Miscarriage

If you're like me, you had no idea what a miscarriage was. And you didn't care to know until a friend was talking about it and you pretended to know what it was and what happened. Turns out, it's a giant topic---too big for one episode, but here we go. I interview a woman who went viral on Reddit for a post about her miscarriage.  We talk about what a miscarriage is, how someone might grieve, and how you might help someone who is going through it.

NOTE: this one is graphic. I asked for the gory details and my guest provided all of them.

Another note: I spoke with Emily who is the head of the Early Pregnancy Loss Association. Check out their website here for helpful resources.

Transcript

Episode Eight: Miscarriage

Bart [Narration]

Can a man get postpartum depression? What's the difference between colostrum and meconium? Where do I register? Do I need to be at the baby shower? What is a baby shower? How does a baby shower work? Do I need to buy all this stuff? How did I get here? What is a womb? How does the umbilical cord work? How do I pay for this baby? When the woman's water breaks, what is that water? What other expenses are associated? How does it breathe? How does it poo and pee? Can a midwife be a man? Are we humans? Or are we dancers? 

These are the questions that need answers. These are the things we wonder about. From a studio in the basement. This…is how to make a baby. How babies are made. This is a story about you. 

Welcome to Episode Eight, fair warning: This one is going to be pretty dark. And there's not really any way around that. In this episode, we're going to talk about miscarriage and pregnancy loss. We're going to include a lot of details—a lot of the stuff that you're like, oh dude, TMI. That is in here, blood, et cetera. So this is not an easy topic and you already know that. If this is stuff that makes you incredibly uncomfortable, that might be a good thing. But if it's not a good thing, then feel free to turn this one off. 

So I'm not pretending to be an expert on this. Remember, I'm a journalist, not a doctor. If you're a guy, you haven't experienced this, but you almost certainly know someone who has. That was something I found pretty shocking. And doesn't mean we shouldn't learn about it, talk about it and let it occupy some space in our brains. 

So what is miscarriage? The Mayo Clinic defines miscarriage as the spontaneous loss of a pregnancy before the 20th week. Most miscarriages happen before the 13th week of pregnancy, which is the end of the first trimester. And if you're like me, you always wondered why people typically wait like 10 to 13 weeks before starting their baby PR blasts. The reason is pretty morbid. They want to make sure that the baby makes it past the first trimester. According to the Cleveland Clinic, about 80% of miscarriages happen in the first trimester. 

Like infertility, Miscarriage happens more than you might think. And we talk about it less than we should or less than we could anyways, we've made a bit of a boogeyman out of it, but it's really not something people are excited to bring up. Probably because we're uncomfortable talking about death. Pop over and talk about death. Slide into my DMs and grieve. 

Some more stats from the Mayo Clinic: about 10 to 20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. The actual number is likely higher because many miscarriages happen so early in the pregnancy, that the woman might not even realize she's pregnant. If you've been with us for a while, you remember that these are called chemical pregnancies. 

So why does miscarriage happen? Most miscarriages occur because the fetus isn't developing normally. About 50% of miscarriages are associated with extra or missing chromosomes. There's a little bit of a linguistics debate about whether you should say pregnancy loss or miscarriage and some people don't like the term miscarriage because it feels like there's something you did wrong. I miscarried, even though there's almost certainly nothing you did wrong. So you may notice that we use both terms. Just know that we're talking about the same thing.

Bart, remind me again why we're talking about this? How come you don't just have happy stuff on your show? In the exact words of the Mayo Clinic, miscarriages are relatively common experience, but that doesn't make it any easier to take a step toward emotional healing by understanding what can cause a miscarriage what increases the risk and what medical care might be needed. 

But why am I talking about it? I think it's because I'm just like, when we were pregnant—when Taylor was pregnant, I couldn't shake this feeling that this is something that could happen. And I wanted to learn about it. And I couldn't find tons of people talking about it. Other than like the random post online or something I would see—I would see one of my friends kind of allude to it or say something about it. And I realized how little I knew. So I figured I'm probably not alone. I want to dig into this a little bit. So that's what we're going to do now. I found today's guest on Reddit, and she wanted to remain anonymous. So we're gonna call her Lisa, from Canada. 

