by Staff writer
Having a miscarriage can be devastating.
Los Angeles-based psychologist Jessica Zucker, PhD, was 16 weeks pregnant with her second child when she had a miscarriage in 2012.
Though she specialized in women’s reproductive and maternal mental health, and had spent almost a decade treating women after a pregnancy loss, it wasn’t until it happened to her that she truly understood the stigma and silence surrounding miscarriages.
After her own pregnancy loss, Zucker launched the #IHadAMiscarriage campaign where she and other women who had suffered a pregnancy loss can share their stories.
Zucker’s own traumatic miscarriage happened in her second trimester.
“My first pregnancy was smooth and simple and fine,” she says.
She went into labor and delivered alone at home, cut the umbilical cord herself, and began hemorrhaging.
Her husband returned home and rushed her to the hospital, where she underwent an unmedicated dilation and curettage to remove the placenta and the remnants of the pregnancy.
“Two hours later I went back to my house and was no longer pregnant,” Zucker recalls. “That was pretty much the most profound thing that ever happened in my life. The most traumatic.”
Zucker says her experience has changed her understanding of her work.
“My loss really scared a lot of my patients and comforted other people,” she says.
“In the most profound way it changed my lens on my work. I was able to understand these women from the inside out now.”
It's the worst thing that has ever happened to me, with each lump of blood dropping a part of me dropped with it. I miscarried at 10weeks but the baptism stopped growing at 6 weeks they called it a missed miscarriage. I cried till I had no more tears left in me. 6 years on I still mourn my little one, I wonder if it were a boy or a girl, how did he or she look, how old he would have been now. I miss my baby so much even though I never got to carry him in my arms I don't love him any less. Miscarriage sucks unless you go through it you never understand it.
**baby not baptism *
Wow got chills reading this. Never actually miscarried. I spent over 3 weeks thinking I was pregnant. All the excitement and mental preparation until I received the news that I was never pregnant.
1 one of the saddest momments of my life