Grace and Grief: Marcella Jewell's Journey Through Miscarriage, Medical Termination, and Motherhood

Transcript

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This episode depicts pregnancy loss.

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Listeners who are sensitive to this topic may prefer to skip this episode.

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Hello, today I have with me Marcella Jewell.

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Marcella is the mother of three who works in non-profit fundraising.

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She's here today to share her fertility and birth journey, including nine pregnancies, three living kids, five miscarriages and one termination for medical reasons.

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Marcella, welcome, and thank you so much for joining me.

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Thank you for having me.

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I appreciate you offering to have me tell my story.

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It's kind of long and complicated, but I am happy to share it with others.

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Yeah, I'm really appreciative of you sharing this because over the last seven, eight years, I believe, I've been watching this unfold and I've been incredibly moved by a lot of the things that you have shared.

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You've been really vulnerable and I think a lot of what you've shared has helped a lot of other people and I just really appreciate that you're willing to come on and use this as a platform to continue to do that.

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Yeah, I've shared some publicly on social media and actually it's been really kind of part of my healing and it has helped me a lot and I'm so glad that I did make the decision to share stuff publicly.

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Yeah, I think it's really helpful because I know a lot of people that have gone through a lot of what you're going through and I think a lot of people tend to just suffer in silence, but that helps no one.

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So having it out there, I think, is really incredibly important it is yeah.

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So go ahead and start from the beginning.

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What it was like for your fertility journey and your pregnancy journey, and just everything that that entailed.

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Sure, I kind of consider my journey starting when my husband and I got married in 2015.

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And after about a year of marriage, we were ready to have kids, because I was already 33 at that point and we thought we needed to get going.

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We made the decision.

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I went to my OBGYN and said I'm ready to take out my IUD, I'm ready to get going.

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Then she could not find the string of the IUD, so that was kind of surprising.

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She did an ultrasound and found that my IUD had actually migrated within my body, which I didn't know was a thing that could happen.

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But they found that it had gone through my uterine wall and embedded in my large intestine.

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So they told me that's not that big a deal.

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They scheduled a surgery.

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I did a laparoscopic surgery that was just like an hour at the health system where I work.

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They got the IUD out and told me it wasn't that big a deal.

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Sometimes that happens.

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And so my husband and I thought, okay, that's the end of it, that's the worst that could happen, which we were very wrong.

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We got pregnant pretty soon, I think at two to three months afterwards.

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We have gotten pregnant very easily over the years, but we didn't know at the beginning, so the fact that it was the second month or so, we didn't know that that was normal for us.

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I got pregnant.

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I had a pretty normal pregnancy.

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I went through some mental health issues and then I had my son.

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When I was 40 weeks and four days, I went into labor naturally at home and my water broke at home.

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I didn't really realize it at the time.

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I was having contractions and trying to measure how far apart they were and I I thought, oh, these are very far apart, I'll get in the shower.

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While I was in the shower, they started going back to back to back and I started like, oh, these are very far apart, I'll get in the shower.

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While I was in the shower, they started going back to back to back and I started like screaming in pain.

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I got out of the shower dripping wet, got on the toilet.

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My water broke which, if you're going to be anywhere when your water breaks, being on the toilet's probably the easiest best way and then I just had back to back contractions where I was.

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They weren't really breaks and I just started screaming and my husband and I had never been through any of this before and so I was scared that we weren't going to get to the hospital and I was yelling at him to call an ambulance and we were frantic running around his first time going through a birth.

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We went to the hospital and they told me I was pretty far along and so they had to play catch up with my epidural, which I was in a lot of pain, but they eventually got me settled in a bed and gave me the epidural, and it was about 9 am.

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It took a little while for it to hit and then I had a pretty good two hours of pushing on the epidural.

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I couldn't really feel the contractions, so they kept showing me on the screen when they were happening.

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There was a nurse that had a twisted towel and she was doing like tug of war with me and trying to get me to push through the contractions, but I wasn't really feeling them.

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I was having conversations and just thinking, oh, this is pretty easy, I can do this.

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But the baby had not progressed at all.

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So my OBGYN said we can't let you go past four hours of pushing.

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We recommend that we turn off the epidural so that you can realize when the contractions are happening and push into them, and that, hopefully, will help the baby progress.

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And so I was like, well, yeah, I don't want to go to four hours, we're already at two.

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So they turned off my epidural.

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This is the most pain I've ever been in in my entire life.

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It was horrendous, it was awful.

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I thought I was dying.

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I pushed for a little over an hour and a half without the epidural.

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The baby was progressing, but he got somewhat stuck.

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They used the little vacuum to try to get his head out of the birth canal and then he got stuck.

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They called it a shoulder dystocia.

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He got his shoulder stuck in the birth canal and I didn't have any idea about this at the time.

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I was out of my mind, in pain, not really understanding, but apparently what I've heard afterwards is that the baby can suffocate because they are stuck and they're in the birth canal.

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So apparently there was a nurse that climbed on top of me and helped to push out the shoulder that was stuck, which explains some of the intense pain I had when I was not on an epidural and somebody did that while I was in labor.

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I'll be honest.

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The baby came out and I was so tired I didn't really hold the baby or understand what was going on.

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They brought him over to the warmer.

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People were crowded around and somebody was just like, oh, move out of the way so she can see her baby.

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And I just kind of like looked over and I was just so exhausted I didn't really understand what was going on.