Bart

Can we jump into this really difficult conversation?

Lisa  

Yes, please. Sure. Okay.

Bart  

I found you on Reddit. I posted Hey, Will anybody talk to me and you said, Yeah, I'll talk to you. How long have you been on Reddit and and how long were you kind of in miscarriage forums?

Lisa  

Um, God, I've been on Reddit since I was a teenager, honestly. But actually creating an account and contributing to the community? Maybe only two or three years, and even then, not really seriously posting anything until I started miscarrying, and really desperately just looking for a community of people to sort of talk to and commiserate with because, I don't know I didn't know anybody that had gone through this, which is so strange, so many women do and yet, somehow, I didn't know any of them.

Bart 

The crazy thing is that you definitely know someone who has miscarried. But yeah, that's what really struck me. Yeah.

Lisa 

They don't reveal themselves until after you come to them and say yeah, I went through this thing, sort of after the fact you're not actively going through the crisis that is having a miscarriage and just knowing off the top of your head like a bunch of women who will understand you read it was a good place for me.

Bart  

I think that's such a human thing. Though, where you're talking about a really sensitive subject. And if you give the gift of being vulnerable, then other people will reciprocate. But people aren't just going out. Thinking like saying things like, Hey, I had these difficult things happening. To me. 

Lisa  

It's also a very unapproachable conversation. I feel like from the outside looking in, like maybe even being curious about miscarriage or risks, I would feel almost embarrassed going to someone who'd experienced that pain because it feels so private even when they're sharing that you almost want to be respectful and not question too deeply even though you're like No Please give it to me straight, like I need to know if this could happen to me. What do I do? So I feel like that's that's half of the posts in there or in Reddit, rather, are women asking, you know, is this a miscarriage? Is it happening to me? They haven't even gone through it yet, but they want—they're paranoid of experience, of potentially experiencing it and still want to talk to people but I don't know. It's a weird place to be.

Bart 

I mean, I feel that just talking to you, where I feel like—

Lisa 

—That’s the reason why I want to talk about it! Because I'm so not embarrassed and I mean, but ya know, it's, it's fine. I want people to ask me about it and make me not feel crazy when they hear how horrible it is.

Bart 

I think that part of this is like we don't know how to deal with grief and death. 

Lisa

Yeah. And so this is an extension. It's like child, it's like child loss. It's child loss. So how often are you going to sit down with someone who lost a child and be like, what was that like for you? Like it feels so wrong? But this is very common. So

Bart  

Yeah, well, maybe we should start there then. So what was it like for you?

Lisa  

Oh, God. There's, there's two ways I think about it. And that is the going through it physically and going through it emotionally. They're very different. You start going through miscarriage emotionally, probably way before you start going through it physically, at least in my case, I had what was called a missed miscarriage where you don't have symptoms. It's just sort of a slew of crappy ultrasounds that eventually over a period of weeks and weeks and weeks confirm my worst fears. So you're going through this awful, hellish waiting period, before you actually confirm the miscarriage while before any of your symptoms even appear. So, for me, the emotional part stretched out a real long time before I experienced the physical, and it was over Christmas, too. So you know, my husband and I found out we were pregnant shortly before maybe like early November. We're so excited and you know, approaching the holiday season thinking next year we're going to be celebrating Christmas with a little baby like how crazy is that? It’s our last Christmas alone. But you know, then going through that month, oh, we don't know yet come back in two weeks, those were like the most common phrases that we heard just over and over again. So it's an awful

Bart

And all that time you're like—

Lisa  

Yeah, just you're holding on to a little bit of hope, you know, like it's Christmas, maybe. Maybe we'll get good news.

