My Experience with Red Raspberry Leaf Tea after a Miscarriage

Today's post is for all the women who come to this blog to find healing and hope after a pregnancy loss. I'm so sorry you're here--I wish you weren't--but since you are, I hope to offer some empathy and support and peace. 

After my miscarriage in 2011, I did a lot of research on what I could do to nourish my body and care for it. Mainly, I wanted it to come back into balance so that I could feel good and strong and healthy, and so that I could be prepared for another pregnancy, since my husband and I really wanted to try again for a pregnancy that would result in our second healthy baby.

I've talked about this elsewhere on the blog (see this) but the first thing I did was to change my diet and go Primal /paleo. It was October of 2011 that we ditched grains, legumes, refined sugar, processed foods and rancid vegetable fats, and I've been living that way ever since. That has been a huge success, which I'll cover in another post, but today I want to talk about the tea.

One of the reasons I suspected I miscarried was that my hormones were off due to nursing. I don't really know if that's the reason, and I'll never know. But when my son reached two, I decided it was time to wean him so that I could focus on healing and conceiving again.

That was, for us, relatively painless. He was down to two nursings per day anyway, and so over the course of about two months, we just tapered off until we said "bye bye to milkies." It was a very emotional process, but it was the right decision and it was ultimately pretty gentle for both of us.

For years, I've charted my menstrual cycle with the method outlined in Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Even after weaning I noticed that my luteal phase was too short. I also noticed that my menstrual cramps since giving birth to my son were waaay worse than they'd ever been in my life. I knew my cycle was off.

After consulting Dr. Google, I decided to try B6 supplementation to lengthen my luteal phase. After two cycles doing that, I noticed that I was having mid-cycle breakthrough spotting, and I didn't like that. It had never happened to me before, so I knew the B6 was not helping, and was possibly hurting.

I stopped taking that, and that's when I did some research on the balancing and fertility promoting properties of red raspberry leaf tea, which I'd heard about from my doula, but never really looked into.

You can read a lot about what it is supposed to do here. This story even talks about boosting goat fertility!

I used the Traditional Medicinals organic tea bags. I brewed 4 bags in 4 cups water in a big Mason jar, and then stuck it in the fridge so I could drink it iced. (I only drink hot tea in the dead of winter, and the taste of RRL is better iced, IMO.) I drank 3-4 cups a day, every day.

I knew it was helping when I noticed a significant improvement within the first cycle. I had a longer luteal phase, much better EWCM, almost no cramping at all when my period did come, and I just felt more balanced.

In my second cycle of drinking the 3-4 cups of tea daily, I conceived again, and this time the pregnancy stuck. :-) My daughter is now almost 11 months old.

Now, I want to say that I don't want this to come off as a "If you do this, then you will conceive" kind of message. I know intimately the fragile state of a woman who has miscarried, and the even more fragile state of a woman who has miscarried and is desperate to conceive again. It is very easy to want to control everything and try to "do" something. The last thing I want to do is send anyone into a tizzy of "I need to order this and this and this." Because, just as I don't know why I miscarried, I don't know why I conceived again when I did. I have my suspicions. But I don't know.

I have my little anecdote, and if it is helpful to you, or you think my story sounds similar to yours and it might help, I don't think trying RRL tea can hurt you in any way. It will cost you a few bucks. (And, full disclosure, the links on my site are Amazon affiliate links to help support my writing, but I want to just put that out there so that you know I'm not trying to sneakily earn some money off anyone's pain.)

But your body is unique and if it is healthy, you could probably do nothing and still conceive and carry a pregnancy to term. And it is my most fervent wish that you achieve your heart's desire. I guess what I'm trying to say is that only you know what you need.

I listened to my body, watched its signs and realized that I was out of balance. I did a bunch of things (including using Pre-Seed Lube in my fertile window and also undergoing Mayan abdominal massage and regular Swedish massage) to try to help me to conceive, and maybe they helped, maybe they didn't. It's in your heart and hands what you can undertake and what you can handle in the quest to have a baby, especially after a loss.

It's so, so hard to be in that spot, and if you're reading this, I'm so, so sorry that you are. I wish none of us had to go through the pain of a lost pregnancy. It's such an awful grief and sorrow. But, sisters, I offer you a hug and some hope that you will be well again.

With all my love,
Tiffany

Embody life. Embody love.