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As soon as they got him out, they turned the epidural back on.

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But I'd had some tearing so they did stitch me up and about 20 minutes afterwards I kind of when I was back in my right mind on the epidural I freaked out and said, oh, I have to deliver the placenta.

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And my doctor was like you did that like 10 minutes ago.

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I had no idea I had delivered the placenta.

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I didn't know the extent of the tearing because they had just sewed me up.

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It was a pretty traumatic, awful experience, but I got through it and then I thought everything's okay.

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But my baby, ezra, was breathing really quickly.

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So they took him to the NICU.

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My husband went with him and it was such a surreal feeling After I'd been in so much pain.

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They cleaned up the room and the nurses left and the doctor left and I was basically in my hospital room for like two hours completely by myself.

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A nurse would pop in every once in a while.

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But I had just had a baby and had been in intense pain and then suddenly everybody left and I was just sitting in the hospital bed by myself.

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So like I asked for my phone and I played around on my phone and I texted people and said I had a baby, but it was.

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I didn't get to bond with him, I didn't get to hold him, I didn't get any of those real experiences because he and my husband just left the room and then no one was with me.

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So I was kind of alone in a really weird emotional place for a while.

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My baby Ezra was fine.

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He stayed several days in the NICU but it was mostly for fast breathing and they had to rule out a lot of bad complications.

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And once they ruled it all out, it was process of elimination that he was coming off of the psychiatric meds that I was on.

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So it wasn't that big a deal.

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They just wanted to make sure it wasn't anything else.

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But I didn't get to be with him for several days.

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I slept through the night and I barely breastfed, so it was a horrible setup for breastfeeding.

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I had major issues with him for months because I wish somebody had told me like be next to your baby, see them every single hour, get set up for success.

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And I was like he's in the NICU, I just pop in every few hours.

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And so we got off to a very bad start that way.

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But he was healthy and great.

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He came home and my husband and I thought this is our first child.

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We had one year of life with Ezra and he's just the most rambunctious child ever.

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But after about a year we were like, okay, we're ready to do this again.

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I actually got so excited I had had a second IUD put in after I had Ezra I got so excited and wanted to get pregnant so badly I took out my own IUD, which is not something you are really supposed to do, but it didn't cause any damage or do anything, it was just I'd had several drinks and I was like I want to get pregnant and I took out my own IUD.

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We got pregnant again right away and I was several weeks along I want to say five or six weeks along and I had my first appointment set with the OBGYN when I started bleeding and I was terrified and they had me come in and they did an ultrasound and they could see the gestational sac and they said it could just be bleeding, because sometimes there are every body is different, every pregnancy is different.

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We don't know that it's a miscarriage, we don't know what's going on.

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It's pretty early, so they had me wait a week, which at that time I thought that was the worst version of hell I could go through is a week of not knowing if I was miscarrying or not, and there was nothing I could do except wait an entire week to come back.

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I was pretty emotional and upset.

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They had bleeding and I came in and I should have been six weeks and they did another ultrasound and saw the gestational sac and measured it and it still was measuring exactly the same.

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So they told me that it was a miscarriage, that the embryo wasn't growing and I just had to let it take its course.

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I just had to let the gestational sac and everything come out.

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So I went through more time of bleeding and my husband and I were so upset I thought that was the worst thing that could happen.

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We didn't know what was going on or why it was so early.

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We didn't really tell anybody, we didn't tell any family.

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It was really tough.

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And so then we just said you know this happens, it's like one in five, one in four.

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You know it's just a fluke, let's try again.

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I got pregnant again right away, probably about a month later, and that was October of 2018.

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And I was terrified of miscarrying again.

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I just spent, and at eight weeks and at 10 weeks she used the little handheld Doppler and I could hear the heartbeat and so that was super reassuring and basically everybody had said after 12 weeks, you know, the risk really goes down.

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It's not that you're in the clear, but you're in a much healthier, better place and there's a lot less risk of miscarrying.

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Week ultrasound we went in for the ultrasound and I just was so scared of miscarrying and the second that they did the ultrasound, I could see the baby on the screen and tons of movement, just so much wiggling around and you could see body, you could see head, they let us hear the heartbeat.

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And so my husband and I just kind of like squeezed hands and I was just like, oh, we did it.

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Like we're at 12 weeks, the baby's moving, the baby has a strong heartbeat, like we're good, and the ultrasound technician was measuring the different valves of the heart and talking to us about you know those different things, and then measure, doing measurements and it.

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I don't have very strong recollection of this, but it was at least five minutes in, maybe 10 minutes in, when obviously she saw something on the screen and she, she said to us and this is my recollection, I don't, I don't actually know the exact words, but in my mind what happened was she said your baby doesn't have a skull and I screamed and I was screaming and crying and hysterical and my husband was and part of me is happy that it happened that way because she didn't sugarcoat it.

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If somebody had said we see something with your baby, we need to call in a doctor or there's this thing going on, you know it gives you hope and we didn't know any of the medical terms at the time.

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But when somebody tells you your baby doesn't have a skull, like every part of me knew that that baby wouldn't survive.

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You can't survive like that.

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It was no sugarcoating it, it was no, oh, it could be a heart valve problem and there's these surgeries or this, and that it was so black and white, but it was terrifying and I was screaming, I was watching my baby move, I was listening to his heartbeat and I was being told he didn't have the top of his head.