Bart  

This seems like a fairly common problem. A woman has testing done to confirm a miscarriage and there's a waiting game to see if it really was a miscarriage. And by game I mean nightmare. According to the National Health Service in the UK, sometimes a miscarriage cannot be confirmed immediately using ultrasound or blood testing. If this is the case, you may be advised to have the test again in one or two weeks. So there doesn't seem to be any way around this waiting. There's a doctor at Yale who's part of a team working on a faster test. Dr. Hugh Taylor, who is Yale medicines chief of Obstetrics, Gynecology and reproductive sciences, so he's working on a test that may give women same day results about miscarriage which would be huge.

Lisa 

So it actually took quite a while to confirm it was a legitimate miscarriage. And that was when I hit about 10 weeks, so just over two months,

Bart

and how do they confirm it?

Lisa  

There's so much medical jargon and little rules they have to follow, but basically, the baby had a heartbeat, and then it did not. Yeah, so we had a slight heartbeat on one exam. And then the following one in two weeks showed no heartbeat, and that's when they say you know, fetal demise. Is the wording they use fetal fetal demise.

Bart

Seriously? 

Lisa

Yeah. The terminology is a little strange.

Bart  

Very like it sounds like something from Star Wars. Yeah,

Lisa   

like a bad comic book villain kind of thing. You know, like fetal demise. It's—

Bart  

—it's it's a it's a bad metal band. It has to be. So that was the emotional part. Tell me about the physical part.

Lisa  

What's interesting about a missed miscarriage is that you can kind of choose what happens so you can wait till the body naturally kind of gets rid of everything for you. You can get a surgery to remove everything from the uterus or you can take a pill called misoprostol, which actually went viral on Reddit—I posted a picture of this little pill on Reddit and kind of, kind of went viral for a day or two.

Bart  

Lisa's post was up on the subreddit mildly infuriating and I got over 50,000 likes and 3500 comments and the caption was, “insert vaginally without lubrication of vaginal pill with sharp edges genius,” and it had a picture of the pills.

Lisa 

It's like the size of one of those regular circular Advils, like a pea, but it's shaped like a little hexagon and it's supposed to dissolve as soon as you put it up there. So you can't lubricate it. You got to be dry as a bone, not the most comfortable thing. And it's usually about three or four pills that go up there. And that's the route that I kind of had to go because I had already been waiting so long to confirm this miscarriage. I had no idea how long stuff had kind of been in there and I couldn't get the surgery because, a lot of backup in the O/R due to COVID.

Bart  

The surgery that Lisa is referring to is most likely dilation and curettage known as a D and C. The Mayo Clinic tells us that this is a procedure to remove tissue from inside your uterus. Healthcare providers perform dilation and curettage to diagnose and treat certain uterine conditions such as heavy bleeding, or to clear the uterine lining after a miscarriage or abortion.

Lisa 

So my best option was the misoprostol. It basic, basically stimulates your cervix to open and your uterus to begin contracting. So it's like labor. You're literally delivering the fetus at home.

Bart 

So they're inducing you.

Lisa  

They're inducing labor. Yeah, yeah.

Bart  

So they're giving you the pills and you go home and then what happens?

Lisa  

How do I describe this while being polite? Basically, you're on, on the toilet, you're on the toilet and there's massive pieces of uterine lining. Placenta. Blood clots, like the size of your hand. The size of like a lemon. Literally, it looks just like a massive piece of liver or something coming out of you and a ton of blood. Because of how far along I was. It was intense. There was a lot the pain is… the pain for me was unlike anything I've ever felt. Like. It was labor and I was also vomiting at the same time, which is fairly common with, with labor with extreme pain. Yeah, so my husband just kind of sat with me and held the garbage can and, and waited with me. And you're supposed to kind of keep an eye out for when you pass the fetus. Because that's sort of a mark that you're nearing the end of your bleeding and your pain. So that was hard.

