I just published an article about going into labor for a miscarriage, accessible via the internet and my friends on social networking sites. While I’ve been writing articles on the topic for as long as I’ve been freelancing, this is my only online article on the topic. It’s caused me to ponder my experience of writing from my own personal tragedy, and for an audience that knows me.
That experience, after years of not writing, is what compelled me to write. It gave me the energy, verve and a passion behind my words and an urgency to get them published in a way I maybe never experienced before. Almost four years after the trauma, I finally had a voice—a voice that could articulate my experience of pregnancy losses, traumatic childbirths, and struggles as a new mom, thanks to getting more sleep when my infant grew older and my getting treatment for Lyme disease.
The keyboard of my computer pulled out my stories and the information I’d researched over the years. The pressure in me to tell my story and shed light on some very under-reported issues drove me to trying a freelance writing career during naptime, while I continue raise my two small children at home all day.
My first instinct was to write about the birth of Levi, my triumph. In trying to write it, I kept backing up. I couldn’t just tell the story of the beautiful, successful birth of Levi—my mind and body wouldn’t let me. I had to stop writing that article and go back and write about giving birth to Eli, my first live son, which had been a very traumatic experience for me. And in writing about that, I realized I couldn’t adequately tell even that story until I backed up and told the story of Grace, the daughter I lost previously, in my first childbirth experience, and before that, my first miscarriage.
Backing up to the beginning, I wrote an article about miscarriage, a sort of expose on a gap in prenatal care in our medical system, and a dearth of information or preparation for the women who miscarry past ten weeks, a process that requires full-on labor and delivery. Suddenly finding yourself in labor for the first time, months before you’d begun to take classes on birth or read about it, is like waking up in a marathon with a gun to your head—there’s no way out, but you don’t know how to get through it. And when you begin it, you don’t even know what it is or how long it will take and what it will require of you. You’ve learned no strategies, no pain management, and, following the analogy, you don’t even know how to run. In my article, I compared my two miscarriages—my first, a typical early loss hardly distinguishable from a menstrual period, compared to my second one that occurred only five weeks later, gestationally speaking, and yet required a 15 hour labor.
I discovered, as a writer, back in college, that there was a truth to not being able to write about personal tragedy while I was in the midst of it. I couldn’t write about my father’s struggle with cancer, nor about his dying, until long after I had time to process it. I didn’t even write a journal entry about my pregnancy losses when they occurred. The only words I ever put down were in the form of emails to friends. But 6 months ago, everything came rushing out, and I found myself shocked that it was good, like a surprised god not sure of the quality of his creation until he stepped back to survey it.
After I wrote articles about features of the beginning of my journey, then I could work back up toward the present. Next I completed one on my second labor and delivery and how research predicted I’d likely experience post traumatic stress disorder when the sensations of my loss labor hit my body the next time, and post partum depression later. I was mad as hell that I could find the studies via the internet, months after my ordeal, and yet not one of the OBs I’d had in recent years, and who knew my history, ever told me or tried to prepare me for that. There was fire behind me to get the topic covered in magazines—the very magazines I turned to during and after my experiences, where I found nothing but anemic articles telling only the beginning of these stories.
When I got those 2 articles done, I could finally write about the victory—my water birth with Levi and how much it healed a lot of my wounds from my other births. I sent all 3 articles out, debating heavily about where to send them. I knew it was a long shot for a newbie freelancer to try the big national names—Pregnancy, Fit Pregnancy, and yet, I knew of no smaller, local publication that would tackle such a heavy issue, so I did nonetheless send the first 2 articles to the big mags because I feel very strongly that the topics need to reach a very wide audience of women. And as I expected, I’m still waiting, as they say it’ll take 6 months for a response, if any. (That's part of the reality in what I'm beginning to consider "the 2-year investment" in articles--a strange reality I talked about in previous blog "Wait 2 Years for a Paycheck?!")
But the 3rd article, I sent to smaller magazine that values natural birth. It was nicely rejected, and then, in days, accepted at Midwifery Today. This will be published this fall. While the focus is on the miracle and beauty of that birth, it is what it is because of the back story. So though the topic is not miscarriage or traumatic birth after, a shortened form of those experiences are included in that essay, in order to make sense of why I so desperately needed to leave the big medical business of hospitals and birth naturally under the care of midwives.
The one I just published on the internet, through a content website, HealthMad, entitled "When Miscarriage Means Labor" was rewritten a few times. The firs time it included too much of me, and too much of the agenda of the above articles. (That's hard--how much of me am I comfortable revealing? I wrestled with that in a couple other online articles: "Is Lyme Disease Lurking in Your Unexplained Symptoms?" and " Surprises in Recovering From Lyme Disease." But in the end, it was the only way I could write them.)
I didn’t really want the article to be about me, nor could it legally be a ditto of any other articles I’ve sent out (copyright laws). But I have a real drive to get the info available on the internet because that’s where I searched time and time again, to learn anything I could about women going into labor for am miscarriage. And I found such a lack of information, officially, yet tons of forums and blogs about women’s experiences. So by multiple rewrites, I finally got an article that is simply educational about what the body must do to miscarry after ten weeks, should a woman unexpectedly start miscarrying before or instead of having a D&C surgery performed.
But I’m finding this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many angles to the stories in my experience that I’m still producing articles on topics tangentially related. (To be explored in next blog entry….)
