Actress Melissa Rauch and her husband, Winston, are expecting their first child in the fall of 2017. In her own words, here is Melissa's emotional and heartfelt story of the long road to parenthood.
Here is the only statement regarding my pregnancy that doesn’t make me feel like a complete fraud: “Melissa is expecting her first child. She is extremely overjoyed, but if she’s being honest, due to the fact that she had a miscarriage the last time she was pregnant, she’s pretty much terrified at the moment that it will happen again. She feels weird even announcing this at all, and would rather wait until her child heads off to college to tell anyone, but she figures she should probably share this news before someone sees her waddling around with her midsection protruding and announces it first.”
During the time when I was grieving over my pregnancy loss or struggling with fertility issues, every joyful, expectant baby announcement felt like a tiny stab in the heart. It’s not that I wasn’t happy for these people, but I would think, Why are these shiny, carefree, fertile women so easily able to do what I cannot? And then I’d immediately feel guilt and shame for harboring that jealousy—one might call this “the circle of strife.” (A song I imagine is somewhere deep in the extended director’s cut of The Lion King.) I’ve always been one to keep my eyes on my own paper, but when it came to having a baby, that proved to be a challenge. So when I thought about having to share the news about expecting this baby, all I could think about was another woman mourning over her loss as I did, worried she would never get pregnant again, and reading about my little bundle on the way. It felt a bit disingenuous to not also share the struggle it took for me to get here.
(Just to be clear, I’m not saying everyone who publicly announces cheerful news should also report the crummy journey they embarked on before getting to the other side of it. I personally just wanted to express what I’ve experienced in the hopes that it could—in some small way—help someone going through a similar pain. Ideally, the more we talk about this issue, the more we can chip away at the unnecessary stigma around it, with the end result being that those of us struggling with loss and infertility will feel less alone. Perhaps with increased overall awareness, women dealing with these extremely challenging circumstances won’t feel like they’re getting sucker-punched in the uterus by well-intentioned people.)
Grief, Guilt, Hormones, and Hardcore Sobbing to HGTV
The miscarriage I experienced was one of the most profound sorrows I have ever felt in my life. It kick-started a primal depression that lingered in me. The image of our baby on the ultrasound monitor—without movement, without a heartbeat—after we had seen that same little heart healthy and flickering just two weeks prior completely blindsided us and haunts me to this day. I kept waiting for the sadness to lift…but it didn’t. Sure, I had happy moments, and life went on, but the heartbreak was always lurking. Inescapable reminders, like the unfulfilled due date, came around like a heavy cloud. A day I had once marked on my calendar with such excitement was now a memorial of a crushed dream. I was constantly wishing that the feeling of being desperately lonely in my own body would dissipate. It didn’t help that I was also fighting against these feelings with thoughts like, You should be over this by now, and People go through a heck of a lot worse, you miserable sad sack! (Can you tell that I am awesome at self-compassion?) What I realized, though, is that because this kind of loss is not openly talked about nearly as much as it should be, there really is no template for how to process these emotions. You’re not necessarily going to a funeral or taking time off from work to mourn, but that doesn’t change the fact that something precious has been unexpectedly taken from your life.
Then there’s the guilt. As a Jewish mother-to-be, this was something I was expecting to be instinctually good at. But I was supposed to be harnessing this power to guilt my future child, not using it on myself! I knew in my heart there wasn’t anything I could have done to prevent what happened, but that didn’t stop me from the futile exercise of mentally replaying every day of the pregnancy up until that point over and over again, wondering whether there was something I did that could’ve caused the miscarriage.
Miscarriage, by the way, deserves to be ranked as one of the worst, most blame-inducing medical terms ever. To me, it immediately conjures up an implication that it was the woman’s fault, like she somehow “mishandled the carrying of this baby.” Eff that so hard, right in its patriarchal nut sack. It’s not that a better name would make it less awful to go through. But for a while, my husband and I just started saying to each other—without any judgment or acrimony to the baby, of course—that the baby "bailed" instead.
When even the perversely stupid medical term involved felt like an endorsement for the blame game, it was hard for me not to take the bait. If you’re doing that to yourself, please take these words in (as I also reminded myself many times): You did nothing wrong. Babies are born in all sorts of extreme conditions. If it was a viable pregnancy, it would have made it. Due to reasons beyond anyone's control, miscarriage is estimated to occur in anywhere from 15 to 20 percent of recognized pregnancies. There was nothing you could’ve done to change the situation. Most important, please be kind to yourself. As much as I wanted to “move on” and gain some sense of control over what happened by beating myself up, I came to understand that thoughts like that have no productive place in grief. Our pain is something to be worked through until it isn’t anymore. So on my better days, rather than be a big jerk to myself, I just started saying: It is OK to not be OK right now.
