My miscarriage

Content warning: Pregnancy loss.

I was 11 weeks pregnant—until I wasn’t.

There was a fetus in my stomach—until its heartbeat stopped and it was removed via a surgical procedure called dilation and curettage (D&C.)

Getting pregnant—being a mom—wasn’t bolded and starred on my list of things to accomplish in life the way that I know comes naturally for others. It was something I gave years of thought, gaming out the different possibilities for how life would look with and without a child. Ultimately, my husband Ben and I decided that we wanted to grow our family and would try our luck getting pregnant. Within two months, even at the ripe age of 38, it happened. 

Staring at the positive pregnancy test on July 1st, I waited for the panic to set in. The feeling that we’d made a huge mistake. But that feeling never came. In that brief moment in our apartment bathroom when I was the only one in the world who knew, I was happy. Content. Ready as I’d ever be.

Not even two months later, I’m still ready. But this pregnancy won’t have been the one to make us parents. What I’ve gone through this week isn’t remotely unique or special. It happens every single day in every corner of the world; but despite its ubiquity, it’s not something for which anyone could ever be prepared. 

You’ve lost something that you never quite had; someone you loved, but never actually knew. Something inside you has died even though it was never fully living. You mourn the death of potential—a potential life that could have been, but for whatever reason, simply wasn’t able to be. You spend a few weeks with this potential, getting used to the idea of it and constructing the future around it. Your lives are irrevocably tied, and you understand that the potential’s survival is dependent on yours. What you can’t comprehend until it actually happens is that the potential can vanish while you keep living. 

On Sunday I noticed some light brown, intermittent spotting when I went to the bathroom and reached out to my OB-GYN. As long as it wasn’t bright red blood, she assured me, everything was likely fine. By Tuesday, the spotting persisted and it started turning a deeper red. Not bright red, but red enough for the first wave of panic to set in. I messaged the doctor again and waited. We finally spoke by phone around 7pm and, hearing the panic in my voice, she told me to come to the emergency room at the hospital where she was on call for an ultrasound.

What followed was an experience that I’m not yet ready to fully discuss publicly, but I will say this: I was fortunate to be home in New York where I didn’t have to worry for a moment that I would be denied appropriate care during one of the darkest moments of my life because of sadistic laws made by cruel people. Yet even still, it was a traumatic process, one during which I felt repeatedly failed simply as a human being. Because of the frequency of miscarriages, it made me wonder how many other people had been subjected to additional suffering during an already excruciating event. I already knew that maternal health care in this country was under-researched and poorly understood, but this experience opened my eyes to how little regard is given to our traumas, even under the supposedly best of circumstances.

A few months back I received an invitation to speak on a panel at the Texas Tribune Festival, which is set to take place in Austin in late September. I was thrilled because it felt like another meaningful step in my burgeoning career. But when I found out I was pregnant, I considered not going. What if there was a complication with my pregnancy and I was hundreds of miles away from accessing safe care? The fact that I even had to have that discussion was nauseating, and I knew how fortunate I was to be in the position to have that choice. 

Now I’ll be able to attend the festival without fear for my own body; but still I’ll carry with me the people who don’t have access to care; the people who live in places where their bodily autonomy is systemically denied; the people who must suffer the possibility of losing a pregnancy along with the mental anguish of being unsure if they’ll be able to safely go through the process; the people who are prevented from seeking safe and legal abortions because their state government thinks they know better. We rightfully talk so much about the physical danger and toll of pregnancy and associated events, but the psychological horror cuts just as deep.

While I’ve gotten through the highest high of being pregnant to the depths of despair in miscarriage, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been publicly walking us through her egg freezing journey. Two distinct processes, to be sure, but both with the spectre of motherhood at their core. It is, in my view, a radical act to so thoroughly demystify an otherwise opaque process; and I do believe her radical transparency helped give me some of the courage to share my experience with you. I’ve rid myself of the cobwebs of shame that I hadn’t even realized had been spun around me. 

I know The Handbasket has been slow this summer, and I hope this helps clarify why. In the early days of my pregnancy, I was focused on caring for myself and keeping my stress levels low—an incredible challenge in this line of work. And in the days since the miscarriage, it’s been hard to consider anything outside of my own grief. But I know there will be a day, hopefully one soon, where the passion and love for this incredible space I created four years ago will return. The work never stops, and the need for credible journalism will never cease. I ask that you just give me a bit more time to find my way back. And if you can’t wait, I understand. There are many other journalists doing remarkable work who deserve your time (and money.)

Right before I was wheeled into the operating room for the D&C, I turned my head to look at the big digital clock on the hospital wall. The time was 12:34am—the time I was born. I sobbed at the sickening symbolism of it all, but it also reminded me that both birth and loss happen concurrently at every moment of every day. On this particular day, I was experiencing loss. But someday soon, in whatever form it may take, there will be birth.