Can you remember a time when you felt completely lost, with nowhere to turn? Picture yourself trying to navigate through the heartbreak of reproductive trauma and grief. Our guest for this episode is Debbie Fischer, a specialized therapist whose personal experience with reproductive trauma has helped her guide countless others through their darkest times. We tackle tough topics, from the complexities of grief to unique experiences of partners and grandparents.
This is not a conversation that stops at struggle. We also bring light to resources like the Star Legacy Foundation, a beacon of support for those grappling with the void left by pregnancy and infant loss. As we journey through this episode, we emphasize the importance of caring for oneself amidst the heartache. Handling grief is a tough road, whether you're the one living it or supporting someone who is. So, sit back and join us as we navigate through these tough waters, offering comfort, knowledge, and understanding.
Can you remember a time when you felt completely lost, with nowhere to turn? Picture yourself trying to navigate through the heartbreak of reproductive trauma and grief. Our guest for this episode is Debbie Fischer, a specialized therapist whose personal experience with reproductive trauma has helped her guide countless others through their darkest times. We tackle tough topics, from the complexities of grief to unique experiences of partners and grandparents.
This is not a conversation that stops at struggle. We also bring light to resources like the Star Legacy Foundation, a beacon of support for those grappling with the void left by pregnancy and infant loss. As we journey through this episode, we emphasize the importance of caring for oneself amidst the heartache. Handling grief is a tough road, whether you're the one living it or supporting someone who is. So, sit back and join us as we navigate through these tough waters, offering comfort, knowledge, and understanding.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to, as I Live in Grieve, a podcast that tells the truth about how hard this is. We're glad you joined us today. We know how hard it is to lose someone you love and how well-intentioned friends and family try so hard to comfort us. We created this podcast to provide you with comfort, knowledge and support. We are grief advocates, not professionals, not licensed therapists. We are you.
Speaker 2:
Hi everyone. Welcome back again to another episode of as I Live in Grieve. This is a topic today that we're going to talk about that has, oh it's been in my heart for decades and decades, after a personal experience of my own. But once I started the podcast, this was something I really, really wanted to be able to talk about. It's just taken me a while to find the person that not only do I feel comfortable speaking with, but that I also know has the same concern and passion and love in her heart. So with me today is Debbie Fisher. Debbie, hi and thanks for joining me.
Speaker 3:
Hi, kathy, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:
Oh, totally my pleasure. Would you, before we start, just give our listeners a little bit of your background, please?
Speaker 3:
Sure. So I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. I'm based out of Minneapolis, minnesota. I co-own a private practice called Partners Infertility where we specialize in reproductive trauma, and I chose to specialize in this area, specifically this very niche area of mental health, because of my own background, my own history with reproductive trauma.
Speaker 2:
Okay, Now can you just clarify for our listeners what exactly reproductive trauma is?
Speaker 3:
Sure. So reproductive trauma can happen at any time in your reproductive journey, whether that's infertility, pregnancy loss, stillbirth, perinatal loss, birth trauma, so during, in the birth experience. So it's that whole spectrum Okay.
Speaker 2:
All right, very interesting. So my own personal experience and many listeners know, but some may not I had a full-term pregnancy, went to the hospital, everything was fine, every appointment I had with the doctor was perfectly fine, and then all of a sudden, within minutes, it appeared that I developed a fever, very serious fever, and it was after an internal examination, and from that moment on for me it became very, very foggy. They eventually wound up doing a forceps delivery and I remember I'm a pretty well researched person, or I do research, so I knew that they gave the newborns an apgar rating and I was waiting for that. I wanted to hear a high number on a scale of 10. I wanted to hear a high number as well as hear my baby cry. I heard no cry, I heard no apgar, and then I kind of blacked out, or maybe they might have helped me with that, with the medication. And when I came to, I was told that at first my baby, a son who he named Lee, was stillborn, and then they revived him, whisked him off to another facility that had a neonatal intensive care unit, a NICU. Within 24 hours my baby died.
Speaker 2:
Now this was decades ago. Everyone, so no one had a cell phone. No one took a picture of my baby. No one. Let me see, let me touch, feel, hold my baby, though it was almost as if my son didn't exist. And even my family to quote, protect, unquote me, unquote the word protect didn't let me go to the little graveside funeral that they had for my baby boy.