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My recollections are really really spotty during this time period, but I know what they did is step out immediately and get the doctor.

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They have a doctor who's kind of on call.

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I guess because of all the things that can go wrong or be discovered in an ultrasound they don't even have a proper room for it.

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We were in this.

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They took us to this staff room where somebody was taking a break and was in the corner on a computer.

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We sat down at a table with this doctor who told us that they had found something called anencephaly, which is a neural tube defect where the neural tube, which is kind of the spine and the skull, doesn't form correctly in the first few months.

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When it doesn't form correctly in the spine, it's spina bifida, and when it doesn't form correctly at the top, kind of at skull and encephaly, the baby doesn't have the top part of the skull and a lot of the brain parts.

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The brain functions aren't there like the.

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The brain stem is so that there is a heartbeat and growth.

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But would the baby be born, they wouldn't have cognitive function to be able to learn to speak or to walk.

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In that moment we didn't know anything and the doctor told us there were three options.

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One was we could choose to not believe him.

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We could choose to just walk away and get a second opinion, or choose to not believe him and just go forward how we've been going, he said.

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The second one was you can choose to take the pregnancy as far as you can.

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The embryo won't miscarry on its own.

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The baby will still keep growing and will still have a heartbeat, and sometimes they make it through birth.

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Sometimes there's a late-term stillbirth, like in eight or nine months, and then I would have to go through the trauma of delivering a stillborn.

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Maybe you can die during childbirth or can actually go through birth, and then you have minutes or hours or days.

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He basically was telling us how horrific it would be.

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And then he said the third choice was to terminate the pregnancy.

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And my husband and I we both just automatically were like there's not really an option, like it was.

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For us it was three.

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Like there's.

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I mean, what do we do?

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Like?

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I thought about it for so long afterwards and I have gone down the rabbit hole reading about anencephaly on the internet and finding out everything and thinking through the trauma that my body would go through, the trauma that my one and a half year old son would go through, the trauma our family would, just everything.

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But in that moment it wasn't even really an option.

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It was like this isn't a baby, this is an embryo that doesn't have the top of its head.

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And so my husband and I both were like, okay, we need to terminate the pregnancy.

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And in my mind I mean I wasn't thinking, but I just thought I work at a health system.

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There's a really big OBGYN clinic.

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We're at the Center for Advanced Fetal Health.

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I figured I would be able to get my care there and then started this whole other awful stage of this journey where the doctor said we can't provide any care to you.

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There is a heartbeat, we are not allowed to do anything.

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We are not allowed to do anything.

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And we kind of came to the realization that the termination is technically an abortion and can only happen at a legal abortion clinic.

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Our hospital doesn't provide that and they were not really allowed to provide much information, but they did tell me that there was a Planned Parenthood and a clinic nearby.

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The clinic was actually my old OB-GYN when I was growing up, so I knew who it was and I said, yes, like I've had care there, I want to go there.

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And they were going to give me the information.

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And we were both hysterical and I said can you make the appointment for me?

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It was on a Thursday that we found out and I just wanted it to happen as fast as possible and I was so upset I don't know what to say.

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And they know this clinic and they've referred there before for really devastating birth defects and they were not allowed to help me.

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The doctor stepped out of the room and he said the nurse will help you make the appointment.

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And then they came back in and they said we legally cannot call the clinic, we can't make the appointment for you, we can't give you advice.

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All they could do really with say that Kansas has a law in the books where there was a waiting period and I would have to make an appointment and then sell out paperwork and wait, whatever the time period was.

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So on top of everything we were going through, it was like we're on our own and now we have to go find an abortion for a baby that we really, really, really, really wanted.

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That was January 25th of 2019.

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I was able to get an appointment.

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I believe for Tuesday.

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The next week I had to go home and spend a weekend at home, being 13 weeks pregnant with an embryo.

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I know wouldn't make it and I wanted it to end as fast as possible.

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I started just getting so emotional thinking about this embryo inside of me without the top of its head, and there were multiple times that weekend I just started screaming that I wanted it out of me.

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It's terrifying.

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And then there was this guilt trip of I'm a mother, I'm making this decision as a mother, as the best choice for this being, but how can I be so heartless to say I want it out of me when all I've ever wanted was that baby?

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And so then I would just guilt myself and think I'm the most horrible person for wanting this to happen and not being okay in my own body and wanting it out.

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And there were multiple times.

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I just laid in bed and I just screamed I want my baby, I want my baby, I want my baby.

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We had a one and a half year old, so he didn't really know what was going on.

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We had to tell our parents and our friends.

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I guess I didn't even realize the magnitude of it.

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I sent an email to the women I work with to the whole team saying like, get devastated, we're going to have to terminate this pregnancy.

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And in my mind it wasn't.

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It's not even connected to an abortion, it's a wanted baby that I was three months along and there's this devastating medical problem and it can't continue because the baby can't survive.

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I mean say that the term is not compatible with life, which is, I mean it's basically fatal.

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It's like is I mean it's basically fatal.

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It's like you need to just say it's a fatal condition.

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Nobody survives it, nobody lives.

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There is a 0% rate of anyone that has anencephaly who lives.

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We went to the clinic.

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They were the most caring, compassionate people in the world.

00:21:46.424 --> 00:21:58.288
The doctor had gone through a traumatic loss of her own at 20 weeks of twins and she was just so human and raw and so compassionate.

