miscarriage

If you want to write about your story, even not even to share it, but just to have it and feel what that is in order for you to then be able to have a fresh perspective.

If you want to keep going, it's, Miscarriage is confusing.

I blamed my body.

I was shameful for not having it perform the way that my friends did.

They will happen.

I ran across this little poem entitled Miscarriage.

So I met a woman that had five miscarriages.

And she wondered, will I ever have children? And after she had five miscarriages, she went on to have six children.

She will share how to find resources, how to self-manage your abortion effectively, and she will share her own abortion story.

And if you have questions about what's happening to your body as you're self-managing your abortion, you can call our next guest, who is the medical director of the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline.

Dr. April Lockley is with us.

and wondering what the legalities of it all are? Well, we have someone who has spent almost 20 years as an attorney and leader in the reproductive health rights and justice movement, executive director of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine.

Of course, there are telehealth providers like Hey Jane, for example.

There's Plan C, which essentially functions as an aggregate for different online pharmacies where you can safely directly order pills to your door or a place that, you know, feels safe for you.

There's also, in terms of information, there are places like Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline, you know, ReproCare, Healthline, so many places that you can find on a good old Google search.

I just said Google in a crazy way.

I hope you enjoy today's offering brought to you by the Academy of American Poets.

This is Gregory Fraser reading my poem, Miscarriage.

They tell me God exists.

I'm not so sure.

And so we had to, we had to-- We conceived my six-year-old daughter through IVF, [lips smack] and this is a pretty controversial topic, and s- and again, I'm-- this isn't, like the point of the message.

The point of the message is this: pre-miscarriage, IVF was something that I didn't want to do because I was convinced it would be evidence that God was not faithful to me.

I didn't wanna consider it because I was so scared of being proven wrong about God's faithfulness Post-miscarriage, about a year and a half later, IVF became this beautiful invitation that we walked through the door of, and it became an incredible provision of God in our life.

We walked with Jesus through that journey.

We walked through a Spirit-filled, loving, believing doctor through that journey.

But again, hopefully going to provide you with some hope and some resources as we make our way through this month of October, which is Respect Life Month.

And one of the things that the church has done very well also had some i would say maybe missteps or or maybe lack of attention to and that is accompanying those who experience the loss of miscarriage of course pregnancy can be a joyful time full of hope and anticipation and whether it's the first child or the eighth the bonds of love begin to form and grow almost instantly and preparations begin for welcoming new life into the home and fortunately for the vast majority of pregnancies they result in a happy healthy delivery However, for many families, joy can turn to sorrow and plans suddenly change from anticipation to shock.

And many are unsure what to do if they get the news that the baby is no longer continuing to develop.

Estimates say that as many as 20% of known pregnancies ended miscarriage.

And despite this high number, it's not something that parents prepare for.

It's not something that is really thought about or even talked about.

Not only is there uncertainty about what will happen physically to a woman's body, as well as the emotional aspect of it, but what becomes of the child growing inside of her? How should we go about preserving the dignity of the person who's lost to miscarriage.

And my wife, Maria, has not only experienced this, I alongside her, obviously, she's had a couple of miscarriages as well as we experienced a stillbirth at 26 weeks.

And then they come and find us, which I think is amazing.

Our TFMR Stories: Pregnancy Loss Support in the Heartbreak of Terminating a Wanted Pregnancy.

Today's episode is a little bit different.

I was interviewed on the Good Grief podcast with Nikki Smith, Nikki the Death Doula, and this is the conversation that we had.