I’m no stranger to the fact that our medical system is broken, but every time I engage with it, I feel renewed outrage. As a physician and a recovered people-pleaser, I’m well-positioned to advocate for myself. Yet still (!), I felt dismissed and subtly bullied by the systemic misogyny and adversarial attitude peppered throughout the medical system.
I also learned that the medical field has a poor understanding of what a body needs after miscarriage. My body was screaming for naps, baths, bone broth, soup, and gingersnap cookies. Instead, the medical advice I got was to run around the city to get additional sonograms, blood tests, and IV fluids. The morning after a miscarriage! I didn’t need IV fluids in an ER gurney, I needed to sip tea while lying on a couch under a blanket watching Jane The Virgin.
After an enlightening conversation with Kimberly Johnson (author of The Fourth Trimester), I learned that the time after miscarriage is essentially a post-partum period, but without a tradition of rest and time off from work (at least in our culture; and the U.S. barely understands the necessity of this even after childbirth, but that’s a separate conversation). She also recommended vaginal steaming to help my body heal.
If you’ve experienced a miscarriage, give yourself time to rest, stay out of gravity (standing, unnecessary activity), consider vaginal steaming, and nourish yourself with iron-rich foods like pate, bone broth, nettle tea, red meat, spinach, & blackstrap molasses, along with citrus fruits for vitamin C. Floravital can be a helpful supplement.
Give yourself space to process, and welcome all feelings, whether it be sadness, grief, defeat, anger, rage, relief, ambivalence, questioning your faith, or deepening your connection to the divine.
Trust what your body is asking for and, within reason, question the knee jerk medical advice. My follow-up sonogram can wait a couple days (I already had one in the ER to rule out ectopic pregnancy, a true medical emergency). For now, my focus is on rest, nourishment, and turning inward to process this experience.