Bart  

There were no medical people with you, it was just you and—

Lisa  

No and having gone through that, what I would say to anybody listening is miscarriage is extremely common and that does not mean that it is safe. It is still a delivery. You should treat it with a birth plan. You should prepare for the worst, hope for the best. What ended up happening with me is I hemorrhaged. I got rushed to the ER. I lost about, almost two liters of blood. I passed out there. I needed a transfusion. And eventually I was brought into emergency surgery. And while I was there, I did, I delivered the fetus. And it's pretty obvious when it comes out. It doesn't look like any of the other stuff. It doesn't look like a blood clot. It was kind of like, I mean I could see the sack and I could see a little tiny, teeny, weeny little baby and it looks like a baby. It looks like a little mini baby. And that's kind of something nobody really prepares you for. Like you actually see it come out. It's an identifiable little thing. Yeah. 

Bart

Jeeze. What was that? Like?

Lisa  

Um, in the moment almost like relief that I hadn't passed this baby into a toilet somewhere and accidentally flushed or—that was like my worst fear, was not was actually, not seeing it and not you know, confirming. I just don't think I could live with that. So I was relieved that I could identify this little this little baby and sort of be present and be a witness and kind of say goodbye really. Yeah. And it also gives you the option to send it for testing which my husband and I decided we wanted to do.

Bart  [NARRATION]

So the testing is to discover whether there was a chromosomal abnormality and if there was, your chances of recurrence are low and this is according to Natera’s website “NATERA”. This is a company that provides those genetic tests you can actually go on their website and order a test kit.

Lisa 

Our miscarriage was due to a hematoma. So I had a bleed, basically a large bleed in the uterus that sort of took the nutrients away from the baby and stopped its growth. So it's, it's good and bad. It's explainable. It wasn't some kind of an awful debilitating thing. It was kind of just luck, I guess. Yeah. Like who knows? Yeah, wasn't my fault, I guess is what I was looking for. It wasn't something I did.

Bart 

Do you think that, do you think that, that's one of the most difficult things? Like you said fault. Like of course, it's not your fault, but in your mind, you must be looking for something to blame.

Lisa  

Oh, yeah. You want to blame. It's, it's like any type of grief that you experience. You try to find a reason for it. You tried to give it some kind of meaning, you try to find an explanation. And when there isn't one, you start blaming yourself. So I was literally you know, just racking my brain thinking, did I take a painkiller I wasn't supposed to? Did I eat something that had an unsafe ingredient? Is my skincare routine affecting my affecting my pregnancy? Like you, you look everywhere to find a place to put your blame. So I guess the confirmation that it wasn't anything we did was actually quite a relief.

Bart 

What, what did people around you do or say that was helpful? And that was not helpful.

Lisa  

There's a lot of at least you can get pregnant, which my husband and I are just so sick of hearing. Like yeah, we know. There's a lot of Oh, at least it was early. Yeah, hearing that just kind of, I guess makes you feel like I'm overreacting. So that's not helpful. There's a lot of that the helpful stuff is other people sharing their experience with miscarriage with us, was very helpful.

Bart 

Right, like, like you're doing now. I mean, everybody grieves in a different way. One of the crazy things is like you will have this conversation with other people. For a long time. Right?

Lisa 

Like I can't see this being an event that I forgot about, or that doesn't affect my personality or my Outlook like it's a very big deal. And on top of that, I kind of had to explain why I was in the hospital for a week. Like I was missing. So I did tell people what happened. And I was met with some of that like, oh, well, it was super early and you shouldn't even really tell people that anyway. But again, most people are very supportive, sharing their own experiences with us. Kind of validating our grief. And just simply saying, I'm so sorry, that sucks. It's enough. There's nothing else you have to say.

Bart 

Do you think people really want to offer some sort of like solution or like they feel that they need they need to say more? Why do we need to, why do we feel that we need to do that?

Lisa  

Yeah, they, because it's horrible. And there's no solution to it, you know, and so people want to say like, well, maybe next time don't do this test, or it's a vaccine problem, or did you take this while you were pregnant? You know, like, they want to just give you some sort of constructive information. So in their mind, you'll feel more at ease, more prepared next time around. Just gotta tune that shit out. It's like, it's like losing any loved one. You know? Do what you would do for anyone that has lost somebody, send them food. Send them flowers, say I'm sorry. Leave them alone for a little while. Or talk to them. If they're reaching out like the same way you would deal with any kind of person that's pretty big.

Bart 

How was your husband helpful? Were there some things that he did that were you were like, Hey, this is my guy. He helped me.

Lisa 

Oh, yeah. I like to tell him he was the only reason why I got through it. But also the only reason why I went through it. Like this is actually your fault. You got me pregnant. So this is your fault. What's helpful is that I guess our relationship is pretty strong to begin with. We joke around a lot. Our humor is quite dark. So as hard as it is, you kind of just have to find a little laugh here and there again. As stupid as that is to say it's like it really kind of kept me go kept my spirits up when I was low, and he just let me hysterically cry when I needed to cry. I never felt that my grieving was inappropriate or had a time limit. And he was always there kind of to pick me up. Like, saying stuff like, we'll just try again and again and again until you're absolutely sick of me. Like we'll just have sex all the time. It's gonna be fine. Like, just kind of, he's a funny guy. So I really liked that about him. He kept me going. That and food. It's such a strange thing, but I think it's helpful for partners to know that when your partner is going through a miscarriage, they are still having pregnancy symptoms. They're still having cravings. So I'd be in the middle of like going from hysterically crying to laughing to tired, being unable to sleep and then suddenly wanting ice cream and he would just be handling it. Just handling it. Food was a big part of it. We planned actually, a special meal to have together if we did confirm a miscarriage. He knows I really love sushi. And basically as soon as we confirmed this pregnancy is over, we had this sort of like weird, solemn, massive sushi meal. And he basically was like my Uber Eats account is your Uber Eats account, like, we're going to eat sushi every single day until you're sick of it. So that was really awesome because it is kind of a special thing to be able to eat your favorite foods again, when you are technically no longer worried about a baby. I mean, it would be nicer to have the baby, but just setting those little, little goals little milestones just kind of pulled us through. Like—he also was able to take some time off of work. We actually had a bit of a COVID Scare, being in the ER for so long. We were exposed so he was off for a little while and was able to spend time with me and he was a couch potato with me. And we didn't need to have a lot of you know, in depth, grief conversation. It was just he was just there. Sometimes you don't need to say or, you know, reason your way around grief for someone else's benefit. He was just kind of there while I lost my mind for 24 hours basically. Another thing I want to say is you kind of go through what is it, the five stages of grief. You go through that multiple times. I think like with any grieving process like that, some days are better than others but you just kind of rolled with the punches, I guess. And there's also a lot of follow up appointments. It doesn't end physically miscarry. There are a series of blood tests you do. Your partner can also go get their fertility tested. Typically once you miscarried, both people will do some tests and see you know what the heck happened? So there's that, there's a follow up ultrasound to confirm that there are no remaining products of conception, which is literally what they call it. Like we want to make sure there's no baby left inside of you. It's such an awful way to say it but they call it products of conception.

Bart 

Right up there with a fetal demise.

Lisa 

Oh my god. It's like traumatizing if you don't just kind of put your mask on and say this is just medical jargon. I'm gonna keep a straight face like they're not trying to wound me emotionally. A lot of these exams also take place in birth centers like in fertility clinics where there are pregnant women. So having my husband along with me for emotional support was amazing. If he couldn't come inside, he waited in the car with a cup of coffee. You know, he texted me while I was in the waiting room, hyperventilating because I couldn't stand to be around all these new moms like it's horrible. And he kind of anticipated what those difficult days would be. And was there although that's not to say he didn't have bad days to be ultrasound that we went to essentially confirm no heartbeat. He couldn't get out of the car. Like he could have come in with me to the waiting room at least but he physically could not get out of the car. And he was being really strong for me this, the whole time. Kind of letting me be the one who sort of fell from grace while he did the cooking and the cleaning and the dog walking. But in that moment when, we were basically about to confirm that this had happened. He, he didn't want to step outside the car. So yeah, he had some moments. He did come in with me in the end. But you know, I gave him the option to stay there. He, he met me in there after which was, which was really good because that was a that was a very hard one. But he had moments. Honestly seeing him break down a bit made me feel a little less crazy. I think he was so strong for me that I almost wondered why the hell am I crying so much. So it's also okay, I guess as the person who is miscarrying to see your partner sort of break down a little bit, it sort of validates that this is not make believe. 