Those two sentences, along with, "Give my wish to god," are what I wrote on my whiteboard sometime around this past January or February.

I have long held the theory that whatever you want in your life, you must practice at. (Not that I've always been able to do this, but it has been a belief I've held for a very long time.) If you want to find love, you must love. And not just the people whom you suppose you'd like to love. Not just the men you might want to marry. Not just the women you'd like to date. But you do your best to love yourself. Your annoying boss. Your inconsiderate neighbor. You just try to pour out love, and love will be returned to you.

If you want to find peace, you must practice peace. Not by moving to a house away from the city. Not by standing outside a building chanting protests. Not by going to a meditation retreat once a month. Instead, you do your best to feel peace at the world, peace toward yourself, even when there are sirens wailing, even when the wars being waged break your heart and hurt your mind, even when there are horns honking at you, angry voices calling you names. It's hard. But you do your best.

It's what I believe. It's what I work at. I fail a lot. But it guides me. (I also like to tell myself to have high standards and rock bottom expectations. It keeps me moving in a direction I like, while taking off some of the pressure. I mean, jeez!)

As I wrote in my last post, I spent so much time clutching at what I wanted, losing sight of what I believed in, struggling with grief and loss and misguided ideas about detachment, that I had to finally throw up some words on a whiteboard to tell me what to do. I had to put it outside myself. I had to assert to the universe what I believed, and give my wish to god, because I sure as hell couldn't handle the burden of my own wants, needs, desires any longer. They were crushing me. Hurting my family. Blackening my heart.

I had to remember to live. To love. To say to myself, look at how goddamn lucky I am. If I never get another good thing to come my way in this life, I will be content with that, because look at how mothereffing blessed I already am. Who am I to think I deserve the certain image I think of when I think of "my life"? Where does peace and love and a good life reside? Within me, dammit, within me.

I appreciated my son more, rather than just mourning over the time slipping by. I decided to have fun with him, rather than just grow sorrowful that he might be my only baby, and his babyhood was very much in the past. I decided to direct love toward myself, and acknowledge that I had not been kind to myself, kicking myself over regrets and lost time and misguided efforts. I decided to be lively again with my husband, tired of cocooning myself in a protective shell that prevented me from having to cry and feel vulnerable and scared of possibility and hope.

And I did these things. Not every day, but a lot. To the best of my ability. I didn't just think them. I emerged from my shadowy hiding place and I started loving. I started living. I found help. I talked to people. I took care of myself. I began daily gratitudes. I surrendered.

Today, as I write this post, I am almost five months pregnant.

Lately, I am so grateful, so joyful, so peace-filled. Would I be feeling these things were I not already pregnant again? I don't truly know, but I'd like to say that the answer would be yes. Because I started living my beliefs, and embodying life, embodying love, regardless of the external circumstances in my life.

I know how lucky I am. I know how little control I have over my life's shifting circumstances. But I have the ability to turn toward love, life and peace, no matter what. I know that when I need help, help is there for me if I ask for it. I know that when I take care of myself, my body and my mind heal. I know now for a fact that what I appreciate, appreciates.

I think I've learned that what your heart desires isn't any given thing, even though your brain will tell you that's the case. A husband. A baby. A bestselling book. A great medical career. A million dollars. Whatever. I think what I've learned is that what your brain tells you your heart desires is the tangible object that you've fixed on as the path to the experience of love, life and peace. And, that that thing--that desire--isn't what you need to experience any of those things, even though they might be very nice to have.

Not that any of this is easy. Or necessarily obvious. But I think it's true.

Embody life. Embody love. Give your heart's desire to god or the universe. Feel peace.

Love and peace to you all,
Tiffany

The Experience of Life

Joseph Campbell, as my faithful readers know, is my favorite teacher. I return to his books again and again for insight, guidance, a warm voice that reminds me where to look when I lose my way. There are many great writers, teachers, but so few are so human and so relevant.

The past year has been hard. It was a year of many small and some very large losses. It's why I've been practicing daily gratitudes, looking toward regular sources of comfort and wisdom and practical advice. It's why I've returned to seeing my therapist on a more regular basis, as a means of releasing pressure safely and constructively.

Losing the little sprout back in June of 2011 affected me and my husband and our marriage more than I could have ever predicted. That's not to say that we lost our love, or our warmth, or even daily joy or enthusiasm. But what we lost was something like certainty or peace or open-handedness.