00:21:58.288 --> 00:22:01.101
I don't remember a lot of what happened.

00:22:01.101 --> 00:22:03.708
I was trying to walk it out.

00:22:03.708 --> 00:22:20.407
I used to know that I was sedated and in a room and then woke up and while I was still kind of, you know, coming out of the anesthesia, in my mind all I wanted, all I wanted in the entire world, was just to know for sure that that baby had had an encephaly.

00:22:20.407 --> 00:22:22.869
I just wanted to see.

00:22:22.869 --> 00:22:28.368
I just wanted to see a face off, and of course that's not something that they do.

00:22:28.368 --> 00:22:28.894
It was 13 weeks.

00:22:28.894 --> 00:22:33.124
It was really really tiny, but I was just what if it's not real?

00:22:33.124 --> 00:22:35.300
What if they were all wrong?

00:22:35.300 --> 00:22:37.246
Of course they weren't.

00:22:37.246 --> 00:22:45.227
They had to do another ultrasound at the clinic to check and they saw it and it's definitely immediately pretty clear.

00:22:45.227 --> 00:22:57.487
And so my husband and I were in survival mode and we got through that and we thought this is kind of the worst thing that can happen and wanted to move forward.

00:22:57.487 --> 00:23:06.963
And I grossly underestimated how emotional and devastating and horrible and I was.

00:23:08.105 --> 00:23:10.087
It was a full year of just.

00:23:10.087 --> 00:23:11.609
I was really messed up.

00:23:11.609 --> 00:23:16.585
I couldn't really care for my one and a half year old son very well.

00:23:16.585 --> 00:23:21.617
I had multiple times I would just fall down crying and screaming.

00:23:21.617 --> 00:23:28.509
There were times I just didn't want to be alive, but I felt like I had to be because I have a son.

00:23:29.871 --> 00:23:43.769
I was really struggling and I didn't know where to get help and I eventually in April, got connected with a wonderful therapist who specializes in women who have gone through loss.

00:23:43.769 --> 00:23:49.826
I also found a psychiatrist who who specializes in women who have lost in pregnancy.

00:23:49.826 --> 00:23:58.943
But between the end of January to April that's a very long time February and March were basically my own personal hell.

00:23:58.943 --> 00:24:03.967
I thought I just needed to find something and someone to talk to.

00:24:03.967 --> 00:24:30.587
I found a support group in my city that was for pregnancy and infant loss and I went to it and many of the women had had full-term stillbirth or multiple of them had had babies with severe medical conditions where they had gone through like ECMO and other interventions and surgeries and had passed away when they were several weeks old, and I felt like I didn't belong.

00:24:31.596 --> 00:24:33.480
I was only at 13 weeks of pregnancy.

00:24:33.660 --> 00:24:36.686
I didn't have nine months and have a stillbirth.

00:24:36.727 --> 00:24:39.825
I didn't have a go through birth and have a baby I could hold.

00:24:39.825 --> 00:24:46.643
I felt like my loss wasn't as big as theirs because I didn't have an actual baby that I ever saw.

00:24:46.643 --> 00:24:53.823
And then they talked about how much was out of their hands and how frustrated they were and I couldn't bring myself to tell them.

00:24:53.823 --> 00:25:02.005
I would tell everybody I lost a baby and I would talk about the loss of my baby, but in my mind I had to make the choice.

00:25:02.005 --> 00:25:07.381
I had to make the choice to stop this part and it's not the same.

00:25:07.381 --> 00:25:18.136
It's not the same at all, because I can't say, like it happened on this day, no, that's the day we had to go to a doctor and make it happen, and so I.

00:25:18.136 --> 00:25:24.435
It helped talking to the women in that group, but I felt like a fraud and I felt like I couldn't talk about.

00:25:24.435 --> 00:25:37.685
I couldn't tell them that I had had an abortion they had chosen that because they had fought so hard for their babies and they couldn't talk about the fact that I wasn't the one.

00:25:38.394 --> 00:25:52.227
They had to pay and fill out paperwork and go through hell to stop the pregnancy, but in my mind it was a loss, because you can't have that baby.

00:25:52.227 --> 00:25:58.282
That baby wouldn't live, that baby wouldn't ever become a real baby.

00:25:59.414 --> 00:26:02.424
It would either have a stillbirth or the baby would die right after birth.

00:26:02.424 --> 00:26:20.914
The one thing that helped me the most from that in-person support group was they all talked about their babies, like with their names, and they all had colors or like a symbol, like an animal or a bird or something that represented.

00:26:20.914 --> 00:26:29.450
And I got a call a few weeks after our termination that they had done genetic testing and found that it was a boy.

00:26:29.450 --> 00:26:36.880
Which is it just made it more real, like it's not just an embryo, like this was, this is going to be a boy.

00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:46.227
And then when I was in one of the support groups one night, I just thought this is my baby, I need to name him and I thought Caleb.

00:26:46.227 --> 00:26:52.519
And it brought me more peace than anything has, because I lost a person.

00:26:52.519 --> 00:26:54.826
I lost who would have been my second son.

00:26:54.826 --> 00:27:02.846
I lost who would have been our baby and then our toddler and then our son for the rest of our lives.

00:27:02.846 --> 00:27:16.045
I didn't just lose a 13-week memorial, I lost this whole future of what our family would have been and no one really understood the magnitude except me and my husband.

