After she had a miscarriage, psychologist Jessica Zucker wanted to help other women tackle the stigma.
By Nina Bahadur, Self
Jessica Zucker, M.P.H., Ph.D., was 16 weeks pregnant with her second child when she had a miscarriage
in 2012. Zucker, a Los Angeles-based psychologist specializing in
women's reproductive and maternal mental health, had spent almost a
decade treating women after pregnancy loss. But it wasn't until it
happened to her that she truly understood the stigma and silence
surrounding miscarriages. After her own pregnancy loss, she set about
telling her own story through essays and using the hashtag #IHadAMiscarriage. In 2015, she started the @IHadAMiscarriage Instagram account, where women can submit their own stories of pregnancy loss.
Sadly, miscarriages are incredibly common. But women often feel alone when it actually happens to them.
According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), 10 percent
of clinically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage, and many more
people will lose a pregnancy before they even knew they were expecting.
Most miscarriages happen in the first trimester, and as ACOG notes,
around 50 percent are caused by chromosomal abnormalities.
[post_ads]Zucker's
own traumatic miscarriage happened in her second trimester. "My first
pregnancy was smooth and simple and fine," she says. "All the while I
was coming across women in my practice talking about miscarriage, stillbirth,
infant loss.... It didn't pique my anxiety, I felt like I would be
fine. Several years later we decided to try again. We got pregnant again
quickly but at 16 weeks, I started spotting."
She
went into labor and delivered alone at home, cut the umbilical cord
herself, and began hemorrhaging. Her husband returned home and rushed
her to the hospital, where she underwent an unmedicated dilation and curettage to remove the placenta and the remnants of the pregnancy.
"Two
hours later I went back to my house and was no longer pregnant," Zucker
recalls. "That was pretty much the most profound thing that ever
happened in my life. The most traumatic."
Medical
tests revealed the fetus had chromosomal abnormalities, and Zucker
would likely have made the decision to terminate had she known this. She
and her husband began trying again when they were ready, and she
eventually gave birth to a rainbow baby.
"I was [debilitated], psychologically, through my subsequent
pregnancy," Zucker says. "Pregnancy after loss...you're basically
returning to the very place of your trauma. You are meant to be there
for nine months, every single day."
Zucker's
own experience informed her clinical practice going forward. "My loss
really scared a lot of my patients and comforted other people," she
says. "In the most profound way it changed my lens on my work. I was
able to understand these women from the inside out now."
Ever since her pregnancy loss, Zucker has worked to spread awareness about just how common miscarriages are and help women deal with their feelings of shame and helplessness.
"My
personal experience was a way to model for other women around the world
that there is absolutely no shame in loss," she says. "The research
overwhelmingly points to women experiencing shame, self-blame, and
guilt following pregnancy and loss. I had to really think it through. As
a psychologist, you don't typically share the details of your life. But
[pregnancy loss] doesn't mean anything about who you are, or your body
being a failure."
[post_ads]Each year in
October, Zucker commemorates National Pregnancy and Infant Loss
Awareness Month with a project. One year she released a line of sympathy cards
specifically designed for women who have lost a pregnancy; another she
made T-shirts encouraging women to have intergenerational conversations
with their mothers and grandmothers about miscarriages. Through her
Instagram account and the #IHadAMiscarriage hashtag, Zucker hopes to
show other women that they are absolutely not alone.
"By
putting it out there in the world and sharing it with women globally,
people then feel this sense of recognition and a robust community," she
says. "I don't have to know you, because it's social media, but I know
those feelings so well. In so many of comments or messages people say,
'I could have written this myself.' Part of the point is to really show
that we're more similar than we think."
[post_ads_2]
[post_ads_2]
