30s, 3rd Pregnancy, Miscarriage, 1st Trimester, Depression, 3rd Child

Being given permission to grieve was one of Xanthe’s keys to healing from her miscarriage. She shares what really got her through her depression and the true lesson she ended up learning from it all.

Xanthe’s Story

It's like the moment you become pregnant you make all of these plans. When I was pregnant, I was always making plans, mentally decorating nurseries and thinking about maternity clothes. Before I ever got pregnant, I loved to look through the Sears catalog at the maternity clothes. It was a fun activity and then I’d make my own clothes.

I was trying to get pregnant when I miscarried. Years before when I was pregnant with my first child, Pam, I had a lot of spotting at the beginning. Then when I was pregnant with my second, Pippa, I started spotting too. I was worried for the first few months of those pregnancies until the bleeding finally stopped. I think my obstetrician prescribed progesterone to stop the spotting and it eventually did. With those first two pregnancies, it all worked out. But when I tried to get pregnant a third time, it took more than a couple of months to get pregnant and when I finally did, I didn’t spot until I started to miscarry.

It was obvious that I was miscarrying. I was maybe 4 months along. It was July. I remember I was up all night and moved into another room so that I wouldn't keep my husband, Nick, awake. Then in the morning, I went to see my obstetrician. He said I had lost the baby and we scheduled a D & C. Back then they just listened for a heartbeat. There were not any sonograms. I had the D & C, I think probably very soon after. I just remember being very, very sad and we had some work function for Nick’s law firm, maybe even that same night! Nick wanted to go and said he thought it would cheer me up. So I thought, “Okay.” and we went.

I think everybody there knew that I had had a miscarriage. One of the firm’s founding partners, Yale, said to me, “I'm so sorry for your loss.” He was the only one who mentioned my miscarriage the whole evening and here he was a 60 something year old man back in 1978! I really appreciated him saying that to me. It was not only a kind thing to say but everybody else just seemed to be too embarrassed to mention it.

I remember life after that … I was so depressed. My best friend, Zara, kept telling me I needed to be on Librium and gave me one. I don’t think I took it. I can't really remember. But I do remember we went down to the beach for our annual family vacation with close friends. When we got to the hotel, our friends were there already. Everybody was excited and happy and the plan was for everybody to go out to eat. I couldn’t. I just went into the hotel room and said, “I don't want to go out. I just want to stay here. You guys do your thing.” So that was one of the little memories I have of how depressed I was.” It wasn’t like me at all.

When we came back from vacation, I went to see my obstetrician so it might've been the six-week checkup. I said that I thought there was something really off with my hormones. I was depressed all the time. The nurse said, “Well, you're very sad. You're mourning.” And I thought, “Oh, you mean, I can be sad? It's all right to be sad?” I mean, even my mom —who was the most nurturing, sweet woman in the world — had said to me, “You have two healthy girls. I mean, cheer up! Get over it.” It’s been almost 50 years and I can still remember where I was when she said that to me when we were talking on the phone. I was down in the basement sorting clothes and I can remember thinking, ”Wow.”

As for how my husband, Nick, was during this time. I remember after it all, talking to Heather, a friend of Nick & mine. She said that she was struck by how much sweeter Nick was to me after the miscarriage. She thought he seemed to be very solicitous and tender. But, I guess I just expected him to treat me that way, so it didn't seem exceptional to me.

Anyway, I got the message from many circles that a miscarriage wasn't anything to get upset about. It was also something that one didn't really talk about. I spent a lot of time talking to my friend, Zara, about it but as I said she was advising taking chemicals, medicine. It was interesting that her take on it was that I should medicate my grief. I don't know that her advice was all that helpful as you can't really medicate grief, hysteria maybe, but not grief. It was something that I had to work through. So, getting permission to grieve by my obstetrician and his nurse was the most helpful thing to me.

It too a little time though. I went back to work in September. I was an art teacher at the time. I think going back to work, getting busy and not thinking about the miscarriage, it really helped. But if I’m honest, the thing that helped me the most was getting pregnant again with my youngest, Kevin, that fall.

With his pregnancy, I started spotting as I did with my first two pregnancies and I asked my OB-GYN about progesterone for it, because I had taken it with those first two. He said, “Well, there's some concern about it. You should, you should go read up about it.” So, in pre-Google days, I ended up having to go to the medical school at Case Western Reserve and finding my way through some of that library and getting scholarly articles. One of the things I remember from these articles is that there were some people that had children who were missing limbs and they were all boys. The girls didn't seem to be affected.

Ultimately, even though I was spotting again, I decided I would not take the progesterone this time. It was a hard decision because I didn't feel like anybody was telling me what to do. My doctor just said, “Go do your research.” He would have prescribed the progesterone if I said I wanted to go that route. So, I had another spotting early pregnancy, just like I did with my first two girls and then with my son. Once I got pregnant and passed this spotting time, all my worries were over. I wasn't depressed anymore. At the time, we didn't know to be worried about other things. These days there are so many tests pregnant ladies have to do. It’s like each visit brought another hurdle for my daughters to jump over during their pregnancies.

Advice:

My first piece of advice is to give yourself permission to grieve and mourn. But the other thing to remember is that everybody has a different reaction. What I thought I had learned from going through my experience was that whenever a woman I knew had a miscarriage, I was going to talk to her and give her my sympathy. When my cousin, Olivia, had a miscarriage, I called her to tell her how sorry I was and how I had had a difficult time after my miscarriage. But she said, “Well, it's actually been okay.” Olivia didn't really have the same experience that I did.

I still give my sympathy to women who’ve had a miscarriage. It doesn't hurt ever. But now I know some people can be more logical about it than I was. They can say to themselves what I couldn’t: “Well, I’ve got two healthy girls and I'm young. We didn't have any trouble getting pregnant. So, we will have another child. What's the big deal?” My cousin went on to have another child. There's nothing wrong with you if you're not crazy sad and if you are, there's nothing wrong with you either. That is what I really learned.

Xanthe N., Cleveland, Ohio