00:27:16.045 --> 00:27:31.969
But when I could talk and say, like when we lost Caleb, or oh, this would have been Caleb's due date, or thinking and talking about the baby with the name made it feel real and you can't ignore it and it can't go away.

00:27:31.969 --> 00:27:34.461
It can't be like, oh yeah, marcella lost that baby.

00:27:34.461 --> 00:27:41.156
Like no, this is, this is caleb, this was she would made part of our family.

00:27:42.838 --> 00:27:47.846
We have a christmas ornament for caleb.

00:27:47.846 --> 00:27:49.308
We put it up every year.

00:27:49.308 --> 00:27:54.416
I had a ring made that has Caleb etched into it.

00:27:54.416 --> 00:27:56.641
It's kind of woven together.

00:27:56.641 --> 00:28:15.164
It looks almost like a DNA helix, because I found out that little pieces of the DNA stay in your body after pregnancy for the rest of your life, and so it was really comforting to know there's tiny, tiny pieces of Caleb's DNA in my body for the rest of my life.

00:28:15.164 --> 00:28:17.009
So I have this ring.

00:28:17.009 --> 00:28:19.558
It makes me smile and it says Caleb on it.

00:28:19.558 --> 00:28:24.169
I had my brother-in-law planted a tree in his honor.

00:28:24.494 --> 00:28:28.759
We got some people made donations in memorial of him.

00:28:28.759 --> 00:28:54.587
I raised money for the health system where I work to buy a carrying cradle or a cuddle cot which is for stillbirth, to cool the process after there is a stillbirth, so that the family can have longer time with the body, with the baby, and I raised all of that in memory of Caleb and, like I said, that's the biggest part of my healing process naming my baby and talking about him.

00:28:54.587 --> 00:29:01.184
He's real, caleb was real and I will say his name and I will talk to my children about him.

00:29:01.184 --> 00:29:06.920
We got a plaque at the zoo Since we love you, caleb, because he was real.

00:29:07.494 --> 00:29:18.884
Even though no one in my life wants to talk about it after the first few months and people don't even remember, I will never, ever, ever, ever forget.

00:29:18.884 --> 00:29:23.747
My life would be 100% different if that experience had gone differently.

00:29:23.747 --> 00:29:35.756
We would have had a second boy, we would have stopped, we would have never tried again and we would have been a family of four with two boys two years apart, and that would have been our life.

00:29:35.756 --> 00:29:47.038
Instead, we lost him and went through hell for another five years and had more losses and more kids, and now we have three kids.

00:29:47.038 --> 00:29:49.923
And that never would have happened if we hadn't lost Caleb.

00:29:51.045 --> 00:30:13.941
So I want to give you a minute to breathe, but I also want to validate that termination for medical reasons is a loss, and it's a very specific loss, and I'm learning that there are very specific support groups out there for people that have had to make that awful choice, which isn't really even a choice, it's just.

00:30:13.941 --> 00:30:22.044
These are the crappy options that you're presented, and it's the option that makes everyone involved suffer the least.

00:30:22.044 --> 00:30:26.978
But that's relative, because there's going to be a lot of suffering no matter what.

00:30:27.558 --> 00:30:31.424
Yeah, I found an amazing online support group.

00:30:31.424 --> 00:30:50.356
It took me months and it was like six months after, but I found it online and it's technically like a hidden Facebook support group and you have to prove your loss to be able to get in because there are trolls out there who will go in and troll women who have had a termination for medical reasons.

00:30:50.356 --> 00:30:56.189
But once I was a part of it, it was the most supportive, amazing group of women.

00:30:56.189 --> 00:31:07.737
I mean, it's all over the world, but mostly in the United States, and people would want to hear your story and they would ask you questions and they would want to know everything and hear everything.

00:31:07.737 --> 00:31:16.863
And you could say all the stuff that you can't really say, like I can't go to a baby shower because I'm so mad at this person who gets this healthy baby.

00:31:16.863 --> 00:31:18.721
Like I can't be around it.

00:31:18.721 --> 00:31:22.125
I can't hear your great stories, like I don't care.

00:31:22.125 --> 00:31:29.281
And you can say all those real things and you can talk about being mad at parents or in-laws or somebody that just doesn't get it.

00:31:29.281 --> 00:31:39.029
And you can talk about being mad at parents or in-laws or somebody that just doesn't get it, and you can cry and you can swear and you can do all these things and it's I mean, it's just online chat, but somebody will respond back right away.

00:31:39.029 --> 00:31:40.816
And somebody has gone through the same thing.

00:31:41.557 --> 00:32:09.715
There's a girl in Nebraska who had basically my parallel journey just very soon after me and she connected with me and she had anencephaly for her pregnancy and it was about 13 weeks and I have no idea who she is or anything about her, but we connected and I will always think of her because we basically went through the same thing at the same time.

00:32:09.715 --> 00:32:21.548
And then we found a handful of other people in my same city and we met up in person and one person had had an awful experience and she couldn't really talk about it and it wasn't.

00:32:21.548 --> 00:32:24.321
She only met us once and she just couldn't handle it.

00:32:24.321 --> 00:32:33.041
And somebody else was in the thick of other things in her life, but one woman we stayed close and we started having lunches together.

00:32:33.041 --> 00:33:02.118
She didn't work far from me and I would have a breakdown at work and I would text her and she would just say let's have lunch and we would go off and we would just cry for an hour in a restaurant talking about our babies and she's probably the biggest support I've had this entire time because she knew she didn't have the same level of support from family and in-laws and couldn't really share it publicly.

