Miscarriage is an extremely common occurrence in women of childbearing age but it is something that is not easily talked about. Or rather, it’s something you don’t want to hear.
A miscarriage is something that happens at least once in the lifetime of many women, but it can also happen two, three, or four times to the same woman. In some cases, specific causes can be identified; in most cases, they cannot. We’ve discussed this here. On this topic, medicine still can’t provide all the answers; we simply know that it can happen. We also know that a miscarriage doesn’t affect the outcome of a subsequent pregnancy. So, at the end of the day, for many it remains a non-issue (you’ll just have another one anyway!). This sends a mixed message: on the one hand, countless women experience a miscarriage at some point in their lives, so it’s best not to make too much of a fuss about it and not to get too attached to the pregnancy—you never know what might happen. On the other hand, it’s not a problem; it’s normal. In short, miscarriage becomes a sort of rite of passage. A sort of price to pay, to see how strong you are. Suffering in silence. Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers—and who knows how far back we can go—knew all too well that many pay the price of a miscarriage: over time, countless women, often from childhood onward, have been taught never to announce a pregnancy in the first trimester, but to wait patiently and keep quiet. Because if it doesn’t go to term, you’ll be heartbroken, they explain—often with big, hurried smiles. And why, if I just keep it to myself and it doesn’t go on, do I feel good?
In short, we know it so well—that it can happen—and we’ve learned it so well that we keep quiet, not because we don’t want to speak up, but because it’s inappropriate and you never know—that miscarriage has become non-news: a common, normal, routine occurrence—so obvious that it doesn’t attract or deserve attention. Be that as it may, like almost everything else concerning a woman’s life, miscarriage, too, has become a private matter. Something that happens to us, but cannot be spoken of (or only sparingly, or only by paying a therapist). Something that happens to us, but for which we shouldn’t expect support from our society or from our mothers or grandmothers, who have often learned the hard way that the response to a miscarriage is silence and a pat on the back—and they, too, as the first survivors of the silence surrounding perinatal grief, have lost their words. They never received any; they have none to give. Think of how much pain passes through these silent scenes.
Abortion is not told because it is normal. It happens to many. In this general atmosphere of trivialization, silencing and patronizing encouragement not to do this and try again soon , women are forced to carry on their own the weight of the experience, traumatic, of the loss, of the experience, traumatic, of profuse bleeding or curettage, that of the changes in hormones that were previously needed and now no longer and resuming a physiological rhythm is not a joke, the traumatic experience not to have a socially shared linguistic code to talk about this experience as well as many other mournful experiences, managing to find support out there. One trauma after another, which we cannot say, because otherwise it means that you are weaker than our grandmothers (these mythical figures, reduced to propaganda as a portrait of the veredonnes of once upon a time).
It is impossible to talk about spontaneous abortion, almost never and almost anywhere (except to pull out the hardcover of the “elderly” woman who is looking for a pregnancy when it is too late because she has forgotten the biological clock somewhere, distracted!) .
It is impossible to talk about the traumatic effects of spontaneous abortion, almost never and almost anywhere (except to say that our grandmothers were stronger and kept everything inside, with a smile on their lips, or to say that if we keep thinking about it too much we risk not getting pregnant anymore).
Talking openly about how much it costs emotionally to want a child and not knowing if you will have one, is almost never possible, and almost nowhere.
Or better: you can say, all these things, knowing that as soon as they are said, someone will arrive *, often with the smock, with a degree in psych * and / or with 4 beautiful children who have grown up to explain where we are wrong and how we should react instead .
What should we think of our desire that has been embodied for only a few weeks and how to “turn the page”.
For all these reasons (and for the testimonies that we have been collecting with the Instant study for fourteen months, which make the blood freeze due to the cultural backwardness on the subject) it is very appropriate to talk about spontaneous abortion with women who are carriers of this experience.
Giving space to the hundred thousand Italian women who every year try to get pregnant and have to deal with one or more spontaneous abortions is necessary, also and above all on 8 March .