For both of us, but to a larger extent for me, clutching entered our lives. In many senses. Clutching at what we had. Clutching of our breath. Clutching for what we wanted, what we couldn't have. And in that desperation, or tight-breath, or closed hands, we dwelt more in the past and in the future -- and thus not in the present -- than we may ever have before.

For nine months, all I could think was: I should be pregnant. Then, when what would have been the due date rolled around at the end of February, the only thought I had was: I should be having a baby today. And while my son was asleep, while I chopped vegetables for dinner, I listened to some beautiful music and I cried. For an hour.

I cried as I imagined how the birth might have gone, how my arms might have felt holding a new baby, all of it. I felt the loss as an experience, instead of as a thought or even just as an emotion. I may have healed to functioning shortly after the miscarriage, but I realize only now that I had not been able to experience my grief -- to live the grief-- enough to let go.

For nearly a year I was full of sadness. Full of fear. Full of regret. Full of anger.

A very wise woman and teacher I know shared this: What you appreciate, appreciates. And "appreciate" here is used in the sense of "looking on" or "emphasizing."

And so, my life filled more with sadness, fear, regret and anger. It's, after all, what I was appreciating, trapped as I was in my clutching mindset.

My biggest question surrounding Buddhism (which I have yet to ask anyone who is expert enough to know the answer) is if all this talk of attachment and the source of suffering is meant to guide humans to a place where we are not to suffer at all. Because I think one has to be incredibly spiritually advanced not to fall into the trap of confusing the intellectual idea of detachment with the actual experience of detachment.

I knew I could not know the baby we lost. I knew I could not know why we lost it. I knew, intellectually, that what had passed had passed and the present was where I should be. But.

But knowing those things did not create the experience of being detached, or of living in peace or in the present moment. Indeed, I believe I may have made my suffering more prolonged, more intense by thinking I had done those things, and then pretending I had dealt with what needed to be dealt with. Not so much repression as inattention. An unconscious ignoring.

I recently saw a very wise midwife for some massage. We talked a bit about the miscarriage, and she said this: "Children are these amazing things, and they change your life in a miraculous and profound way. And once you're on that path, it's not as if you can just say, "Oh, well, that didn't work out."

Those words, combined with my experience of the release of my grief (as well as all the other work I've been doing), made my heart felt heard in a way it hadn't been before.

It's so simple. I am a mother and I am in this experience of life.

And so back to Joseph Campbell. He says, in his interview with Bill Moyers in "The Power of Myth:"

[The definition of myth is] the experience of life. The mind has to do with meaning. What's the meaning of a flower? There's a Zen story about a sermon of the Buddha in which he simply lifted a flower. There was only one man who gave him a sign with his eyes that he understood what was said. Now, the Buddha himself is called "the one thus come." There's no meaning. What's the meaning of the universe? What's the meaning of a flea? It's just there. That's it. And your own meaning is that you're there. We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it's all about.

I don't think I'm spiritually advanced enough to experience detachment in such a way as to not suffer. Maybe I don't want to. I don't know.

But I know that I want to practice the opposite of what I've been doing over the past year. So, openness, love, joy, peace -- the absence of clutching. I want to experience these things. And so I am practicing the gratitudes. Taking deep breaths. Appreciating what I want to appreciate. I am practicing life so that I might be able to dip into actually experiencing it the way Campbell describes, pain and all. 

And, happily, it's working.

Peace and love to you,
Tiffany

Update on Our Caveman Lifestyle

Nearly five months into primal living, and I am happy to report that it is still going better than we could have hoped.

We eat more whole foods than ever. My son has decided he now (usually) likes spinach, cucumbers, and all the soups, stews and chili I've been making. Our pantry is less cluttered. (No boxes, really, once you get rid of grains.)

Grocery bill ends up being about the same. (More spent on good quality meats and organic purchases, but less on advertising, since most bulk foods like nuts and raisins and fresh produce doesn't come from Big Food.) Also, since we snack less, we actually eat less, too.

Cooking is easy when I want it to be: Some fish with some lemon-garlic butter and sauteed veggies. When I want a showstopper, I can do that, too: Chile rellenos with chicken, cheese, pecans, raisins and lime sour cream, with a side of calabacitas con crema. Yummmmm.

Our energy levels are still sky high, which is my favorite part. (Well, that and the ability to not be hungry for hours on end--and therefore not be motivated nor distracted by food. Life is too short to spend it eating *all* the time!)

