The Loss I Didn’t Have Words For
When you have a miscarriage, one thing that gets drilled into you fast is that miscarriage is common. According to the American Pregnancy Association, 10 to 25 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Those are just the ones we know about; many others happen too early to ever be detected. And the risk gets higher as you get older. Your friends, if you tell them about your miscarriage, will confirm how ordinary it is: “I had one,” someone will say. “We had two before we had our son.” “A neighbor’s aunt had four miscarriages and then four children!” “Meghan Markle had a miscarriage.” “Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan had three.”
The first time I miscarried, in December of 2020, I took pills so that my body would expel whatever wasn’t growing inside me. I bled too much too fast and came to in the emergency room, hooked up to someone else’s blood, while a sweet young doctor held my hand and told me the facts. It’s nothing you did. It happens so often.
Because I am a poet, I filter my experiences through lines of. In the second section of that poem, Eliot imagines an exchange between two Cockney-sounding women, one of whom has taken pills to end a pregnancy. On being accused of looking “antique” (at 31) for her returning husband:
