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My miscarriages story and guilt

[00:00:00] Hi Tuesday, tribe. So I'm gonna talk about my miscarriage stories. You know why? Because yesterday I'm gonna talk like I'm southern too. Now, yesterday in my office, you know who you are. Lovely, delightful patient of mine and her awesome husband said really helped us hearing your stories. And Lord, that is all I need to hear. 

You guys wanna hear my stories, I will tell you. And actually it echoed what several dms had also said, so I love it for two reasons. Firstly, yes, I am a megalomaniac. I will admit it. If you did not know it, you don't know me. I love talking about myself, so I will talk. Secondly, it echoes what I've always thought, which is when we divulge our information and our site, we are helping ourselves. 

By just getting it all out there and we're helping other people because those other [00:01:00] people are then realizing, oh my God, would that happen to you? It happened to me too. Oh my gosh. Right. And then it's like 360 degrees. Right. I always say I like to engage and be engaged when we as women realize that our stuff is not so unique. 

I believe that that gives us the ability and power to say, ah, thank God this stuff is not as bad as I thought. So here it is, girls, as much as I can nutshell this, I'm gonna, which is about 15 minutes cuz that's all I GTVs gonna give me. And now we're down to almost 13 and a half. I have had nine pregnancies and three babies. 

Three babies. Three babies, three babies. Let's put that over this whole thing so that we can all take heart. Again, for those of you who have gone. are going through or will go through miscarriages that you will likely end up having a child or more than a child if that is what you want. Will it be spontaneous on your own? 

Will it be your own eggs, your own sperm, [00:02:00] your own uterus? I don't know. It might be with someone else's eggs, someone else's sperm, someone else's uterus or adoption. I don't know how you're going to mother, but if your aim and goal is to mother, I deeply believe that there. Almost no barrier to mothering if that is your end result. 

Does that mean it's easy? Lord, no. Mine and three children were not easy because I had to go through nine pregnancies to get them. So here it goes. first miscarriage, age 31 ish. Easy, easy pregnancy, meaning I got pregnant on my own spontaneously. I was a resident. We decided we were kind of gonna try. Boom. 

It happened right away. Oh, that's amazing. Cuz I had endometriosis. I wasn't sure it was gonna happen and it happened. And then right at about five weeks, meaning a week past, missing your period, started bleeding and spotting. Looked with an ultrasound, little teeny sack, nothing in it. Most of it came out of its own. 

You might remember from my video that's called a spontaneous miscarriage or spontaneous abortion, [00:03:00] or incomplete abortion, cuz most of it came out. But my doctor at the time had to perform a little procedure in the office with the skinny little straw called a PIP to extract the rest of the tissue. Yes, that hurt. 

I was very sad, and yet I thought, this is it. This is the drill. I'm a doctor, I know what it entails, and I will get pregnant again. And boy did I, three months later, boom, I got pregnant again. Made it to about six to seven weeks. And you know what's interesting? At the time, I could have told you exactly how many hours, minutes, days I was pregnant. 

And right now I don't remember. And I say that to you because right now, You remember every detail, every nugget of every single thing that is going on in your life right this second, cuz it seems so incredibly important in Jermaine. But once you look back on it later, once you get to the point that you want to be at, you'll realize that it's not as important as you think. 

So at that moment, when I was miscarrying, when I thought it was so important that I was, I don't know, six weeks and five days, or seven weeks and two days, whatever it was, it seems so [00:04:00] important and it's not now, now that I'm past it. So just keep that in mind cuz it's so sad when you're going through it. 

And that one was tough cuz I saw a heartbeat. It was even tougher than the first, because the first I didn't see a heartbeat, which the least for me made it emotionally easier. It doesn't always, for all of you guys, were all so different. But for me, the first one was really hard because it was my first, but there was no heartbeat. 

The second was really hard because there was a heartbeat and it was my second and now I was starting to get worried. So, . I did myself a whole workup of blood tests and all kinds of things and found really nothing. Couple of little things, but nothing major. Got pregnant again. pretty quick. That one stuck. 

There was a high risk for Down syndrome on my tests, the blood tests at the time, because we didn't have the blood tests we have now. So I had to do an amniocentesis, which is where they put that needle into your belly to extract fluid, to prove that the chromosomes were normal and his chromosomes were normal. 

That is now my 16 [00:05:00] year old child. That pregnancy was challenging cuz I was pretty heavy. I was 200 pounds when I started and too Fitty. When I finished, I was hypertensive. That means high blood pressure. His fluid was low. He was growth restricted. We had to follow my growth the entire time to make sure that he was growing, which in fact, he was not growing. 

So by the end I had to be induced, which was a very grueling 30 hour labor, three hours of pushing. He was sunny side up. My catheter did not come out for 48 hours cause I couldn't pee because I was so swollen. Lord have mercy. I did not ever want to go through a delivery like that again. Hence, the reason I say to you guys, I don't care how your baby comes out, as long as you and your baby are happy and healthy, and you know what? 

He was not happy and healthy because that little boy who is now 16 and healthy, but that little boy hadn't a stroke inside my uterus. It turns out we found out eight hours after the delivery that he had had some. After the delivery that led those amazing NICU doctors to find out that he actually had had a stroke. 

That is a whole story for another [00:06:00] day. Let's move on with my miscarriages. Okay, so then a year later, we decide we're ready for baby number two. Pregnant again. I was fertile Myrtle. I got pregnant right away. And then at seven weeks we're flying to Israel to see my husband's family. To baptize my first child. 

Yes, we baptize in Israel because my husband is Catholic. Yes, I know. It's strange. Another story for another day, miscarriage, bleeding in Israel. All of it comes out. I did not need a D N C with that one. There had been a heartbeat, but it all came out. So that's what we called a complete miscarriage, a complete abortion that now was pregnancy. 

Four. I go on to have three more miscarriages after that. So follow me here, two miscarriages, full term baby. Four more miscarriages. Within those four miscarriages, I ended up having four DNCs, but only for three of them, [00:07:00] meaning the first one came out on its own. The next three I needed DNCs, but one of them. 

the tissue got stuck, meaning I had a dnc, and then about two weeks later, I kept bleeding and bleeding and bleeding, and I had to have another dnc, not because the doctor was not awesome, but because my uterus is strange, and some of the tissue got kind of stuck that we didn't know. So two weeks later when I just kept bleeding, I had to go back for another procedure to have that little nugget of tissue just removed. 

So that happens even to the doctors, right? Just to show you. So two miscarriages. Form carriages. Finally another pregnancy. Now, this is my eighth pregnancy at this point, and I'm like, you know what people, I just can't keep doing this. I started bleeding again. I was about seven weeks. We had seen a heartbeat, but things were a little bit funny, and I was seeing a fertility doctor at this point because I just wanted help with the hormones in case things were a little bit odd since I had been having so many miscarriages, and I remember walking into that office. 

I'm having a miscarriage. Just get me [00:08:00] through this one. And then I think I can emotionally handle one more pregnancy before I'm just gonna call it quits and have an only child, because everyone knows either way is okay. And they looked and they said, look, there is a baby, there's a heartbeat. It's there. 

But there's also that little extra sack. There was a twin, and that must be what the bleeding is. That twin is going away, what we call a vanishing. And I remember a lot of people saying, God, you must be so sad. And I know maybe this sounds heartless, but at the time I thought, God, I'm just like, happy there's one there, right? 

Like I just wanted one sibling for my son. At that point, I, I just wasn't being greedy. I just wanted. One more baby, so that my son had a sibling. And to be God completely honest, I didn't even feel like I needed another baby myself. I just wanted another baby for him. I wanted a sibling, and he was already four almost at this point. 

