Listen in about pregnancy loss
Jan 24, 2003 Infertility
Motherhood Lost By EmilyÃBazelonÃand DahliaÃLithwick, a discussion about the book Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in America by anthropologist Linda L. Layne
“I think one of Layne’s great insights is that we all falter around miscarriage because society has no “cultural scripts” for dealing with it. There are no rituals, no expectations, no Hallmark cards for miscarriage — as there are in abundance for illness, death, or the loss of a pet. For a lack of such scripts, women who miscarry endure most of it in silence and solitude. “My Own Private Elba,” I called it, as I lay in bed after my D and C, wondering why I was being doubly punished: first by the death of this baby we already loved so desperately, then by all the people working so hard to erase all traces of it. I think I agree with you that one needn’t “go through this to get it.” But I also suspect that, with a handful of shining exceptions, the people who best knew how to be with us through all this had gone through it. They had the scripts, or wrote new ones. They were the ones who drove for miles and showed up at the door. They were the ones who called and listened, instead of providing the universally cheerless comfort that this is “just Mother Nature’s way of rooting out the defective babies.” Like you, that line offered me no solace. It just meant Mother Nature was a bitch.”
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