Bart

Yeah. 

Lisa

This is not an overreaction. If that makes sense. 

Bart   

Yeah. It's interesting. I was thinking about this Brene Brown book about vulnerability, and thinking about how the whole book is like, kinda like, hey, it's actually really good to be vulnerable. It's really good to show your emotions and I think that a lot of men don't really feel that way or it's like I actually, yeah, that sounds good. Like I understand. Yeah. Are you Yeah,

Lisa

In theory, in theory but not in practice, right. It's, it's really hard.

Bart

But it's interesting to hear you say that like, actually, I mean, it was good for a time that he was that he was kind of stoic and and I don't know, maybe didn't let you see that he was dealing with it. But it was also good that he did let you see that he was dealing with it.

Lisa

Yeah, exactly. And I think it at that point, it's less about you know, what men are expected to express versus what women are expected to express and more about, about a partnership where both people cannot be in crisis at the same time. You know, if there's two people on a team making the world work, one pillar can't crumble along with the other, you know, and there's moments where he's been in crisis and I've had to be that pillar kind of holding up the roof. Right in this moment. It was me struggling and him that was holding us up. But I find also that as I become a little stronger, he, he's kind of going back to that place and remembering what happened and processing it now. 

Bart

Yeah. 

Lisa

Which I think is a good thing to expect of yourself. I guess speaking to the partners of folks experiencing miscarriage. Yeah, you may experience the shittier stuff later, when you know, the miscarriage is already completed. And you're all healed up you know, that's when the layers start kind of coming down.

Bart 

So neither of us are therapists. But the advice that we're giving is to is for men to just bottle it up.

Lisa

No, not. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. I guess, to put it better is, if it doesn't come out while it's happening, is going to come out after and you should expect it to. And oh, another thing I want to mention is I think even like as soon as you get pregnant, you better make sure you're rock solid in your relationship because you might be looking at that person's like coochie real soon and not not in a good way. But you'll be putting a miscarriage pill up there or something or, you know, having a wipe their butt in the emergency room. It's that in sickness and in health stuff. is about to come into practice. Whether you're dealing with a regular, happy live birth, or a traumatic miscarriage. You cannot be squeamish with your partner's body and their bodily functions. So I mean my husband really just proved to me above and beyond that this is the right person for me. He did not falter. He was a superhero superhero, and I like that kind of already knew that before like we've had fluids and stuff around each other and whenever he seen me bar from like, like absolutely lose it and get sick. This was beyond anything either of us had ever experienced. And he just like he showed up to the hospital with wet wipes like ready to give me like, I don't know, like it's fun. Like yeah, it just really made me realize we are so solid like this man truly is caring for me in my worst moments. At one point he even put on he put on a rubber glove, a rubber cleaning glove—

Bart

Like a medical glove?

Lisa

Put on one of those—No no, no

Bart

Like yellow? 

Lisa

Yeah, like the yellow gloves. And he's like, he literally went in to the toilet and grabbed something that I had passed to confirm whether or not it was the fetus. Because I was so distraught that I may flush this baby down the toilet. He literally put on this glove and went into the toilet and got it out. Like who would do that for you other than someone who just unconditionally, loves and respects you? As you know, he went to the toilet for me. Like I can’t think of anything more respectful! But you know what I mean? 

Bart

Yeah 

Lisa

I wasn't, I wasn't strong enough to do it in that moment. I couldn't look and he looked. So that was an amazing thing.

Bart 

Um, how did this change? Earlier in our conversation, you were talking about your outlook. You said you weren't going to be the saint. You couldn't imagine yourself being the same person after this. And your outlook has changed. What, What has this changed about your outlook and sort of like? Yeah, let's start there.