Exercise is less stressful than it's ever been. I walk or jog with the dog for 20 minutes once a day, and spend my usual time on my feet chasing my son around. Once a week or so, on Saturday or Sunday, we go to the park and do our sprints, which take all of 10-15 minutes, including resting between sets and chasing the little one. Then we are free to head to the playground or walk around the lake or do whatever we'd like to do as a family. I go to yoga most Sunday mornings. (Not that that's exercise for me--even if it is. It's my church.) Every other night or so, we do push-ups or squats or some other kind of bodyweight exercise, all in about 20 minutes or less. No more worrying about "getting enough exercise." We can do more, if we want, but we don't have to to stay lean. It's awesome.

Additionally, the way we're eating gives us enough energy to do intense bursts and build muscle. Thanks to my awesome "100 Push-Up" iPhone app, I just completed 100 push-ups, which I don't think I ever thought was possible. (It's broken up into sets with a 1-2 minute rest between them, but still!) I'm also well on my way to 200 sit-ups and 200 squats. 

As for weight, we have both lost quite a bit of body fat. I was a size 6-8, and now I'm in the 2-4-6 range. My husband, who had a bit more to lose, has lost enough (more than 24 pounds, and still losing) that he's had to buy new pants and his shirts are quite roomy! And he is continuing to lose body fat every day. His blood pressure, though, has gone way down, which makes me very happy. He's gone from the low end of "high" to the middle of totally normal!

My skin continues to improve. I think this is a sign of my hormones, which are still a bit wacky, balancing out. There's some possibility that losing body fat, which holds on to estrogen, could be responsible for things not being totally normal just yet. I'm going to be consulting with some health professionals soon on this, so we'll see what I find out there. 

As for temptations and cheats, it does happen. Mark Sisson, author of The Primal Blueprint, advocates an 80-20 approach, so that eating doesn't feel too restrictive, controlled or obsessive. I'd say we're doing 90-10. Corn is our biggest cheat, as we love Tex-Mex, so once in a while we'll have a corn tortilla enchilada, and maybe a taste of rice and beans. We've had pieces of cake--my son's birthday was recently--and while I really wanted to enjoy it, I just couldn't. I felt the buzzing of too-high blood sugar almost instantly, and it just made us feel poorly. It also was interesting how addicting it was; I wanted to eat more cake, despite knowing that it would make me feel junky. So we threw it out. We've found that wheat, combined with sugar, seems to be the very worst at making us feel bad.

My friend recently asked these questions in her comment to the post "Primal Bliss":

What I can't reconcile though, is what I know anecdotally about Atkins, which I know is not the same (the quality of this food sounds much higher) but seems fairly similar. I know lots of people who had success losing weight with Atkins, but no one who continued with it in the long-term (say two years or more) which of course led to regaining any weight lost. Of course, the same can be said of any style of eating for weight loss-- I can't think of anyone I know who has lost a large amount of weight on any plan, sensible or otherwise, and kept it off permanently. This my long-winded way of asking, is there something about this style of eating that can help one stick with it long-term? There's something unique about eating habits-- they die really, really hard.

She's right about eating habits, and her questions are good ones. My first thought is that there's something about coupling an eating plan to the science of ancestral health. Basically, if I understand intellectually why these things are good for my body or not, and I can look up the evidence myself, I'm more likely to be internally motivated to eat well. I think internal motivation is key. Someone telling you what you can and can't eat smacks of authority, against which nearly everyone eventually rebels. Further, without the strong cravings for the blood-sugar highs, the temptation to cheat plummets, making success much easier.

And I think another reason why this is working so well is that without the elevated levels of insulin numbing us to the effects of poor choices, we can get immediate feedback about how food affects our bodies. I know I feel better when I'm eating primally, and when I stray, it's like instant negative reinforcement. My body is more finely calibrated, and I'm more mindful, too.

While I'm happy I've lost weight, and thrilled that my husband has, I wasn't really in this 100 percent for weight loss. Mostly, I wanted to feel better, avoid blood sugar issues, and be in optimum health for a long time to come. I was motivated for higher reasons than vanity, which doesn't motivate people for very long, since being heavy or thin is not the source of real unhappiness or happiness. I just want health for myself and my family.