Giving space to these experiences allows us to break down the taboo on women’s health and reproductive rights, but it also allows us to fight the social stigma against women who ” cannot have children “.
Being childless in Italy today means not existing .
And instead, thousands of women carry this weight alone every day, look when it is good with pity, when it goes badly humiliated (because they are old, because they are fat, because they are too young, because they cry, because they already have other children and therefore who complain, because they have an underlying disease and therefore they had to wait for it).
I am honored to be able to host Chiara’s testimony, who tells us about her experience
Bye CiaoLapo, bye women, bye men.
I am Chiara, I am 28 years old and I would like to be a mother, together with Christian, my partner in life, work and suffering.
I am healthy, but a few years ago I discovered that I have a nasty and unpleasant autoimmune disease: undifferentiated connectivitis. This crap, however, never stopped me. I have always been full of energy and desire to live my youth, to then one day be able to dedicate myself to my children, whom I have always dreamed of having. Chri and I have always had a gypsy life. We have lived in Spain, in Africa, in Costa Rica, in Romania, we have traveled far and wide fighting to try to help animals (which have been our mission since graduation). Then we decided to stop and build our nest. We now live on the outskirts of Turin, in the middle of a forest where we have our farmhouse and our 4-legged hairy baby girl.
During the first lockdown, last March, the wonderful news that after only 3 attempts, I was pregnant.
The surprise, the emotion. We walked over the sky, the stars and the stars. And our parents with us. In the naivety of the first time. I still remember the emotion of the first ultrasound. I was all dressed up, all pink with a long side braid. Mom and Christian with me. My soul trembled and I could not wait to meet my creature. First ultrasound, nothing is seen. Let’s try again in a week. Nothing yet. And then still nothing. After 4 dark ultrasound scans the diagnosis: light egg. The discouragement. The delusion. Fear. Because? And then the RU pill. The damned hospital with its insensitive doctors. The lack of humanity. Be a number and not a person. The cramps, the blood mixed with tears. We will try again, it doesn’t matter. I have trauma, I cry. But we will make it. Together.
January 5, 2021: The test came back positive again, after a few months of trying. How wonderful. Again. “Yeah, okay, but let’s not get our hopes up too fast this time, okay? Let’s not tell everyone like we did last time!”
We’re eagerly awaiting the first ultrasound. This time, I’m being treated by the super-duper expert OB-GYN in the hospital’s high-risk pregnancy unit.
The excitement, the anxiety, the fear of seeing that black ultrasound screen again. The fear that the gestational sac would be empty. But no! There’s a heartbeat. And the fetus, too. We’re soaring above the clouds again. “We made it this time, love. Let’s wait until March when the first trimester ends, and then we can finally breathe a sigh of relief.”
Two days later, my breasts stop hurting. How wonderful—I don’t even have morning sickness anymore. Hmm… it feels a little strange, though… “Chri, should I call the midwife at the clinic?” “No, don’t worry. In fact, it’s for the best.”
Two days later, my libido—which had completely disappeared until then—began to return, and I no longer had the hot and cold flashes I’d been experiencing in the weeks before.
“Good morning midwife, I’m sorry but I have no more symptoms, I’m incredibly fine … everything okay? Can I make an echo?”
“Chiara, I don’t understand the question. Pregnancy is fine! Don’t worry and experience pregnancy without anxiety”
My mom, my friends… everyone was telling me the same thing: “Come on, Chiara, give it a rest. You’re so anxious. Just relax!” I felt like I was going crazy. I was listening to my body, just as we’ve always been taught to do, and I could tell something wasn’t right. I could feel it. Just like I knew I was pregnant a month earlier, without even needing to take a test.
But no. You’re just an anxious person, and these fears don’t exist.
Friday morning, a light, almost transparent, pale pink discharge.
“Chri, look…”
“Come on, Chiara! It’s nothing!”
No, I don’t like this…so I go to the emergency room.
Triage, pre-triage, and the nurse: “Ma’am, it’s probably implantation bleeding. Don’t worry. We’ll do a routine ultrasound anyway, but try to stay calm.”