Speaker 2:
So then, without bereavement groups, anything like that therapy at all, it was just left to me to move on, and I did. Within a week, I went to work and I just kind of stuffed it, and, in truth, it hasn't been until I've been doing this podcast that I have really started grieving that loss, because now I know it's a loss, but I stuffed it all those years. Thank you, and I offer that only for some perspective, if you will. There are millions of women out there that don't even get to birth their baby, and for those women my heart goes out to you. But it's a type of sometimes what we call disenfranchised grief, because you don't get the support. Everybody thinks it's real easy to pick up and move on.
Speaker 3:
It's not though, debbie, is it? No, it's not, and I am so very sorry for your tremendous loss, and I would love to tell you that your story is unique and I'm sure you know that for generations that that was how it was handled, yeah, and it's only been relatively recently that it's finally been recognized. But that is not a good way to go about it, that we need to be able to grieve. It did happen, and what happened with you in recognizing that recently is also very common. Your body remembers whether you stuff it and think that you've processed it. It still is in there, and so you know what you experienced was all of the grief that was coming later in life as you recognized it, that you had suppressed so many years ago.
Speaker 2:
Right, right, and within this capsulized phrase of reproductive trauma there are so many different types. So not necessarily in chronological order. But if a woman or a couple has trouble getting pregnant, that is a grief filled experience because you are grieving the life you wanted, You're grieving the child you wanted. That's a unique experience and it's traumatic and it's difficult for both the woman and also the man. In your practice, Debbie, do you work with couples at all, or is it just the women?
Speaker 3:
No, I work with couples and individuals, and you were right, and we're all human beings, so it doesn't matter our sex Exactly, we experience grief differently and absolutely it touches everyone.
Speaker 2:
Sure, sure. And then, should you get pregnant and then heaven forbid, lose that baby, you have the grief again because it's a loss of a lifestyle that you wanted. You wanted to be a mom or a dad, you wanted to be a parent, but it's not going to happen. At that moment there is an entire range of emotions and thoughts that you'll have, but you're still grieving at that point. That's also a point where many times, you don't get the support you really, really need.
Speaker 2:
It's much easier for people to seemingly gloss over the situation by saying, oh, you can try again and that just ranks with I have a book filled with stupid shit people say to greeters. But that's one of those things I mean. Who knows whether you can try again or not? There may be something physical that will prevent you from having a child. Grief In a case similar to mine, where you have a baby, a newborn, and they don't live, or they're not healthy enough to live, maybe. And after an autopsy I was told that Lee was so ill he would have had to have been in a facility for whatever life he had. That's no way for a child to live. That's no way for a mother to live. So then you have this whole controversy going on your head. Was I better that he didn't live, or would it have been different? So so hard? Are there exercises? Are there? What do you recommend for people that are going through this?
Speaker 3:
Oh, there's so much that I want to say here.
Speaker 2:
Well, the floor and the microphone is yours.
Speaker 3:
Okay, so there are a few. I'm taking just a couple of notes that I want to make sure to circle back to, and I will start with what you just said. The controversy in your head, the battle, right, and what I like to say about that is is that we are trying to make sense of something that's senseless. Right, it was. This is when you have a loss like this, something that is so traumatic and unexpected and I'll circle back to your mention earlier disenfranchised grief, but when you were having that conversation in your head, it was around trying to make sense of it. Okay, well, here's the reason why it happened and where can I find peace in this? Wouldn't it have been better if he was here? Or right? And it's our way of processing, right? But sometimes that battle is overpowering and it can be a lot to try to sort through on our own. So, to answer your question about resources and what I tell people, I think that that's what you were asking, right, so we can talk about resources, but, as far as what I share with people, we talk about that, we talk about what has happened and how do we make any sense of it, how can we, you know, attach some meaning right.
Speaker 3:
And so for folks who have had a loss, such as yours or at any stage really in your pregnancy, or at birth or right after, oftentimes these are intangible for you. So we call it an ambiguous loss, right? You never had the opportunity to see or hold no photos of your baby, and so it's intangible. What happened, what did I lose?