I don't know enough about Atkins to know why it (or any other eating plan) might fail, but I think one explanation of why "low-carb" and other diets don't work for some in the long term is that they allow wheat and grains, and demonize saturated and/or animal fat. Wheat is a powerful appetite stimulant, and where the carbs come from is just as, if not more, important as how many you have per day. Carbs from green veggies behave differently in your body than carbs from grains and sugars. I just read Gary Taubes' "Why We Get Fat, and What to Do About It." In it, he explains the biochemical mechanisms for fat storage, along with the history of obesity research and cures. I recommend reading it for the history alone, but knowing how insulin affects fat storage and metabolism is really important, too. (I've just started reading Dr. William Davis' "Wheat Belly" and that is full of great info, too, on the science of all this.)

Obviously, we've only been doing this about five months, so I can't know if we'll do this for the rest of our lives or not. But given everything we've experienced, we have no desire to change a thing, so we'll be eating this way for the foreseeable future. Only time will tell, of course, but I'll periodically share how we're all doing. I'll also mention that our success has motivated my husband's two brothers and his niece to go Primal, too, and so far the benefits they've experienced reflect our own experience. 

So, to sum up: This decision we've made is working out well, and I'm so glad we challenged conventional wisdom and struck out on this path a little over four months ago.

Peace and good health to you,
Tiffany

Primal Bliss (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Eat Like a Caveman)

In the months since my miscarriage, I’ve been thinking a lot about health. My health, my husband’s health, my son’s health, and my parents’ health.

My health, because of the miscarriage: Not because I think I was in terribly poor health, but because I want to be in optimum health for another pregnancy, and of course just because it’s a good idea.

My husband’s health, because of course I want him around for a long time, and because, in conjunction with me, we serve as health role models for our son.

My son’s health, because I want him to have a radiant and happy life.

My parents’ health, because my mother is, for the first time in her adult life, taking responsibility for it, and because my father is feeling so poorly that he, too, is looking at making major changes, or facing curtains.

I realize ever more what an illusion “medical care” is. I think that it is wonderful in emergencies, accidents and a very few diseases, and I’m grateful that it exists. But too many of us, myself included, have trusted in medicine’s ability to swoop in and take care of our problems. This isn’t entirely our fault, as most of us have been trained in this mentality from day one.

For a host of reasons, beginning with the shockingly bad and careless treatment I received in the area’s “best” hospital after my son’s birth, I have started my own quest for personal responsibility in health, mainly so I can be healthy and happy and avoid as many medical practitioners in my life as possible. (As it becomes abundantly clear, too, that the system is hopelessly broken, it is in our financial interest to practice personal responsibility in health, too.)

However, I’m not into quacks, charlatans and other health gurus. That’s just making the same mistake of entrusting your health to a different subset of people. So it’s not really a move into “alternative health” that I’m making, but rather an alternative approach to health.

What that leads me to is that I am considering evidence—all evidence—from credible, science-backed sources and weaving that into a plan for what works for me and my family. I’m proceeding carefully and also radically into a mode of self-experimentation, starting with diet and fitness.

In short, I’m eating and exercising like a caveman.

Actually, after months of research, I’m following the majority of the advice behind the “Primal Blueprint” and a month in, I am shocked at how much better I feel (and look).

Before I go into what results I’ve gotten, I’ll just say that it’s a no-brainer that your health should be your biggest priority in life. If you are living in a way that shortchanges your health, short-term or long-term, you will have many obstacles on the path toward living your bliss, simply because so much of your time will be taken up with illness, discomfort or more serious problems. Trust me. I know how much time my dad spends at the doctor’s office. It’s mind-boggling.

And the thing is, I don’t think most people (my dad included) are lazy, have poor impulse control or are gluttonous overeaters. I think there is something wrong with the way we’ve been taught to go about fitness and diet and it is just not working, as evidenced by the chronic illness, obesity epidemic and even just people like me, who had minor, chronic ailments, despite doing everything “right.”

My troubles really began after my son’s birth. I had no problem losing the weight from pregnancy (which wasn’t much to begin with: about 25 pounds), but keeping my blood sugar stable has been a challenge for the last two years. I had a couple of hypoglycemia incidents that had me sick, nauseated and in bed feeling so bad that I contemplated going to the ER. Then the constant feeling of being run down. Granted, a newborn will do that to you, and since he didn’t sleep through the night until he was 15 months old, that had some hand in it, but I knew instinctively it wasn’t the whole story. Then, despite a regular walking/running exercise routine, yoga, “healthy” food and being hungry all the damn time, I realized I wasn’t heavy or overweight, but just puffy. If I was doing everything right, why wouldn’t I be in great shape?