Unrelated publications of mine:
Treating Depression with Natural or Alternative Medicine
Sunburn Prevention: Take Off Those Sunglasses!
That experience, after years of not writing, is what compelled me to write. It gave me the energy, verve and a passion behind my words and an urgency to get them published in a way I maybe never experienced before. Almost four years after the trauma, I finally had a voice—a voice that could articulate my experience of pregnancy losses, traumatic childbirths, and struggles as a new mom, thanks to getting more sleep when my infant grew older and my getting treatment for Lyme disease.
The keyboard of my computer pulled out my stories and the information I’d researched over the years. The pressure in me to tell my story and shed light on some very under-reported issues drove me to trying a freelance writing career during naptime, while I continue raise my two small children at home all day.
My first instinct was to write about the birth of Levi, my triumph. In trying to write it, I kept backing up. I couldn’t just tell the story of the beautiful, successful birth of Levi—my mind and body wouldn’t let me. I had to stop writing that article and go back and write about giving birth to Eli, my first live son, which had been a very traumatic experience for me. And in writing about that, I realized I couldn’t adequately tell even that story until I backed up and told the story of Grace, the daughter I lost previously, in my first childbirth experience, and before that, my first miscarriage.
Backing up to the beginning, I wrote an article about miscarriage, a sort of expose on a gap in prenatal care in our medical system, and a dearth of information or preparation for the women who miscarry past ten weeks, a process that requires full-on labor and delivery. Suddenly finding yourself in labor for the first time, months before you’d begun to take classes on birth or read about it, is like waking up in a marathon with a gun to your head—there’s no way out, but you don’t know how to get through it. And when you begin it, you don’t even know what it is or how long it will take and what it will require of you. You’ve learned no strategies, no pain management, and, following the analogy, you don’t even know how to run. In my article, I compared my two miscarriages—my first, a typical early loss hardly distinguishable from a menstrual period, compared to my second one that occurred only five weeks later, gestationally speaking, and yet required a 15 hour labor.
I discovered, as a writer, back in college, that there was a truth to not being able to write about personal tragedy while I was in the midst of it. I couldn’t write about my father’s struggle with cancer, nor about his dying, until long after I had time to process it. I didn’t even write a journal entry about my pregnancy losses when they occurred. The only words I ever put down were in the form of emails to friends. But 6 months ago, everything came rushing out, and I found myself shocked that it was good, like a surprised god not sure of the quality of his creation until he stepped back to survey it.
After I wrote articles about features of the beginning of my journey, then I could work back up toward the present. Next I completed one on my second labor and delivery and how research predicted I’d likely experience post traumatic stress disorder when the sensations of my loss labor hit my body the next time, and post partum depression later. I was mad as hell that I could find the studies via the internet, months after my ordeal, and yet not one of the OBs I’d had in recent years, and who knew my history, ever told me or tried to prepare me for that. There was fire behind me to get the topic covered in magazines—the very magazines I turned to during and after my experiences, where I found nothing but anemic articles telling only the beginning of these stories.
When I got those 2 articles done, I could finally write about the victory—my water birth with Levi and how much it healed a lot of my wounds from my other births. I sent all 3 articles out, debating heavily about where to send them. I knew it was a long shot for a newbie freelancer to try the big national names—Pregnancy, Fit Pregnancy, and yet, I knew of no smaller, local publication that would tackle such a heavy issue, so I did nonetheless send the first 2 articles to the big mags because I feel very strongly that the topics need to reach a very wide audience of women. And as I expected, I’m still waiting, as they say it’ll take 6 months for a response, if any. (That's part of the reality in what I'm beginning to consider "the 2-year investment" in articles--a strange reality I talked about in previous blog "Wait 2 Years for a Paycheck?!")
But the 3rd article, I sent to smaller magazine that values natural birth. It was nicely rejected, and then, in days, accepted at Midwifery Today. This will be published this fall. While the focus is on the miracle and beauty of that birth, it is what it is because of the back story. So though the topic is not miscarriage or traumatic birth after, a shortened form of those experiences are included in that essay, in order to make sense of why I so desperately needed to leave the big medical business of hospitals and birth naturally under the care of midwives.
The one I just published on the internet, through a content website, HealthMad, entitled "When Miscarriage Means Labor" was rewritten a few times. The firs time it included too much of me, and too much of the agenda of the above articles. (That's hard--how much of me am I comfortable revealing? I wrestled with that in a couple other online articles: "Is Lyme Disease Lurking in Your Unexplained Symptoms?" and " Surprises in Recovering From Lyme Disease." But in the end, it was the only way I could write them.)
I didn’t really want the article to be about me, nor could it legally be a ditto of any other articles I’ve sent out (copyright laws). But I have a real drive to get the info available on the internet because that’s where I searched time and time again, to learn anything I could about women going into labor for am miscarriage. And I found such a lack of information, officially, yet tons of forums and blogs about women’s experiences. So by multiple rewrites, I finally got an article that is simply educational about what the body must do to miscarry after ten weeks, should a woman unexpectedly start miscarrying before or instead of having a D&C surgery performed.
But I’m finding this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many angles to the stories in my experience that I’m still producing articles on topics tangentially related. (To be explored in next blog entry….)
Unrelated publications of mine:
Treating Depression with Natural or Alternative Medicine
| Transferring Your Values About Sex to Your Kids: Timing and Definitions are Key |
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