Speaker 3:
And when you talk about the dumb things people say, oftentimes it starts with at least, at least you didn't really know your baby, at least you're young, you can try again. Yeah, there's no empathy in at least, right, right, and so then that's where you, that's that disenfranchise, right, they disenfranchise, okay. So now, what did I lose? And everyone's telling me that it clearly wasn't anything, exactly, yeah. So whether or not our babies are here physically with us, right. So whether we are, if we are holding our babies in our hearts rather than we're holding them in our arms, we still have a need to parent them. Oftentimes and it looks very different, but it could be in, you know, planting a tree, planting a garden, dedicating something in their name, in their memory, continuing that legacy, those are ways that we can say no, this child had meaning, their life had purpose, and by doing that. It's our way of continuing to parent and also in helping us to grieve and to process what has occurred.
Speaker 2:
Is that?
Speaker 3:
answer.
Speaker 2:
It does. It does. It helps a lot. It prompts what I call one of my toddler questions, and that just means it's a question. Maybe that sounds so simplistic, but I have to ask. So, whether it is during your pregnancy or immediately at birth, or within a few hours or something after birth and you've never experienced holding, touching, seeing that baby or any combination like that, is it okay to name your baby and is it okay to have some type of a memorial or legacy so that you remember that baby for the rest of your life?
Speaker 3:
Thank you for asking that. It's absolutely okay, it's all okay and it's just like grief and we talk that we don't grieve. Similarly, everyone is unique in how they process and whatever makes sense to you is the right answer, and I've known lots of folks that did not know the sex of their baby but they had a gut feeling right and they've named their baby, and I have a friend and a colleague who also has. For her it was a first trimester loss. She had a gut around the sex of the baby, she named her baby, she got a tattoo with her baby's name.
Speaker 3:
So it's really so very personal, but it's all okay.
Speaker 2:
Good, that's nice to hear and it's nice to know. And I separated here and know because everybody knows those are two different things. I can hear it, but until I accept it in my heart I don't really know it. So that does help me feel more comfortable with that. And it's also very common, I know. The entire time I was growing up people would say how many children do you have? Oh, I have two daughters. I would never mention him, Should I have. Would it have made grieving easier for me If I said I had three and lost one?
Speaker 3:
Again, there's no right answer and that is a really complicated question for a lot of people. What do I say? I feel like if I don't mention my child, then I'm, that's not there. I'm not honoring them, I'm not acknowledging them, and if I do, is that going to make somebody uncomfortable, or do I want to share with this individual? And it becomes extra complicated, I think, in some cases for those that don't have any living children. So it's something that we all get to decide for ourselves. And I will say that my first son was still born on his due date, and I had another son who died halfway through my pregnancy due to court complications, and so when people would ask that question, I grappled with it a lot in the beginning and then eventually I had living children and oftentimes I will say I have three living children and that generally sends a message Wow, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:
I like that yeah.
Speaker 3:
So at times, if I chose not to bring it up, especially because it was my first, and then it didn't know, you know, people said, do you have any children I would have to decide. And I had a piece of jewelry that I wore all the time that was representative of the mother-child relationship for me, and so if I didn't acknowledge him, I would hold my necklace that I was wearing and it was just my own thing to say it's okay, I didn't forget about you.
Speaker 2:
Oh, I love that. I love that. That's beautiful, that's beautiful. Oh my, I love the. Okay, it happens at times with podcasts. Like you know, I'll get teary eyed. I'm like everyone else. I want to talk for a moment, if you will, about the couple, the parents, the husband and wife, or the boyfriend, girlfriend or the again, gender doesn't matter, yeah, okay, the parents how is it different from the one who was bearing the child to the one who was not? Is there a difference?
Speaker 3:
Sometimes there's a different. I mean, there's a difference, yes, in that we don't know that they're going to agree with the same.
Speaker 2:
Okay.
Speaker 3:
Or the person who carried the child, or the person who had the pregnancy with their partner. Oftentimes the partner that didn't carry will feel less like they have space to express their grief because they didn't have to go through carrying the loss right.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 3:
So if you want to, just for the sake of ease, talk about male-female couples, then it's not uncommon that folks will ask him how is she?
Speaker 2:
Okay.
Speaker 3:
Right and they forget that he's also grieving, you know.