I’m open to radical ideas; it’s just the way I am now. I listen to something, and apply my own analysis and do my own research to see if it’s credible or not. I am not interested anymore in “knowledge” that is received or common.

So I found the blog Mark’s Daily Apple linked from a favorite website and here I am.

I don’t eat any grains. None. No wheat, no rice, no corn, no oats – you get the picture. No refined sugars, either. I eat plenty of veggies. Lots of grass-fed, organic meats with lots of fat. Wild fish and shellfish. Pastured butter and organic heavy cream. Eggs. Nuts. Olives. Some cheese. Lots of coconut and coconut products. Fruits, some chocolate and some alcohol.

I follow the exercise advice, too: Move frequently at a slow pace. Lift heavy things. Sprint once in a while. That’s it.

In one week, I stopped being hungry all the time. Before, I couldn’t go two hours without a snack. Now, I could probably go from breakfast to dinner without eating if I wanted to. No more blood sugar crashes. No more foggy brain. Better sleep. Most of all, just so much more energy. My mood has improved, and I am happier and more even-keeled. I just feel better all around.

As if that weren’t enough, how I look has changed, too. My skin looks more radiant and is clearer than it has been in two years. (I actually got carded recently, which hadn’t happened since becoming a mama!) I think my hormones have balanced out, too, which helps with the skin issue. I’ve lost eight pounds, and my body fat percentage—immovable for years—has finally started declining. I can see muscles in my legs that I’ve never, ever seen in my life. My stomach is flatter, and my clothes just fit better.

I can’t wait to see what the next few months bring. I don’t expect that I’ll never ever eat another slice of cake or a piece of pizza, but I don’t plan on going back to the way I used to eat. If I should get pregnant again, I can add in some quinoa, sweet potatoes and other high-nutrition carbs to round things out. (Pun intended, ha ha.)

The point of this post is to share some anecdotal evidence with you, and challenge you to look at what advice you might be following regarding your health that you have never questioned or analyzed and see if there is room for changes that might improve your life.

Health--good or bad--is not permanent. I realize that simply because I have found a way of eating and living that is working for me does not mean I will never fall ill or get injured or what have you. But what it does mean is that I am comforted that I have found something that I can do, that I have taken responsibility for, and that the rest is out of my hands.

When I feel good and have my health and do daily work to maintain good health – that is part of the path toward a blissful existence. When I don’t feel good and have fallen ill or injured - that is the nature of being alive, so I will not agonize over it, but will do all I can to heal and feel my feelings and accept what is.

I wish radiant health and happiness to all of you.

Peace,
Tiffany

p.s. If any of you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them in the comments.

How I Healed After My Miscarriage

Some lives are long, and some are very, very short, but they all make their mark.

That’s the sentence that came to me from somewhere that felt very much outside myself in the days after we lost the little sprout that we believed would be our second baby.

I’m a fairly private person, so I’ve struggled with how to discuss this here. But I talk so much about finding bliss and equanimity and peace even through the hard days, and there were no days I’ve had that were as hard as those.

So I’ve decided to open up a bit, and share how I found my footing and began to heal after this loss.

Note: If you don’t think you can handle hearing the details of a miscarriage, this isn’t the post for you. I have decided to do something scary, and that is to write honestly, which is something I am tired of being afraid to do. That’s a topic for another post, but suffice it to say, this will be a post that does not hide from life’s more uncomfortable realities.

First of all, miscarriage is something very few people talk about, but it is very common. I think it’s so difficult to discuss because it most often happens well before you begin to look or even feel pregnant. We had only told our families, and so in a sense, unless we said to everyone, “Hey, we had a miscarriage,” it was invisible to almost everyone, making our pain private and lonely. (I actually wrote to my closest friend in the days afterward, telling her, I said, so that she could be witness to this event in my life. I’m so glad I did, as I could not let this little life go without my closest friends helping me to acknowledge it.)

1. Reach out to friendly ears. Don’t go it alone.

When we found out we were pregnant again, we were stunned and happy. We were hoping to have a second child, but we were surprised at how quickly it happened, since our son took us some time to conceive.