00:33:02.619 --> 00:33:26.756
So she suffered in silence a lot, whereas I chose to share a long story on social media and kind of open it up to people, because I just was so frustrated and mad at the world and at everybody talking in politics and in media about abortions and I just snapped and was like you don't understand abortion.

00:33:26.756 --> 00:33:33.906
If you don't have a uterus, you don't get to talk and you don't get to paint with this broad paintbrush.

00:33:33.906 --> 00:33:36.990
Abortions are not all unwanted.

00:33:36.990 --> 00:33:47.243
There's this underground network of hundreds of thousands of women who have abortions, of wanted pregnancies, and it's not talked about.

00:33:47.243 --> 00:34:01.599
And I basically just like posted out of anger because I was like how dare you assume or think that you know what is going on If you take away the right to abortion?

00:34:01.700 --> 00:34:06.218
You basically like condemn a woman to carry a pregnancy that's not viable as far as possible.

00:34:06.218 --> 00:34:08.063
Like I would have been condemned to have a pregnancy that's not viable as far as possible.

00:34:08.063 --> 00:34:18.768
I would have been condemned to have a stillbirth of a child without the top of his head or go through birth or birth the baby and watch him die in my arms.

00:34:18.768 --> 00:34:24.586
That's what you're condemning somebody to when you take away their choices.

00:34:24.586 --> 00:34:36.737
And I shared everything because I was angry and I felt like there's a lot of people that don't share an abortion story because it was unwanted or sometimes, like determination for medical reasons.

00:34:37.119 --> 00:34:49.795
You don't have a support network and all of my parents and in-laws were supportive, so I was like, well, I could share this and I'm going to yeah, I think it's important for people that do feel empowered to share to share, and I think it's important for people that do feel empowered to share to share.

00:34:49.795 --> 00:35:17.702
And I also think it's important for others to come out and say that I'm a safe person that you can share this with, because that's a lot of work to vet people to know if they're going to be in your corner or not, because there's so much risk to sharing your story if you're sharing it with the wrong person, because there can be so much damage and trauma caused by somebody saying the wrong thing, so it's hard to find support in that situation.

00:35:18.445 --> 00:35:29.402
I think also, more than anything, my family, my husband's family, everybody around us, our good friend, didn't want to make things worse, so they don't want to say anything.

00:35:29.402 --> 00:35:38.400
They don't know what to say, so they just tell you you're doing well or like, oh, at least you already have a child or you know you can get pregnant.

00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:47.521
Or they say all the things that they think are supportive or they're scared of upsetting you so they don't say anything and that just riles you up, makes you so angry.

00:35:47.521 --> 00:35:54.085
I I've never been so angry ever in my life where I'm like you mentioning it doesn't make it bad.

00:35:54.085 --> 00:35:56.617
The fact that it happened made it bad.

00:35:56.617 --> 00:36:05.097
You pretending like I didn't have three months of a baby and then lose him is what's pissing me off.

00:36:05.097 --> 00:36:11.407
You saying the wrong thing isn't going to trigger me and make me grieve.

00:36:11.407 --> 00:36:12.690
I'm already there.

00:36:12.690 --> 00:36:18.789
You're just pissing me off right now by not validating my pain.

00:36:19.811 --> 00:36:38.286
And I had some co-workers who are really positive, wonderful, sweet people, but I almost consider it like toxic positivity when I came back and they're just like, oh, oh, we have this sweet, wonderful boy and oh, you know you can get pregnant easily, and oh, you've got this and that, and like they just would gloss over everything.

00:36:38.286 --> 00:36:46.746
And I was just like you are not validating it, like why can't somebody just be like, yeah, it sucks, it's hard, your baby died.

00:36:46.746 --> 00:36:47.827
That's what it is.

00:36:47.827 --> 00:36:52.297
Don't don't try to make it better.

00:36:52.297 --> 00:36:53.099
Just listen to me.

00:36:53.119 --> 00:37:08.632
And this in-person support group would talk about this like element concept of get in my bucket, where, if you feel totally overwhelmed, you don't need somebody to take things from you, you don't need somebody to solve things for you or to do it.

00:37:08.632 --> 00:37:10.597
You just literally need somebody.

00:37:10.597 --> 00:37:12.021
Get in my bucket with me.

00:37:12.021 --> 00:37:15.956
I am in the middle of grief, I'm in the middle of everything.

00:37:15.956 --> 00:37:18.820
Just get into the pain with me.

00:37:19.641 --> 00:37:44.202
And I very quickly learned who in my life could do that, which is almost no one, and people would try to keep their distance because they didn't know what to do and what they needed to do was just to listen, just to let me cry, just to give a hug or, like you know, all the women in the online support group we would just tell each other, yeah, this sucks, this absolutely totally sucks.

00:37:44.202 --> 00:37:45.244
You don't deserve this.

00:37:45.244 --> 00:37:48.077
You're a good mother, life's not fair.

00:37:48.077 --> 00:37:50.418
And we'd be like, yeah, life's not fair.

00:37:50.418 --> 00:38:01.016
And we would just support each other that way, because it validates that you're going through some shit and you're in pain and you are grieving and there's nothing anybody can do to take it away.