Speaker 2:
Good point.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, both are bereaved parents. Right, they both lost their baby, they are both grieving. So now it adds an additional layer, it sends a message to him that he doesn't have space to grieve, because folks will ask well, how is she doing Exactly? And then for him he will often feel like, okay, I can't say anything. Boy, she's gone through so much, so my job is the protector, my job is to be the one that will support.
Speaker 3:
And then what happens is that sometimes there's a disconnect between them, right when she wants to know from him. Aren't you feeling this as well? Why aren't you expressing your emotions? Is it not hitting you? Is there?
Speaker 2:
something wrong with me.
Speaker 3:
And he's feeling like I need to protect, I need to lift her up and he'll go off on his own and grieve quietly. But then that can further break down.
Speaker 2:
So then, if you can have the couple in your office, you can work with them together so that they can appreciate what the other is feeling, right?
Speaker 3:
Yes, and you know, what's interesting about that is that I, when I entered this field and I decided to specialize in this area, I naively thought that that's exactly what would happen, that they would come together.
Speaker 3:
And I can't tell you how it was very surprising to me, when the vast majority of the time it would just be her and so we would talk about that, and I think that that's starting to shift a little bit more and more that we're giving both parties permission. You both are grieving, you're both experiencing this right, and so it's giving them permission to attend together and to recognize that they both have needs.
Speaker 2:
Wow, interesting. Is there something the woman again, just for the sake of ease, the woman might say to her husband to encourage him to come?
Speaker 3:
But, depending on the relationship, and I would generally ask them does he know he can come? Can we give him permission? And so that's generally what I will say to them is when you talk about it, does he know it's okay as well? Does he know that his feelings matter also? Right, okay, all right.
Speaker 2:
And this is probably beyond your scope of treatment. But what about the grandparents?
Speaker 3:
Oh, I'm so glad that you brought that up. You know what the grandparents have a oh boy. It's a double whammy for them, because their child is grieving and the grandparents have lost their grandchild. And how do they grieve the loss of their grandchild and also support their child? What do they say and what do they not say? And, oh my gosh, I've said the wrong thing and I don't want my child to think this is about me, it's about them, and so do I hide my tears. It's so complicated. I will say that Star Legacy Foundation you'd asked about resources earlier and they're a wonderful nonprofit organization and they have support groups that are free for parents who are grieving the loss, for grandparents, for the partner only, so the non-birthing partner, right and anyway, they're all virtual and so anyone can access it and I'm so grateful to them for acknowledging the need of the grandparents. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's exactly what I was thinking of when I asked that question was that I know when Stephanie was first trying to get pregnant and then, when she got pregnant and when she was in the delivery room, there were some complications, and at the time I was employed by the hospital, so I was familiar with those alarm pages that they disguised by calling a specific doctor or a code color. So I knew that an alarm had gone out for assistance in the delivery room and I had moments, and it probably wasn't very long. But you know, at a time like that, when something is happening, time stands still, I swear, and eventually everything was fine. It's just there was some difficulty. They had to do cesarean, but even with that there was some difficulty with the birth. Everything turned out fine.
Speaker 2:
Both my grandsons are beautiful, now grown, grown, young men, and I adore them. But I remember that was my first grandchild I was waiting for. It was also my daughter, my best friend, and to this day she's my best friend, and I was just wrapped in this tornado of distress myself. So I'm glad that there is also a resource and I wrote that down Star Legacy Foundation, and I'll do some research on them as well. So there's just so much complexity to this situation and I'm so glad that we were able to spend some time today. Now I have heard the phrase rainbow child. Is that kind of a common phrase to refer to a baby that has been lost during pregnancy or?
Speaker 3:
So no, it's actually for a subsequent pregnancy and the term was coined now a few decades ago, I believe. But in any regard it was meant to describe the, the child who comes after the loss.
Speaker 2:
So Stephanie would be my rainbow child.
Speaker 3:
The rainbow child, and the reason is that the rainbow comes after the storm.
