately began making plans for our baby to arrive in September 2009, even giving a "womb name," Fievel, so that our little progeny could have an identity beyond "the baby". Then on February 18, 2009 I began to miscarry. Chris and I were devastated at the loss of our first pregnancy. Although we were only 9 weeks along, the loss of this pregnancy was also the loss of our dreams for this child, the loss of a chance to expand our family this year and the loss of our innocence-I now know in a profound way that yes, these things can and will happen to us.

I titled this post "Coming Out" because this has been my secret for the last 8 months. Not that I have tried to hide it, but there simply is not much of a safe space to talk about pregnancy loss in the public sphere. How do we bring this sort of thing up? When I see an old friend, how do I say "oh, and we lost our first pregnancy" as we are giving our life updates? In our language, there is not a term for a woman who has lost a child or pregnancy, there are no words for this creature I lost other than baby(which feels presumptuous, especially in conversation with those who have lost infants) or embryo(which I cannot bear to use). The Japanese have a word, Mizuko, which refers to the unborn who have died and translates to "water baby." So now I have Mizuko Fievel, who lived in me for less than 2 months, the focus of a myriad of dreams and hopes. The reason for my recent depression and withdrawal from the world. The namesake of the puppy my husband gave me for our anniversary.

I hope that with my public display of grief, the people in my life will become more aware of how common pregnancy loss really is. I hope that people will be more comfortable talking about it, and most importantly, have someone to talk to if they experience this sort of tragedy. Only after I miscarried did I hear about the miscarriages, still births and fertility struggles of the women in my life. These are not dirty little secrets and should not be treated as such.

So yes, please ask me questions. I would love a chance to talk about my pregnancy, my loss, and as always, my opinions.