00:38:01.016 --> 00:38:04.065
So all you can do is just say it sucks and it's hard and that's not fair.

00:38:05.856 --> 00:38:14.686
It makes me think of this meme that my friend sent me like 10 years ago I think, and it was like I know you're sad, you know what do you want me to do?

00:38:14.686 --> 00:38:24.737
And the person just kind of sits there and then the next thing that the friend does is say I built a nest, would you like to get in it?

00:38:24.737 --> 00:38:26.181
You know blankets and pillows.

00:38:26.181 --> 00:38:29.327
And then the next one is what would you like me to do?

00:38:29.327 --> 00:38:31.478
Would you like me to get into the nest with you?

00:38:31.478 --> 00:38:43.405
And then at the end they're just sitting there in this comforting spot together and that's all really anyone needs during the time of grief is just someone to just sit, build them a nest and get in with you.

00:38:44.514 --> 00:38:46.378
There's literally nothing else anybody can do.

00:38:46.378 --> 00:38:47.840
No one take away the pain.

00:38:47.840 --> 00:38:49.481
No one can change it, no one can.

00:38:49.481 --> 00:38:55.851
Everybody would try to rationalize it or talk through it or make you feel better.

00:38:55.851 --> 00:39:00.126
You know, like, oh well, you can get pregnant again.

00:39:00.126 --> 00:39:02.150
I mean, like, who cares?

00:39:02.150 --> 00:39:06.382
Like let me grieve the baby that died, I don't care whether I can get pregnant again or not.

00:39:06.463 --> 00:39:10.574
Like this is days and weeks out, it doesn't replace that.

00:39:10.574 --> 00:39:12.762
Yeah, we're not replacing this child.

00:39:12.762 --> 00:39:13.204
We are.

00:39:13.204 --> 00:39:18.340
This child is part of our family, regardless of how things played out.

00:39:19.766 --> 00:39:31.396
Yeah, and my husband's really the person who's just you know, he'd been through it with me, but he could just be there in my pain with me and he, I wouldn't have gotten through it with me, but he could just be there in my pain with me and I wouldn't have gotten through it without him.

00:39:31.675 --> 00:39:33.813
And I don't even consider that I got through it.

00:39:33.813 --> 00:39:44.130
It's just that we went through a year of hell and then the pain just kind of fades a little bit where it's not as immediate all the time.

00:39:44.130 --> 00:39:52.164
But you don't get over it just because you have other kids and we actually went through hell because you have other kids and we, we actually went through hell because it happened in January.

00:39:52.164 --> 00:39:54.487
I wanted to get pregnant again immediately.

00:39:54.487 --> 00:39:56.659
I just thought like this is how I fix it.

00:39:56.659 --> 00:39:58.804
I just I have another baby.

00:39:58.804 --> 00:40:02.460
They say it's a fluke, you know, in encephaly.

00:40:02.460 --> 00:40:07.820
They don't really know what causes it, but you can take folic acid and reduce your risk.

00:40:07.820 --> 00:40:16.407
So I just went on a huge dose of folic acid and tried to get pregnant immediately and it took me like four months to get my period back.

00:40:16.407 --> 00:40:25.920
I got pregnant in June and got a positive pregnancy test and was elated and then like five days later started bleeding.

00:40:25.920 --> 00:40:31.197
So it was like an incredibly early miscarriage, but it was.

00:40:31.197 --> 00:40:35.347
I was obviously not emotionally ready to get pregnant again I shouldn't have.

00:40:35.347 --> 00:40:39.766
But I just thought this is the only concrete thing I can do to move forward.

00:40:39.766 --> 00:40:42.784
This is the only like actual step I have.

00:40:43.675 --> 00:40:58.864
So then I was just an absolute total mess because I was bleeding and had had a second miscarriage and now was one for four, and talked to some doctors, talked to my OBGYN.

00:40:58.864 --> 00:41:02.617
They wanted me to see the high-risk doctors and so they made an appointment.

00:41:02.617 --> 00:41:11.226
It took several months to get the reproductive REI doctors I can't remember what REI stands for and by that time I'd actually gotten pregnant again.

00:41:11.226 --> 00:41:21.106
I got pregnant in August because I just was convinced that as long as I could just get pregnant and have a healthy baby, that would get me through this.

00:41:21.106 --> 00:41:40.869
So we started seeing the high-risk doctors and I was pregnant and so they just followed me very closely for the first few weeks and I got to hear the heartbeat several times and I think it was like eight or nine weeks came in and they were doing the ultrasound.

00:41:40.869 --> 00:41:43.021
I could hear the heartbeat and I was like, oh, thank God.

00:41:43.021 --> 00:41:49.829
And the tech just kind of was like and the heartbeat had slowed down a lot.

00:41:50.735 --> 00:41:58.403
So even though I could hear it she was tempering it, saying like the heartbeat has slowed, like this isn't a viable pregnancy.

00:41:58.403 --> 00:42:07.704
I can't remember the exact term, but in my mind I've always called it like my miscarriage waiting to happen, like I'm miscarrying but not yet.

00:42:07.704 --> 00:42:08.706
There's still a heartbeat.

00:42:08.706 --> 00:42:18.507
So we had talked multiple times with the doctors about doing testing and they could take the genetic tissue and see if there was something that was causing multiple miscarriages.

00:42:18.507 --> 00:42:22.188
So I said, okay, I want that, like do that.

