Miscarriage and the Mother left behind

Miscarriage and the Mother left behind

1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage (sociological perspective). Where are the statistic on life after?

After suffering from a miscarriage on November 30, 2012, I was left confused and with questions. When you experience a miscarriage your doctor apologizes and hands you a pamphlet with websites and a number for the Heal program. Although the Heal program is an amazing program designed to provide awareness and comfort for women who have suffered from infant/pregnancy loss; they do not provide a recovery.

A few days after the miscarriage I began to look at the websites that my doctor had provided, each site was full of statistics. I had just lost my child and felt completely alone and in no way did I want to make a connection through the use of statistics. According to the American Pregnancy Association (2013):

• More than 500,000 pregnancies each year end in miscarriage
• Approximately 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage
• 10-25% of all clinically recognized pregnancies will end in miscarriage
• Women under the age of 35 yrs old have about a 15% chance of miscarriage
• Women who are 35-45 yrs old have a 20-35% chance of miscarriage
• Women over the age of 45 can have up to a 50% chance of miscarriage
• A woman who has had a previous miscarriage has a 25% chance of having another (only a slightly elevated risk than for someone who has not had a previous miscarriage
• During the first trimester, the most common cause of miscarriage is chromosomal abnormality – meaning that something is not correct with the baby’s chromosomes. Most chromosomal abnormalities are the cause of a damaged egg or sperm cell, or are due to a problem at the time that the zygote went through the division process.
• http://americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/miscarriage.html

What does any of this truly mean? In my eyes it meant nothing, I wanted to know why I was apart of that 10-25%. I wanted to know what I had done wrong and I wanted to know why I wasn't good enough to be a mother. These were my questions and no statistic could answer these questions. It has taken me a year to finally look for the answers to these questions. I found that by reaching out to other women who had experienced a miscarriage. Women who experience a miscarriage are mothers in their heart but not physically and seek those who understand and can relate. Therefore, many women who have miscarried create a bond/community with other women. This community is what I desperately needed in order to no longer feel alone in my experience.

 

The Community

In order to answer these questions and look into this community that I was apart of I had to further understand why it was created. The subculture of miscarriage should be looked at it terms of cultural studies rather than percentages, according to Cultural Studies UNC "Cultural studies is an innovative interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that investigates the ways in which 'culture' creates and transforms individual experiences, everyday life, social relations and power. Research and teaching in the field explores the relations between culture understood as human expressive and symbolic activities, and cultures understood as distinctive ways of life" (2013). The women who miscarry are a culture who live very distinctive lives whether those in the dominant culture recognize or accept us a subculture.