During this time I was continually surprised by the constant assault of emotions—and how severely unlike myself I felt. In addition to the intense grief, the hormonal drop-off is something I was not prepared for in the least. I wish I had known that this physiological response is an extremely prevalent and real component of pregnancy loss. In retrospect, it would’ve helped me to be aware that many women essentially go through a form of postpartum depression after a miscarriage, without a baby to show for it. If nothing else, having this knowledge may have put some of my darker “what the shit is happening” moments in context for me.
I remember watching House Hunters International one night about three weeks after my miscarriage. Out of the blue, I began what I can only describe as “projectile crying.” Like tears were literally spurting out of my eyeballs toward the TV, and they would not stop. Nothing in particular set it off. I surely wasn’t crying about whether or not the young ex-pat couple would find a flat close enough to the city center in Lisbon. It was just something going on hormonally. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve since been informed there are small doses of estrogen, progesterone, or herbs that can be taken under the guidance of your doctor to help. Acupuncture can potentially offset these hormonal changes as well. The sadness on its own is hard enough; the least we can do for ourselves is talk with the medical professionals in our lives about ways to alleviate the hormone plunge that occurs after pregnancy loss.
The Great Baby Inquisition
One of the perks to sadness is the time it gives you to think when you’re somberly staring at a wall. Something that kept coming to mind is how arbitrarily we all talk about baby-making. I know I’ve asked women about their reproducing situation in the past (as most of us unintentionally have at some point or another). It comes from a well-meaning, good place. My hope is that if we as a society become more aware of how common fertility struggles are, perhaps we won’t be so cavalier in questioning females about what's on their baby agenda. There are so many other things to ask women about other than procreating…ya know, like what we’re wearing. I kid!
Ovary-probing like the following constantly happens to childless women of a certain age: “Are you pregnant?” “When are you going to have a little one?” “You’re getting up there, you worthless old empty baby dispenser…isn’t it time you breed already?!” OK, maybe the last one isn’t as common, but the sentiment is there. And I have friends with kids who tell me it doesn’t stop there. It transitions to: “When is Lyla getting a sibling?” (And yes, if you’re wondering, all of my friend’s kids are named Lyla.) Yet, on the flip side, we’d never inquire of a man: “When are ya going to shoot a virile load up in someone and create human life?” So, before any of us ask a woman about popping out a baby, let’s think to ourselves: We don’t know what she’s going through, what her body is capable of, or what she personally desires. Whether a woman wants to have children or not, if she wants to share that information, she will.
Bottom line: I’ve come to the conclusion that unless I clearly see an infant emerging from its uterine homeland and its mother is shouting at me: “Over here! Look at me! I am birthing a baby right now in the back of my 2007 Saturn!” it’s probably best not to ask her about reproduction. Incidentally, if anyone does see a baby being birthed in the back of a 2007 Saturn, congrats to you on that awesome and rare sighting!
In My Heart Until It’s in My Arms
Many times in my life I’ve been able to get through difficult situations by reminding myself of the classic adage: “Everything happens for a reason." But as it turns out—for me, anyway—miscarriage was more of a “This straight-up f-cking sucks” situation. Some things just are. The simple acceptance of this reality actually proved to be the most helpful course of action for me. This was a below-sea-level moment among the proverbial peaks and valleys of life. There was something very healing about simply acknowledging where I was, rather than trying to completely make sense of it or wrap my head around some cookie-cutter rationale. We all process grief differently. If you are dealing with prenatal loss, I hope you find something, anything, to bring you comfort (whether it’s planting a tree, having a small ceremony, or giving a big double middle finger to the universe). The unknown is a scary place, but it's also where hope and possibility live. I’m trying as much as I can to embrace the reality of that uncertainty.
All I really know for sure is that this experience has changed me forever. I know it’s made me grateful for every moment of my current pregnancy, and I hope it will make me a better mother in some capacity when I can finally hold the child that has been in my heart in my arms. Although I can’t categorize these lessons of humble appreciation and gratitude as “reasons for this happening,” I will consider them a silver lining. (But to be honest, I would’ve much preferred to learn said lessons from either a fortune cookie or by watching a few heartfelt reruns of Full House.) So, to all the women out there who are dealing with fertility issues, have gone through a miscarriage, or are going through the pain of it currently, allow me to leave you with this message: You are not alone. And it is perfectly OK to not be OK right now.
