#obs gyn

Disclaimer: I am a pediatric subspecialty resident, not an obstetrician/gynecologist. While pediatrics may be involved in cases of perinatal loss sometimes, it is not our main area of expertise and the cases in which we would be involved are infrequent. However, as pediatricians, we also take care of our patients in the context of their families, many of whom have suffered a perinatal loss.

I bring up perinatal loss in light of the recent tragic loss suffered by Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, which was met with an outpouring of love and support, but also, because people friggen’ suck, a whole lot of absolutely disgusting, garbage backlash.

Please see this post by an obstetrics/gynecology resident that provides very helpful education on second-trimester pregnancy loss and the various processes that hospitals may follow to provide comfort to families struggling to cope through their grief.

First of all, people all grieve and mourn in different ways. Everyone experiences loss, and they all experience loss in their own way. How they choose to express and/or share their grief is a personal choice, and no one can decide what is “right” or “okay” for someone else. To have the audacity to make disparaging comments about Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s brave decision to share their grief and devastation is like attending a funeral and telling the family, “Ugh, how dare you do this for attention?”

Perinatal loss is something we don’t talk about enough. It’s common, but it’s stigmatized, and this stigma is 100% anti-mother discrimination (if anyone can think of a more inclusive term for this, please let me know; though not all mothers identify as female, I want them all to know that this discrimination against them is not okay).

Have you ever noticed that commercials for Viagra and Cialis come on regular television programming? Because male sex drive and sexual performance are considered NORMAL, COMMON issues in sexual health? Well, it’s time to wake the f*** up and realize that periods and pregnancy are NOT the only sexual and reproductive health issues that people with uteruses face.

Perinatal loss is common. It’s devastating. And the vast majority of the time, it’s completely out of the mother’s control. However, many mothers internalize these losses, which are often due to nothing more than sheer bad luck wherein physiologic processes just don’t quite align, as personal failures. I wonder why that is? It couldn’t possibly be because there’s a huge social misogynistic worldview that sees childbearing as your sole purpose in life if you were born with a uterus, could it? But of course, you should only bear children if you’re young enough (but not too young), old enough (but not too old), in a “stable” (read: cis-het) relationship, and gainfully employed; otherwise, you “don’t deserve” to have children, and if you choose not to have children, there’s something fundamentally wrong with you (because your sole purpose was childbearing, remember?).

YOU ARE MORE THAN YOUR UTERUS. (Furthermore: you and your uterus are NOT incubators for society’s gross anti-woman, anti-female, cis-het agenda.) You are a person who can make decisions about your life, your body, and your family. You are a person who experiences loss, who feels emotions, who has had to suffer and struggle. You are a person who has shouldered the judgments heaped upon you by society, borne of ignorance, misogyny, prejudice, and discrimination, but you are also a person who, in spite of this, has lived and loved and breathed.