I knew I was pregnant for a week (but I was 6 weeks along), and I wish I could say that I spent every moment being grateful and thankful for this new life. Instead, I found myself thinking about how I would fit a new child into our home, how it would affect my relationship with my son, even—gulp—what it would do to my body, as I felt I had finally gotten it “back,” whatever that means. In other
words, I wasted more time than I care to admit in useless worry and what-ifs.

Once I saw the spotting, the fading line on the pregnancy tests that I took once I realized this pregnancy was unlikely to continue, and finally, the bleeding that told me that I’d never see this particular baby’s face in this particular lifetime, I was filled with regret, with remorse, for every second I spent not being grateful for this new life.

2. Won’t do that again.

Because it was an early loss, I trusted my body to do what it needed to do. No doctors. Just some ibuprofen for pain, and normal life. After all, I have a beautiful and energetic son to take care of, and a toddler, thank god, doesn’t stop for anything. Life went on as normally as possible, until…

Until I discovered my lost baby’s embryo. That’s what happens, isn’t it? One day an embryo was in my uterus on its way to being my second child, and for reasons I will never, ever know, that path ended, and it couldn’t stay inside my uterus any longer. And there, in the wavelike folds of toilet paper, I was forced to say goodbye to more than just an idea of a baby.

3. There is no denying the reality of death.

Do you know how you know you’re married to the right man? When he comes home that night, and you show him the little box (shipped to the house carrying the beneficial insect eggs he’d ordered for the garden—lovely green lacewings) into which you’ve nestled an embryo that you could identify from a drawing in a biology textbook, but that is your fused DNA, your lost baby, your lost daydreams, and he gets so profoundly sad, as sad as you’ve ever seen him, and you know that somehow, even though this is the most painful moment you’ve ever shared with him, that you are really, actually indivisible, because your sadness is a shared sadness that is so deep it could consume you both, but instead, your love begins to pour into the hole, filling it from the bottom up.

4. True love is salvation.

But it was into a hole, dug by my husband, that our lost baby’s embryo went, under a live oak tree in our yard. Watching my husband go to the garage in a deliberative quiet, retrieve the shovel, and then start digging a little hole with such skill and care made me fall in love with him in a way that had nothing to do with charm or wit or physical beauty or any of the things that people focus on when they’re younger. The seriousness and care with which he treated this tiny resting spot for our sprout is something I will never, ever forget.

In the dark, we kneeled and cried. We cried so, so much. There was a baby, supposed to be inside me, that was now under a tree. We said we were sorry we would never get to meet him or her, that we loved and wanted this life and that we would never forget it. And then we said goodbye, and placed dirt, and finally a rock, over our lost baby.

For the next few days, we cried and we talked, and we stared into space and cried some more. We needed to. We felt our feelings when they asked to be felt.

5. Feel your feelings.

So much of life consists of not knowing, and yet we try to pin life down, to find reasons for the way it is. I do this all the time, and it is normal, but misguided. I see a young girl on the playground with cancer, and I want there to be a reason: exposure to environmental toxins? Genetic mutations? How could it be that she was just unlucky?

Making this more complicated are the swirls of studies and scientific reports that seem to imply that toxins or genes can be the cause of cancers, or that external factors—controllable factors—can cause death, illness, disease. As though those things would not happen if we could eliminate all those factors.

The guilt I felt for the miscarriage was what descended on me in the next few days. I’d had a glass of wine. I am still nursing my toddler. I have been dehydrated a lot lately. I am maybe nutritionally depleted. I read an article that said nursing, for some women, is linked to miscarriage. I showed the article to my husband, and I started sobbing. Curled on the floor, my face buried in my hands, I cried, saying: “I killed my baby.” Because at that exact moment, that’s how I felt. So again, I felt my feelings, entrusting them to the most trustworthy person in my life.

He smoothed my hair, and just held me. No, you didn’t, he said. You don’t know why this happened.

Over the next several days, I realized that the suffering, the guilt, was based in my trying to find a reason that I could control. If I could figure it out, I could make it never happen again. But, once I felt those feelings and let them pass through me, I realized that I didn’t know anything for certain. Somehow, I had to accept that I would never, ever know why we lost this life. Sure, I might have suspicions, or theories or thoughts about why, but while I am alive, I have to accept the unknowing.

