She hopes her words will give solace to other women struggling with pregnancy loss.
By Audrey Goodson Kingo, Working Mother
By Audrey Goodson Kingo, Working Mother
I always wince when I see those pregnancy-test commercials where a
woman waltzes out of the bathroom, grinning, and jumps into her
husband’s arms. I think to myself: Don’t get excited yet. You have almost 10 more months to go.
I imagine many women who have suffered a miscarriage or traumatic childbirth feel the same way. We know far too well just how much can go wrong in a pregnancy, or during delivery.
[post_ads]That’s why I adore actress Melissa Rauch’s pregnancy announcement on Glamour.com. Yes, the Big Bang Theory
star proudly cradles her adorable bump, but she also opens up about her
fears, since her last pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage:
“Here is the only statement regarding my pregnancy that doesn’t make
me feel like a complete fraud: ‘Melissa is expecting her first child.
She is extremely overjoyed, but if she’s being honest, due to the fact
that she had a miscarriage the last time she was pregnant, she’s pretty
much terrified at the moment that it will happen again.
She feels weird
even announcing this at all, and would rather wait until her child heads
off to college to tell anyone, but she figures she should probably
share this news before someone sees her waddling around with her
mid-section protruding and announces it first.’”
I bet the truth
(and bravery!) of those words will resonate with millions of women. And
the rest of the essay is just as refreshingly candid and emotional. She
confesses to jealousy when “every joyful, expectant baby announcement
felt like a tiny stab in the heart.” (Oh, I’ve been there, sister.)
She
shares the grief and “profound sorrow” of her miscarriage: “It
kickstarted a primal depression that lingered in me. The image of our
baby on the ultrasound monitor—without movement, without a
heartbeat—after we had seen that same little heart healthy and
flickering just two weeks prior completely blindsided us and haunts me
to this day.”
And she perfectly describes the guilt that comes
along when your body doesn’t work the way you expect it to: "I knew in
my heart there wasn’t anything I could have done to prevent what
happened, but that didn’t stop me from the futile exercise of mentally
replaying every day of the pregnancy up until that point over and over
again, wondering if there was something I did that could’ve caused the
miscarriage."
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The star, who is expecting a baby with her husband
Winston in the fall of this year, says she hopes her words will give
solace to women who are struggling with infertility
or the pain of pregnancy loss.
“Just to be clear, I’m not saying
everyone who publicly announces cheerful news should also report the
crummy journey they embarked on before getting to the other side of it,”
she explains. “I personally just wanted to express what I’ve
experienced in the hopes that it could—in some small way—help someone
going through a similar pain.”
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