This story is part of our monthly series, Campus Dispatch. Read the rest of the stories in the series here.
When you think of miscarriage, what images usually come to mind?
Some may think of a woman crying uncontrollably as her Gynecologist breaks the news, or perhaps a married couple in their 30s grieving after trying desperately to conceive. Whatever images you conjure up, I’m guessing the people in this are probably fully grown adults, right?
But when I think of miscarriage, I think of myself three years ago: a single, sexually inexperienced 19-year-old bleeding out in a college dorm, debating whether it was bad enough to go to the emergency room.
While the risk of miscarriage increases as you get olderyoung people miscarry more than you think—we just rarely hear about it.
“Notably, very few studies have been done on people under 18 and miscarriage. There tend to be more studies on miscarriage in older people,” said Dr. Anne-Marie Amies Oelschlager, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and assistant professor of pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine.
The first time I took the pregnancy test, I doubted the result. The second line on the test was faint, and plus, we had used multiple forms of protection — what were the odds?
But none of that mattered: A positive result is a positive result. Almost as soon as I slipped out of denial and started thinking about next steps, it happened.
My roommate and I were doing our makeup in front of the mirror in our dorm when I suddenly felt like I’d been stabbed in the stomach. The sharp, twisting pain nearly knocked the wind out of me and I clutched my stomach. Then I felt it drip.
I went to the bathroom and saw the blood. It was everywhere. No amount of tampons or pads seem to contain it for long.
I knew what was going on, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself—I had a miscarriage.
In the long run, that was probably a good thing. It wasn’t serious enough that I was in medical jeopardy and dropping out of college to raise a child wasn’t part of the plan. I knew all this. But still, for some reason, I couldn’t help but feel sad.
Turns out it’s common for people who miscarry feel that sadnesseven if the pregnancy was unplanned and unwanted. I became overly fixated on what my life could have been if I hadn’t miscarried and stressed about the possibility of miscarrying again one day when I really wanted children. I was angry with my body because I thought this shouldn’t happen to people my age. And most of all, I was angry at myself for being upset about it. I wasn’t ready to be a parent and I didn’t want to get pregnant. However, I was still grieving.
“Even if it was an unintended pregnancy and an unwanted pre-pregnancy, miscarriages can cause grief and suffering,” said Amies Oelschlager. “I think people sometimes underestimate the loss and grief that can come with teenagers.”
We are taught in sex and by the mainstream media that teenage pregnancy has only three outcomes: abortion, adoption, or parenthood. But there is actually a fourth possibility, and we have not been taught how to deal with it.
I didn’t know exactly who and where to turn. No matter how much I googled, all the resources I could find were clearly aimed at adults and didn’t take into account the complexities involved in miscarrying at such a young age. In fact, when hospitals and other medical institutions were approached for this story, many responded that they had no staff with experience in this matter. And while I knew my family would support me, I still felt the weight of the stigma surrounding being a sexually active teenage girl.
Amies Oelschlager said this stigma, along with the fact that a teen’s sexual partner is less likely to be receptive, often contributes to teens not getting help.
“They need to talk about the pregnancy, the loss, but also after the fact that they were sexually active,” she said. “And you know, the younger you are, the less likely that partner is going to be in your life for the duration, and the less likely your partner is going to be mature about it.”
My friends who knew what happened tried to comfort me. There were many sentiments such as “that was for the best” and “at least you don’t have to think about it anymore”. But I thought about it. And while those things may have been true, it didn’t help ease the pain. For some reason, even though my pregnancy was unplanned and unwanted, I still had this overwhelming feeling of sadness.
I don’t blame my friends for not knowing what to say – instead I blame what we’ve been conditioned to think about miscarriage and teenage pregnancy. I can’t help but wonder what my experience would have been like if teenage abortion had been discussed in high school sex classes, in the media, and in medical settings.
“A lot of people in their teenage years don’t think about pregnancy at all, and a pregnancy can happen and it can make them think more carefully about what they want in the future, even if they know they don’t want it. right now,” said Amies Oelschlager. “So I just encourage people to be supportive and nice and kind.”
The unfortunate truth is that most teenagers are not going to research miscarriage themselves unless it has affected them or someone they know, so we need to meet them where they are. We should focus on talking about miscarriage in the classroom, just like putting condoms on cucumbers. We are taught in sex and by the mainstream media that teenage pregnancy has only three outcomes: abortion, adoption, or parenthood. But there is actually a fourth possibility, and we have not been taught how to deal with it.
I know, now, that this wasn’t my fault, and that it’s okay to grieve and have complicated feelings. But the 19-year-old, the first in my circle of friends to experience such a thing, I had no idea.
So now, if I feel safe, I try to talk about my experience in as many places as I can in hopes that the next teenager who is the first of their friends to dump them will know that they are not alone, nothing is wrong, and that a day, everything will be fine.