So that ended up being my eighth pregnancy. . That baby had a club foot. That's my 12 [00:09:00] year old boy. That baby ended up coming up by C-section by choice, cuz I did not wanna go through that grueling, horrible vaginal delivery. Again, that doesn't mean all vaginal deliveries are horrible. That doesn't mean all C-sections are great. 

That means that for me, that was the right thing. Again, you should talk about it with your doctors. I say all this so that you know that everybody goes through these things. Everybody goes through different things. Everybody goes through things that are great and everybody goes through. Are terrible. And in the end, all of these things can teach us something. 

And in the end, all of these things can still, um, add to our psyche in good and bad ways and lead us down the road of learning and lead us down the road of being a little bit frustrated and angry and lead us down the road of feeling appreciative. And some of those things are, , the way our emotions play out on their own. 

And some of those things are a choice. And I think that I have just really [00:10:00] netted out at choosing that all of this stuff was gonna happen no matter what. I could have chosen to feel very guilty about some of these things that happened. I literally was 250 pounds and I'm five foot three. It was not healthy. 

My. Was definitely a burden on my body and it led to hypertension and it led to some very high inflammatory markers that we had checked in my bloodstream that were not healthy no matter what. I remember saying to a wonderful cardiologist, don't you think there's some stuff going on? Just cuz I'm really fat and God bless him. 

He was a colleague and I could tell he felt uncomfortable. He didn't wanna say to his colleague like, You're really heavy and it's not good. He was like, ah, well, and I thought, you know what? This poor guy, I shouldn't put him on the spot, but the fact is I know that that added to it, that doesn't happen for everyone who's overweight. 

There are some very over overweight women who don't have any side effects from their weight, and there are very lucky. There are some very thin women who have other things happen. The fact is that I chose to not allow [00:11:00] guilt to creep into my. Because it's not worth it. I did the best with what I could at the time. 

Do I think that had I been healthier in my lifestyle with regard to the food I was eating, maybe even the stress of the amount I was working, would that have changed my pregnancy outcomes? I think it might have to be honest. Looking back when I do it all differently, I'm being honest. Also, I probably wouldn't have because it was all the journey. 

It all brought me to where I am right now and I kind of am where I wanna be right now. Is everything perfect in my life so far from it has a lot of negative outcomes come from some of my choices in my life. Yes. Would I say that those choices were all voluntary choices? Yes and no. As we all know, weight addiction, things like that are not necessarily. 

Choices in the way we'd like to believe they are because they're not always in our control. So I think I want the take home message to this video to be [00:12:00] partially miscarriages suck. Full stop period if you have them. I'm sorry I acknowledge your morning, but I also wanna let you know that you will probably be okay, especially if you choose to be okay. 

I wanna also say to all you, mama, , please stop feeling guilty. Whatever it is you're feeling guilty about, cuz I know you're all feeling guilty about something, just stop. There's no two ways about it. There's no way to say it other than this. Guilt has no space here. We can choose to say no to guilt. I've said this to many of you in my office. 

Guilt is a term that we should use if we are knowingly, willfully causing harm to someone. Did I cause harm to my unborn child when. was so heavy. I did. I did. But did I knowingly, willfully inflict that on him? Not at all. I did the best with what I could. At the time. I was working crazy hours. I was a [00:13:00] resident then. 

I was an attending. I was very addicted as I still am to food. There were a lot of other conflicting issues going on. So again, did I knowingly, willfully harm him? No. Did my actions have repercu? Yes. Should I examine my behavior and my actions? Absolutely. But should guilt come into it? I don't think so. I don't think there's merit. 

I don't think there's benefit. I think it actually makes people move backwards. So interestingly, I just therapized to myself like what I thought was just gonna be like a discussion about miscarriages, became a whole discussion about guilt. I hope that helped. This has been a little bit of a rambling session. 

Uh, but that is what it is now, isn't it? Okay. So I hope this is gonna comfort someone and if it comforts even one of you, then I'm glad I am gonna sign off now and get some of my work done. And [00:14:00] that is it. See y'all later. Later.