Infertility versus Miscarriage: A Personal Examination

I wrote this two months ago when I believed I’d had a miscarriage. I didn’t post it because, well, it turned out I hadn’t. And now it seems kind of unfair for me to reflect on the experience of having a miscarriage when I haven’t really gone through it.  Other people have had real ones; who am I to talk about the suffering that miscarriage brings? There are other limitations to my experience: it also happened early in the pregnancy.  Someone who has gone through a [real] miscarriage later in pregnancy would have a very different story. And yet, I can’t help hoping that there might be something worth sharing in this experience.

Remember, when I wrote this, I was absolutely, completely convinced that I was no longer carrying a child.

For anyone who’s new here, a rundown: after almost two years of being unable to conceive, I found myself unexpectedly pregnant this last December; about a month later, I started to bleed and for almost a week believed I had miscarried. This is my reflections on both experiences – infertility and miscarriage – written during that period of grieving.

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You might instinctively believe that the pain of a miscarriage is more severe than the pain of infertility. An actual life is lost. Joy is turned to grief.

But in my experience, it’s not.

Certainly, the miscarriage was more shocking and immediately traumatizing. I’ve suffered immensely over the thought that a beating heart has stopped, that those maternity clothes now have no use, and that the baby book I ordered and those prenatal vitamins I purchased are going to have to go on the shelf. I’ll never know whether it was a boy or a girl, or whether he/she would have looked more like me or more like his/her daddy. That baby will never get the name I’ve been mouthing to myself at night as a lay with my hands over my abdomen, wishing I could see or feel evidence of that heartbeat I’ve read about.

But the loss of this pregnancy is at least tinged with hope: maybe the next time will work out. Because there has to be a next time. At least now I know I can get pregnant.

And with this miscarriage I’ve had a huge network of sympathizers to turn to. Almost everyone can, to some degree, understand the pain of a miscarriage. I’ve felt comfortable expressing my grief, because I know they’ll understand and think I’m being fairly normal.

Infertility is a whole different story. For starters, there’s the constant battle with despair: you have no “next time” to look forward to, because you have no idea whether there will ever be a first time. You have no idea whether any of it will ever take place. Perhaps your body is completely incapable of producing children . . . you have no evidence to suggest otherwise. I found that sorrow so much harder to cope with than the sorrow of this particular pregnancy ending.

What’s more, I think people have a harder time grasping the agony of infertility, so I had a harder time expressing my grief about that. How can they possibly understand? You haven’t lost anybody. There’s no body or sonogram to mourn over. You’re sad over a great big nothing.

It’s hard to appreciate grief felt over the absence of a nonexistent person. So I never felt I could be completely open about my anguish. I felt so much more alone.

I wouldn’t have dreamed, for example, of telling my boss I needed the day off to grieve another failed conception (instead, I told him I had the flu); but I felt okay telling him I needed a day off to grieve my miscarriage.

I would never have admitted to a friend that I’d spent the previous afternoon weeping in bed because I’d had another period (what kind of weirdo does that?). I would never have confessed that I’d passed on an invitation to see a movie because I’d just gotten the news of another friend’s pregnancy, and needed time to cry on my husband’s shoulder, wailing, “Why? Why does it happen to everyone but me?” But I had no problem telling all my friends that I was in agony over my miscarriage. It felt more normal.

It just feels too weird, talking about suffering over the absence of a person who’s never existed. It feels like it’s all just in your head, like it’s not a real problem. It feels like you’re a crazy person. So you hold it in and feel even crazier.

With a miscarriage, I feel free to mourn. I feel free to share, and have been blessed with the compassion of many friends.

And I feel a little bit hopeful about my future.

That has been my experience.