My Mother's Miscarriage
I've known about my mom's miscarriage for a long time. I can't remember when or who first told me about it. I don't remember being too upset about it but that's probably because whoever told me wasn't that upset.
When I had my first miscarriage, I asked my mom a few questions about hers. She's a Brit at heart (her grandmother was from England) so she favours the stiff upper lip and all that. She rarely, if ever, gets teary or emotional and I feel her discomfort when I cry.
I couldn't get many details from her. She said that she had had her miscarriage at school and a coworker took her to the hospital. She couldn't remember how pregnant she had been. They did a d&c as she was "hemorraging" (my mom often uses this term...like she says that she hemorraged after I was born and she often hemorraged with her periods). My uncle came to pick her up and take her home. When I asked her why my uncle, she said that my Dad and her had had a fight the night before. She blames the miscarriage on the stress from the fight .
My Mom doesn't exactly seem particularly upset when she talks about her miscarriage. Mind you, I guess it was over 30 years ago. I wanted to know how long it was before she conceived me but she doesn't remember. She did say that the memory of the miscarriage faded when she had me.
Why isn't her re-telling of this story enough for me? I want more details, more emotion. Was she sad? Did she have anyone to talk to? Did she think twice about trying to get prenant again (she had already had 3 children)? She makes it all sound so matter-of-fact and not really a big event in her life. She has had a bunch of difficult experiences in her life. I suppose she has a way of dealing with painful things privately. Or, maybe she hides her feelings away.
Have any of you had your mom share with you about her miscarriage? What was it like? Did it comfort you?
posted by Chantelle @ 11:41 AM
1 Comments:
I just had a miscarriage at the end of October (and I'm waiting to hear whether or not it was a molar pregnancy -- the doctor says "possibly"). My mom is one of the very few people I could talk to about this, as hardly anyone knew I was pregnant. I was vaguely aware that she had had a miscarriage; but talking to her last week, I learned that she had had two. She was also not all that emotional about them, at least not when telling me about them. I assume it's mainly because so much time has passed. The first time, she said she was very young and scared; it was unplanned. The second time, she had two kids and it was also unplanned. So while she wanted to have the baby and was disappointed when she miscarried, it wasn't like in my case, where I had actually tried to get pregnant. She told me that she had been able to move on fairly quickly. Anyway, she has been a great listener and very supportive as I go through all of this.
By the way, thank you so much for doing this blog; it has been very helpful and inspirational.
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