Embracing the Imperfection in Our Lives
IT’S WHAT MAKES IT OURS
I have two lovely children. I’ve been pregnant three times.
I am a professional, driven woman; in my life, there haven’t really been “good” times to have a baby. But there were times that seemed “less bad.” One of those “less bad” times was at the end of graduate school. Anticipating that a few months at the end of school would be spent writing a thesis rather than doing lab research, I backed into a short window where it’d make sense to try.
I didn’t have high expectations – it really was a short window – and was delighted when I got pregnant right away. My body adapted easily; I never felt ill, I’m not one to turn down an excuse to sleep more and the pregnancy glow is real. My relationship with my husband flourished; we’d always been good at doing projects together – mainly home-improvement – and making a human was the ultimate undertaking! My days felt vibrant. I read every morning about what was happening that day, marveling at how quickly everything changes. I made a poster to hang at my desk comparing the size of my growing baby to fruit, awed by the progression from poppy seed to kumquat to lime (and opting not to consider how a watermelon was going to be removed from my body).
My life was humming along in unrelated ways, too. Most significantly, I had applied for a dream job – a coveted role with a prestigious consulting firm that I really didn’t expect to get – and had been invited into the recruiting process, progressing through multiple rounds of tests and interviews. At eleven-and-a-half weeks into my pregnancy, I traveled to Minnesota for a final interview day. I stayed with my parents; my Mom and I planned to come into the city for my interviews, followed by shopping for maternity clothes, the grown-up version of our long-standing “Girls’ Day Out” tradition.
I woke up that morning bleeding. Not a lot. But enough to send my stomach into the basement. I asked my Mom, with a forced casualness, if she’d ever had any spotting during her pregnancies. She looked me in the eye and mirrored my approach: “No,” she shrugged, adding, “but it’s not unusual.” I’m not sure why we did that; we’re not a family that avoids things. Maybe because I had a big day ahead of me. Maybe because there wasn’t anything to do about it anyway. We both knew it was significant, but that was the only mention of it. We even carried through on our plans to shop for maternity clothes.
A few days later, I was back home when I was woken up in the early morning with excruciating abdominal pain, the kind that literally doubles you in half and makes you want to vomit. Before long, I was at the emergency room where they loaded me up with narcotics, confirmed I was miscarrying and sent me into surgery to speed up the process. I was one day shy of twelve weeks pregnant. One day before the risk of pregnancy loss drops dramatically. One day less than twelve weeks and then abruptly … zero days pregnant.
I spent the rest of that day at home on the couch cuddled up with my husband, alternating between napping, tears and watching (sort of) movies. The magnitude of the emptiness is difficult to describe. In my heart, in my head, in my body, it was all just a void. So, we sat.
The only interruption was a phone call offering me my dream job. Surreal.
The next day began the process of un-telling. Having made it so far, many people knew. Now they needed to know the opposite. Initially, I cursed my inability to keep a secret. But the telling quickly became my therapy. So, I kept on telling. Here I am, 17 years later and I’m still telling. It’s not just my therapy anymore; it’s a mission.
On the micro level, my mission is to normalize pregnancy loss. It’s incredibly common, estimated up to a quarter of pregnancies. The more you learn about conception and fetal development, the more surprising that number isn’t even higher. So many things must go right. Why don’t we talk about it? Maybe because we’re worried about making others uncomfortable. I refuse to solve for the discomfort of the few, especially when I’ve heard only relief from so many others – not just miscarriages, but ectopic pregnancies, difficulty conceiving, abortions, surprise babies. I hear relief at being able to share, to emerge from the shadows, to be seen.
On the macro level, my mission is to counteract the pressure to lead a perfect life. Social media has exacerbated this, but it’s always existed. And it doesn’t make any sense; it makes everyone miserable. We waste our time and emotional energy maintaining a fiction instead of investing in our actual lives. Our actual lives can be wonderful despite – and sometimes even because of – the imperfections. That dream job, which I probably wouldn’t have taken, turned out to be hugely impactful, teaching me things and taking me places I would have never thought possible. My youngest probably wouldn’t be here; I can’t imagine what life would be like without her.
A perfect life is a cookie cutter life. It doesn’t belong to you. You are literally living it for someone else – for your so-called “friends” on social media, for the long-ago classmate you’ll see once every 20 years at a reunion, for the nosy neighbor down the street. I won’t do it.
I will live my life. It isn’t perfect. But it is perfectly mine.