6. Know what you don’t know.

And I got to that acceptance by grieving fully and totally for something I have no power to change. Even if I could have prevented it, I didn’t, and so the baby that I loved from the moment I saw the pink line is still, sadly but surely, irretrievably lost to us for all time.

I had already gotten so attached. Imagining this little boy or girl playing with my son, imagining how his or her features would differ, what sort of personality I’d get to meet. I thought about the little toes I’d now never get to kiss, the little mind I’d never have the privilege of exploring, the giggles and tantrums I’d never witness. I kind of wanted to not think about these things, because every time I did (and even now, many times that I do) I had to experience an intense, painful sadness that brought me to tears. I was giving this nascent life its due, and in the process, letting myself be sad enough that I could properly say goodbye.

7. Purposefully meditate on whatever it is you can hardly tolerate thinking about.

The next few days I walked around in a fog. I was just numb, checked out. I was able to take care of my son and his needs, but I was less able to focus, and off in a netherworld that felt shadowy and gray.

I don’t know what was going on inside me, but whatever it was, I just let it happen. Almost as though after such intensity of feeling and awareness, I had to power down in order to restore a normal level of functioning.

And at no particularly important moment, I just started feeling better. I could laugh again. I could look at the world and not take it or myself so seriously. I could return to yoga and reading, my body and mind again willing and able. I began to pursue the care I needed—contacting a midwife for counsel, herbs and what I could do to prepare my body and mind for a healthy pregnancy, whenever we were ready. I could appreciate how many blessings I had, as well as appreciating and accepting all that I had lost.

8. If you’ve felt your feelings, time does heal.

No one wants anything bad to happen, and I don’t think there’s a “reason" for why things happen the way they do. I think that life is inherently a rising and falling wheel of fate that we can ride in one of two ways. 1) We can ride on the rim of the wheel, attached to good fortune and crushed by bad fortune, clutching and avoiding and suffering all the way or 2) We can crawl toward the center of the wheel, and witness the rise and fall from a place of equanimity, seeing it for the impermanent journey that it is while still being a part of it, while still fully experiencing it -- and embrace it.

Not that that’s easy to do, but, you know, that’s the way I think makes the most sense, so it’s what I practice at.

I have a friend whose nephew died when he was very young. I can’t imagine. How much grief I went through for an embryo of 6 weeks, so much more a child you have loved and nurtured and known. No one can mindfully say that there was a “reason” for his death, just as there’s not a “reason” for my miscarriage, or for that little girl’s cancer. That’s not the spiritual universe I subscribe to. My god has a little “g” and is not a being, is not wrathful or rewarding, is not a parent trying to teach me a lesson.

What I’ve come to is that bad, truly awful things can happen to us. And, if we can survive them, and feel our feelings and grieve our losses fully, we become new people in new territory. And like any new journey, we will come upon trials as well as gifts. Why spurn the gifts, especially if they are so hard-won?

I would never have chosen to go through the abuse I went through when I was younger, I would never have chosen to go through the miscarriage. I hope I won’t go through another one. But since I have gone through those things, and since I am irrevocably on the other side, I choose to accept whatever positive changes these great trials have brought with them.

The deepened love for my son and my husband.

The greater sense of self-knowing.

The gratitude for the many blessings I have.

The reminder of the shortness and sacredness of life.

The knowledge that I can deeply love another child, even one I will never meet.

The heightened awareness of impermanence.

Some lives are long, and some are very, very short. But they all make their mark.

About two weeks after the miscarriage, my yoga teacher closed class with “Keep Me In Your Heart” by Warren Zevon, which he wrote while dying. Eyes closed, on my back in savasana, I started to cry. I cried and cried. And then I felt an incredible lightness, a peace. At the end of the song, my yoga teacher said, “I like what Rumi said: ‘We haven’t truly begun to meditate until we cry.’”

Not only do I like what Rumi said, I think it is true.

I don’t know what the future holds for me and my family. Right now, I am choosing to stay as close to the present moment as I can, and find my balance by trying to move toward the center of that ever-rolling wheel.

Peace and love to you,

Tiffany

UPDATE:

For those interested in reading how my healing process continued, check out this post: The Experience of Life

And, for those who want to do something good for your body after a miscarriage, try 3-4 cups of raspberry leaf tea per day. I'll blog soon  I've posted about my experience with that tea, and why I think it's a good idea for healing and pregnancy preparation. All my love and best to you...