After I watched the power point "Little Loss, Big Hurt: Miscarriage," I was expecting to hear about how miscarriage affects the woman and her family. Although the information was good, there was only one slide that mentioned how the woman may feel. In the power point it says that some women may feel guilty, blame themselves, and feel some sort of abandonment. I know this is true. I worked in an OB/GYN office and have seen it firsthand. I've had to take a fetus that was the size of the palm of my hand and put it into a plastic container so that it could be "disposed" of properly. Talking with the mother was heartbreaking. She felt guilty because she had been doing light exercises. This wasn't the reason for the miscarriage and the doctor confirmed that. She couldn't help blaming herself anyway. Also, she was worried about how her husband would react. Would he blame her? Would he leave her? She eventually had a healthy baby boy but did require psychiatric treatment to deal with the miscarriage.
The power point did a good job explaining the medical aspects of miscarriage, but could have devoted more to the psychological aspect.
Amy Morrow
source: Kampschroeder, M Spring 2007
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Wow!! That must have been terrible. I recently had a miscarriage myself. I did blame myself for a little while, but then I chose to believe it was God's way of saying I wasn't ready. I couldn't imagine being on medical side of it and having to dispose of someone's dream or give them the news. God Bless The OB/GYN's out there!
ReplyDeleteI think the reason it is so hard to deal with a miscarriage is because one does not specifically know what happened. The doctor cannot specifically tell them, well this and this happened. Instead they mention some things that could have caused it. Then the patient tries to think of something they did, which is why the self blaming occurs. This is just a hypothesis from what I saw my sister in law experienced.
ReplyDeleteWhat made me upset was that the doctor seemed to show no compassion towards her. Since she is 18 and young he made it seem as if “oh you’ll have another”. She had to have a procedure done in order to remove the fetus, which I saw her go through a lot of pain.
I had no idea what to say or how to make them feel better. I had never seen anyone experience it or didn’t know anything about it. They even asked me why I thought it happened and I told them I had no idea. She mentioned to me it’s not fair for her when there are all those irresponsible mother to be women who are taking drugs, smoking, and drinking even though they know they are pregnant who still have a live baby.