I walk into the ultrasound room.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s no heartbeat. Get dressed and I’ll explain the procedure.” “I already know the procedure—this is the second time this has happened to me.” I wanted to laugh. To laugh, scream, and smash everything. All I could do was laugh.
A sword had pierced my heart and inside me there was only a thought “I knew it. I felt it. I knew it. Sorry, my child for not listening to you. I knew it.” It was 7 weeks. Few, fragile, 7 weeks. Meanwhile, your vision becomes blurred, your head is spinning, your legs are shaking. No, not again. Not again. Not again. Your mind repeats this phrase in a loop as you put on those bloody bloody panties. This time you were hoping for it. You believed it. This time you did everything possible, everything right. You took all the meds that the super medical experts gave you. What went wrong? Your body, woman. Your body cannot hold that heart within itself, despite your best efforts. Your body is not functioning. This is the thought that suffocates the mind. “I don’t work”.
And what does this have to do with March 8? With women’s day? It has to do with the fact that never, never in my life have I received so much violence as in those moments. When there, lying there, helpless, with tears in your eyes, you are not a person, a woman, a mother. You are a number. “Yeah, one is gone. Come on the other. Quick.” The doctor says to the nurse, once my cursed quick and hasty ultrasound is over.
As she writes the report in front of you, pale and shocked, the doctor chuckles with her colleague, as if we were at the post office and only the stamp was missing, while she prints the receipt for the package just sent.
Obstetric violence exists. Medical violence exists. By women, by men, by those health workers who should accompany you in this mourning and that what they do is just repeat a script in a cold, detached, almost annoyed way. Not a “I’m sorry”, not a smile, a caress on the shoulders, not a word of comfort. And you there, you have a thousand questions but the voice does not come out and you go, empty. Alone. “You’re young, come on come on, be strong that next time will be better” this is what the world can tell you, when you come out of that hospital with a sheet of paper, and you were in it with your baby on your lap. Then you crack a smile, while your throat burns with pain.
And here I am dedicating this March 8 to all those women who have heard that sentence. I dedicate this party, at times hypocritical, to all mothers who have not been, are no longer, or who cannot be. To all women who feel defective. This March 8, between domestic violence, femicides, women in science, women in politics, women who change the world … I want to dedicate it to all the women who felt alone at that moment, when squatting in bed, their chest has sunk.
No woman, you are not alone. There is little talk of spontaneous abortion. There is little talk of the harm it does, of the little empathy there is, of obstetric violence, of the crying of newborn babies in the next room while you are pissing yours in the toilet. Little is said about how much violence is done to us.
As if “a lot then passes”. But it does not pass. And fear keeps you awake at night. Fear of not being able to be a mother anymore. Fear of being wrong. But the days go by. Sometimes you touch your belly, as usual. A tear falls, then you smile and you give yourself strength, trying not to hate the world out there, where anyone and everywhere squirts in your face what you want to be and what you can’t. Not now.
Now I’m here, on the bed, with blood and tears again.
Different tears though. Tears of fear.
Will I ever be a mom? Will this damn connectivity ever allow me to be a mom? I start looking for adoption associations in the meantime.
You wonder if a child – not yours – will ever be enough for you
You wonder if dogs will be enough for you.
You wonder if Christian deserves a flawed woman.
You feel defective. If it were for mother nature, I would never be a mother without heparin and cardioaspirin. I’m not hiding behind this.
I want to deal with this disease.
I join Facebook groups where other mothers with autoimmune diseases tell me that after 3,4,5 abortions they are now hugging their babies and this gives me strength.
I don’t want to give up. As long as the body gives me energy I want to do it.
For me, for Christian. For us.
But I’m afraid.
I’m afraid of the next positive test. What will become of me and my anxieties? In the early morning without nausea I will run to the hospital because the last time I was right? How will I experience the pregnancy? Alert as if you were walking in the savannah among the lions? How will I experience ultrasound scans?
I want to be a mom, but I want to be a happy and healthy mom. Wise and aware. Instead now I just feel like a fragile and anxious woman.
Happy 8 March, woman. You’re not alone.