00:42:22.188 --> 00:42:24.376
And then they were like, well, there's still heartbeat.

00:42:24.376 --> 00:42:27.186
We can't, we can't do anything with you.

00:42:27.186 --> 00:42:30.197
And I was like, literally, the heartbeat is slowing down.

00:42:30.197 --> 00:42:34.668
We're waiting day to day for when it stops, but they can't do anything.

00:42:34.668 --> 00:42:38.543
So they told me to just get back in touch when the like.

00:42:38.543 --> 00:42:46.954
I just needed to kind of reach out periodically to see when bleeding started and they would try to test and see if there was a heartbeat.

00:42:46.954 --> 00:42:53.347
I started bleeding on a Friday night at my huge work event and I knew it was going to happen.

00:42:53.347 --> 00:42:57.722
So it wasn't as devastating because I knew the heartbeat had slowed.

00:42:57.722 --> 00:43:01.137
But then I couldn't get in to see the doctors over the weekend.

00:43:01.137 --> 00:43:03.123
I couldn't get in Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday.

00:43:03.123 --> 00:43:09.967
I finally got in Thursday, which was very frustrating because they had told me they wanted to get the tissue to test it.

00:43:09.967 --> 00:43:12.440
They got me in Thursday for a DNC.

00:43:13.061 --> 00:43:23.327
By that time my body had basically expelled all of it, so they never actually got any tissue to test because it was almost a full week after I'd started miscarrying.

00:43:23.327 --> 00:43:35.644
So I was incredibly pissed off at the medical system and the doctors and the whole thing, for not, they couldn't stop the heartbeat to get the tissue and then I couldn't get in to see them for a DNC, for them to get the tissue.

00:43:35.644 --> 00:43:38.597
They had told me to collect what I had.

00:43:38.597 --> 00:43:55.800
So in this week of hell I had this tiny little Tupperware where I collected pieces of my embryo expelling from my body, which was highly disturbing and not great for my mental health.

00:43:55.800 --> 00:44:05.576
And I went into the appointment with these little pieces and they had told me I can't remember somebody told me that they didn't need that and I actually ended up throwing it away in a trash bag with my Wendy's from that appointment.

00:44:05.576 --> 00:44:10.976
And then the next day they got me in for a DNC and they were like, oh, there's no tissue left.

00:44:10.976 --> 00:44:12.376
I was like I had tissue.

00:44:12.376 --> 00:44:14.300
I collected all of this tissue.

00:44:14.300 --> 00:44:19.166
I had a whole tupperware of it and somebody told me they didn't need it and it wasn't worth it and like I threw it away.

00:44:19.166 --> 00:44:20.606
And then I was.

00:44:20.606 --> 00:44:26.940
So I was like I threw away pieces of my baby into a trash can, like I was.

00:44:26.940 --> 00:44:30.025
I was just in the absolute worst mind state.

00:44:30.025 --> 00:44:31.688
But they didn't.

00:44:32.108 --> 00:44:37.744
They put me under for the DNC and when it came out they said we didn't get any tissue.

00:44:37.744 --> 00:44:47.338
But I had given a history to the anesthesiologist beforehand and I had told her that the last surgery I had was to get out my IUD that had migrated.

00:44:47.338 --> 00:44:56.567
She had remembered that and so when there were multiple people in this room and I was under for the DNC, the doctor was like, oh, there might be some scarring here.

00:44:56.567 --> 00:45:01.726
And the anesthesiologist said, oh, she mentioned that she had a surgery for an IUD.

00:45:01.726 --> 00:45:03.068
That could be it.

00:45:03.068 --> 00:45:14.965
So when I got out of it, the doctor was like we'd like to do an exploratory surgery and figure out if there is actually scarring and if maybe that's what's causing you had three miscarriages now.

00:45:14.965 --> 00:45:29.588
But if I hadn't mentioned that on my own to the anesthesiologist and they hadn't made that connection, it would have been like, oh well, whatever, and they would have walked away, but they scheduled a surgery like a week later and they put me under and it was exploratory to see.

00:45:29.588 --> 00:45:31.038
Oh, was there scarring.

00:45:31.038 --> 00:45:33.804
Is that maybe why I'm miscarrying?

00:45:33.804 --> 00:45:34.867
I was under.

00:45:34.927 --> 00:45:38.422
When I came out the doctor was like you have holes in your uterus?

00:45:38.422 --> 00:45:50.463
She had found two big holes in my uterus one from the IUD that had migrated and gone into my large intestine that we had known about, and then my first IUD.

00:45:50.463 --> 00:45:58.521
That was about five years before that, when they were trying to insert it, the person inserting it went through my uterine wall, which I felt it's very painful.

00:45:58.521 --> 00:46:00.425
They take it out.

00:46:00.425 --> 00:46:06.778
They say, wait a few weeks, it'll heal, we'll put a new one in, which is what they did and I never thought about it again.

00:46:06.778 --> 00:46:10.746
It turns out your body doesn't always heal.

00:46:10.746 --> 00:46:17.646
I had two IUDs go through the wall of my uterus and I was told both times that the uterus just kind of heals itself.

00:46:17.646 --> 00:46:18.829
That was not the case.

00:46:18.829 --> 00:46:20.552
I had big holes.

00:46:20.552 --> 00:46:23.559

Grace and Grief: Marcella Jewell's Journey Through Miscarriage, Medical Termination, and Motherhood

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