Lisa

I feel more in awe of my body than ever. Just seeing physically with my own eyes, something that me and my partner created, that I had a part in making life inside of me. And I also felt when that life ended inside of me, so I experienced life and death inside of my own body. There's something so profound, and strange and amazing and awful about experiencing that. I can't even put it into words. Something like you give life to something and also it like dies inside of you? Like it's awful. Who comes up with this stuff? It's just, it's but it's also so profound. Like, I'm in awe. And it's just given me pause, thinking about, thinking about life and death and being so close to death. I've never been so intimate with, with, with death.

Bart 

Man oh man. So one thing I'm thinking about is when adults die, there's some sort of a ceremony there's a burial, there's a cremation, you know, there's sprinkling of ashes, etc. What, what in your experience, what happens after something like this?

Lisa

So, I think you can probably expect your partner to do some weird shit while they're grieving. Because a lot of the time you don't have a body to kind of prepare and bury or you know, perform some kind of closing the lid type of ritual. In miscarriage. You don't get that. And there is a strong desire to just like do weird stuff. Like, my partner was very supportive of me. I mean, he watched me go on Etsy for like hours and look for little, little fetus replicas that maybe I could buy and sort of close up in a little box with our positive pregnancy tests and you know, a little baby socks and things that we have. He just kind of looked at me like, Are you sure? Like why are you? This is so weird, like, why do you want this? And even I felt kind of weird, like, What the hell am I doing? But it's just this weird drive to like, I need to make a plaque like, I need to do something. Also because it's such a profoundly painful, shitty experience, you want to mark it with something like yeah, this happened. I'm not just going to forget about it. So there’s something very validating, too, about marking it somehow. A lot of people write letters to their unborn children, some women get little decorations made up. I've seen some women who get tattoos. To each their own I guess. I tried to be very forgiving of myself and the weird, like Etsy search history that I had over the last month. But yeah, very weird. You just, you want to do something. You want to do something.

Bart

Thank you so much. This is so helpful. Thank you for being really open. It's thanks for being vulnerable. And it's, it's a brutal, brutal topic. And I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry.

Lisa

Thank you. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's shitty. But I think for me, one of the things I've sort of become obsessed with is, is making it not for nothing, I guess. And I think talking about it and leaving some kind of a resource behind or being a continued resource for people really is a way to sort of make it all mean something.

Bart

I hope that if you want another baby so that you have one and I hope we can have you on here and you can tell us all about how how well everything went.

Lisa

Part two, the discussion of how horrible pregnancy is! I can't wait. Right, that's the chat that you want to have. Oh, thank you so much for shining a light on this as you know, also being kind of a men's issue as well as someone who might be supporting their partner. There's not a lot of resources out there. So yeah, it's really cool. Hope people give it a listen. They should all definitely recommend it.

Bart

Awesome. Awesome.

Bart [Narration]

Huge thank you to Lisa from Canada. I don't know if this is something that we can really understand unless we go through it, but I do think these tough conversations are super important. I also want to thank a woman named Katie who reached out on Reddit and told me her story, and Emily and Adam who told me their stories. So if this is something that you are dealing with, Emily runs a program called the EPLA. The Early Pregnancy Loss Association and they have some awesome resources for women and families who are going through pregnancy loss. You can just Google early pregnancy loss Association, and they should be the first result. 

One of the bummers about the US healthcare system is that it's not free. So if you miscarry in the United States, you still get a bill which can feel like a huge slap in the face. One of the services the EPLA is doing is finding money to help with some of these bills. That's, that's just one of the many things they do. They also, if you are in Michigan, they have miscarriage kits that they will send you so check them out, and yeah, take care.

[Metal Music]

Still here, huge mistake, because now I'm gonna play some loud music, and we're gonna get into it again. This song is lucky shot by alibis and I actually now really like it anyways, like this, whatever, I don't know, comment on it, send it to your buddy. Whatever do do what you're gonna do. And now we've all got to do our things. Love you too. Bye bye.