A different kind of grief during a pandemic
Less than two weeks before Mother’s Day, I miscarried in the middle of a global pandemic. After I received a diagnosis of endometriosis, my husband and I decided to start trying to have children earlier rather than later. But a few days ago, I was hit with sudden pain as I took a rambling walk outside.
Soon, we lost a potential child we didn’t even know we had. I messaged my coworkers that I was sick because I couldn’t bring myself to type “miscarriage” over Microsoft Teams. I bled and cried while holding the hand of my husband — the only person I have touched for weeks.
I knew that miscarriage was common, but I had no idea how agonizing it would be or the high number of people who experience this silent wrecking ball, tearing down their plans and hopes. I didn’t know that it could last for days. And I certainly didn’t know how to handle it during a pandemic.
A few years ago, I grabbed lunch with an old friend. We laughed about the embarrassments of the past and gossiped about the current lives of our mutual friends. Then the pleasant moment faltered and crashed.
“Did you see what Amy posted?”
“About her miscarriage?” I asked.
“Yeah. I just can’t believe she would post about that. It’s not really something people talk about. It should be private. You know, between her and her husband. Now it’s just awkward,” she said.
That thought had never occurred to me. I brought up that I had been writing about my struggles with divorce and openly posting on social media about them.
“Yeah, well. … That’s different,” she said.
It stuck with me. In a society that is tackling taboos like linebackers on steroids, silence about miscarriage is so persistent that even I, a person who openly and frequently talks about stigma, felt like I couldn’t tell anyone.
When we realized what was happening, my husband contacted my parents. They brought us takeout. I looked at them and my clumsy facade shattered. I broke.
My at-risk mother hesitated for the slightest moment, considering the risks of hugging her at-risk daughter, and then stepped forward and held me for the first time in months, risking both of our lives to comfort me.
This is what miscarriage during a pandemic looks like.
It looks like laying on the floor of the bathroom too scared to go into a hospital. It looks like families comforting you with their eyes from 6 feet away. It looks like crying over video chat with your therapist.
My husband goes to work with hand sanitizer clipped to his belt. We are out of sanitizing wipes, and he lives in fear that he will bring back a virus to his vulnerable wife.
“It’s all so raw,” he tells me. “It feels like it can’t get better because what even is better? There’s just been so much loss that I don’t know how much more I can handle.”
There is no “normal” routine to get back to. The whiplash of only finding out you were pregnant when you no longer are is so much more painful when you don’t have loved ones to help you get back on your feet.
I talked to a disembodied doctor over email whether the risks of staying in outweighed the risks of going to the hospital. So far, I have been lucky that there haven’t been major complications.
If I do need treatment or surgery, I will be alone for it. If I test positive for the virus afterward, I will be quarantined alone for two weeks, dealing with the loss on my own. I will add to the work of an already overworked, overcrowded health care staff.
For now, I scroll through social media navigating the inevitable boom of quarantine pregnancy announcements like an emotionally explosive game of Minesweeper. I try to find ways of distracting myself when I’m stuck at home, surrounded by the place I lost my baby.
I see posts of people draped in American flags holding signs about freedom from tyranny, protesting for the right to open their small businesses, go to salons, play golf and get haircuts — to get life back to their normal.
The world is trying to bounce back economically, but in our little apartment, we are trying to bounce back not only emotionally but physically. For some reason physical health and economic stability seem to be mutually exclusive, and at-risk people like me are offered as sacrifices to the god of the economy.
Meanwhile, politicians in Texas used this terrifying, distracted time to further cut women off from reproductive health resources. This ban has since been lifted, but many women were forced to leave their safe homes and risk traveling to other states get the help they needed
Millions have lost access to contraception. Condoms aren’t deemed “essential” products. And in Texas, many pregnant people’s lives were put in danger when they couldn’t have abortions unless their circumstances were immediately life-threatening.
It is beyond alarming to be a woman in need of reproductive help in a country that not only does not value it, but frequently attacks reproductive rights. The stigmas and division around reproductive care, whether it is miscarriage, abortion or contraception, are magnified by this pandemic. We must break the silence in order to support each other and become more unified during a time of crisis instead of more divided.
There is a collective loss in the air. Everyone is grieving something. We have lost things people talk about, like graduations and weddings and travel and birthdays. And we are also grieving things that go largely unmentioned and unnamed.
Graduates celebrate with signs and home graduations. Small weddings are streamed online and celebrated virtually by loved ones. Birthdays are celebrated with drive-by parades. But there are no ceremonies, no public processions for miscarriage. This is a different kind of grief.
Even when there seems to be all the time in the world, there is no time to process this kind of loss when you’re worried about social distancing, safety precautions, food insecurity and layoffs.
When the outside world goes to bed, the loss pounces and no amount of binge-watching or bread-baking lessens it. There is no outlet. It was early enough in my pregnancy that we don’t even have a body to bury. During this pandemic, we have lost so much — even grief itself.
Rollins is a web editor for the Joseph Smith Papers and a freelance journalist and editor based in Utah, where she lives with her husband, their puppy, Remus, and their hedgehog, Hermione. Her views are her own and do not represent the views of her employer.