The Aftermath

The next few days were more of the same. It seemed to take all of Elan’s will to get out of bed. Each day was a struggle. Elan returned to work. She had a migraine that lasted the entire week. She tried to respond to over a thousand emails that cluttered her inbox during her brief leave and respond to the new crises of the day. Elan had always taken pride in her work, but now it all felt pointless. Elan and her husband took on the heartbreaking task of telling their family and friends that the baby they hoped for all these years would not be arriving in six months. Elan and James were eager to tell family about the pregnancy when they received that positive test result. They did not wait to cross the safety zone of the first trimester because the doctor had assured them that the rate of miscarriage was very low because they had the frozen embryo genetically tested prior to transfer.

As Elan began to make the calls, send the texts, and have the in-person conversations about the loss, she never felt more alone. The responses could be categorized into the optimist, denier, and comparer. The optimist told Elan about their friend that went through the invitro process two, three, and four times and finally obtained their dream family. Better yet, the optimist would tell the story of the couple that quit trying to conceive and then miraculously conceived. Neither comforted Elan because her eggs had aged. In her invitro experience, only one out of her ten eggs developed into a normal embryo. It was a miracle that she got pregnant and ultimately devastating to lose that miracle.

The denier treated her loss as if she had accidentally backed into another vehicle in the grocery store parking lot. Elan’s mother was the worst offender. When Elan tried to confide in her mother in her most vulnerable state, her mother said, “these things happen.” In that statement there was no recognition of the years of effort and resources expended in trying to conceive or the recognition of the loss of pure happiness and hope that Elan and her husband experienced during those few precious months of pregnancy. Elan thought, what did she expect from her mother that tended to deny all human emotion. Elan’s mother had chosen to fall in love with an abusive alcoholic when Elan was six years old. Elan had lived in fear until her mother finally moved them thousands of miles away when Elan was twelve years old. Elan lived those six years in fear and constant anxiety about what each day would bring. As with all things, Elan should have known better to confide in her mother and expect a nurturing and sympathetic response.

Lastly, the comparer, chose to relive their own trauma of miscarriage when Elan spoke about her loss. The comparer seemed to try to compete with Elan’s current pain. In their lack of compassion, the comparer seemed to say in their response, “This is nothing, and I had it worse.” When Elan told a coworker about the miscarriage and this colleague had been one of the only colleagues, she talked about her invitro treatment with, her colleague replied, “I have been through that.” Again, others minimized the pain Elan was experiencing in this moment. When Elan sought comfort from her mother-in-law, her mother-in-law nonchalantly said that she had been pregnant seven times and experienced five miscarriages. Elan’s mother-in-law bragged about her only grandchild during the entire conversation. As her mother-in-law bragged about her granddaughter, Elan could only think about how she would never give a grandchild to the family. Again, Elan felt alone.

Elan wanted to scream during these conversations, but she bit her tongue as she always had and just politely ended the conversations and internally suffered. These family members and friends failed to realize or acknowledge that this would be Elan’s only pregnancy. Although her colleague and mother-in-law had suffered miscarriage, their life resulted in a beautiful family with multiple children. To minimize Elan’s pain by their own stories of trauma only made Elan feel invisible and alone. Elan felt deja vu in these conversations because she often felt invisible and alone as a child. She had tried hard in her life to escape the trauma of her childhood to only revisit these feelings after her loss. After these conversations, Elan strapped on her running shoes and went for an ever so slow run. But in these runs, she again felt present and alive if only for a brief time.