Speaker 3:
Okay, and what I will say is that that term, while it resonates with many, doesn't resonate with all, and more and more lately, folks have said you know, I don't like it because then it says that my baby who died was the storm. Like that was the storm, yeah, right. So it's really very, again, very personal. Okay, some love the term and it resonates and for others they don't. Okay, um, but that that's what that's referring to, yeah, okay. And if I can quickly just circle back on what has been with you, you know what happened with you and you also had that additional whammy rate because it was a trigger. You, you knew what happened to you, oh, yes, so it there. There must have been an added level of anxiety for you with your own history that I never thought of until just now, when you mentioned it.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
For your mom. You know she made the decision that she felt was right at that time on and no better, but it was in in time. Maybe you can, you've given or can think about giving mom some grace around it, that she thought she was protecting you by not allowing you to be at the funeral or to you know, maybe to see or hold your baby. So again, when we make the decisions that we make, it's with the best decision, with the information that we have, Absolutely, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, speaking about terms and phrases, do you know oh, this might be a trick question, but it's, it's an easy one Do you know of a term for parents who have lost a child, whether it's during pregnancy, shortly thereafter or anytime in the child's life? Do you know of a term for those parents?
Speaker 3:
I'm glad that you brought that up as well and remember earlier I said in our brains we're trying to make sense of the senseless. Well, that's because we don't even have a term for that in the United States, right? We have a term for somebody who has lost their parents, the, you know, our orphan. We have we loss of a spouse, right, that you're widowed. We don't have a term to define the loss of a child. It is out of the order of nature, it's not supposed to happen. And when that's how we understand this in the United States. I mean, we have a really hard time with grief in general, as I'm sure you are well familiar.
Speaker 3:
So no, they don't have a term.
Speaker 2:
Well then, then let me share this with you. I recently ran across a gentleman, henry Dash Cameron Allen is his name, and he is coining a word for that very situation and he is using the term peregrine Interesting. He has a Facebook page, an entire group, in support of these people. Now, interestingly enough, he lost his son, who was named Cameron, to cancer. I believe he legally changed his name to Henry Dash Cameron.
Speaker 2:
Cameron was his son's name and he says it constantly keeps Cameron in his mind and in his heart, using that name. At the same time he says, mathematically it makes sense Henry minus Cameron, and I thought that was so touching. But so he is trying to get this term, peregrine, popularized, and on his website which I don't have the link at the moment, but if anyone wants it, just reach out to me and I'll share it with you gladly he has an entire page devoted to the origin of the word peregrine and why that was chosen. So he is on a campaign a personal campaign, if you will to get this adopted, so that parents who have lost a child at any stage, at any age, have a term for themselves.
Speaker 3:
Lovely. Thank you for sharing that. No problem at all.
Speaker 2:
No problem at all.
Speaker 3:
What a way for him to honor his son.
Speaker 2:
Exactly, exactly. There are a lot of ways out there and we're starting to wind down now. Before I wrap up, debbie, I'm going to turn the mic over to you and let you speak directly to our listeners, without me interrupting with comments, questions et cetera. So the floor and the mic are yours.
Speaker 3:
Well, I appreciate that. Thank you If I could add just something more for your listeners with regard to miscarriage, because I know that that's where we sort of started and we talked a lot about silver or loss right after. But I want to give everyone permission to grieve, at any stage in their pregnancy, loss. The minute that you discover you are pregnant, you have a whole life planned out. You know when your child is expected to be born, what the weather is supposed to be like in that season, when they're going to have their firsts and their holidays and their kindergarten. You know all of it, and when that is taken from you, your body remembers.
Speaker 3:
You have to now go through that entire pregnancy, knowing those dates and reaching that due date. You go through life imagining what would have been at different times and how old your child would be, and it hurts. That's an ambiguous loss and I think that people don't recognize enough the magnitude of that loss. So and you don't need to have even an idea of the sex of your baby, it doesn't matter, it is your baby and your baby died. So, for what it's worth, I would like to just send that out to folks and give permission to know that it is okay and you are grieving for good reason your baby died.
Speaker 2:
I just had to take a deep breath. Yeah, thank you, debbie. Thank you so much. That was very eloquent. I'm going to have to re-listen to that a few times myself, I think, just to take comfort in it. Well, listeners, sadly I don't like saying goodbye to everybody, so I'll just kind of say see you later. And so long, I want you to remember to take care of yourselves wherever you are in your grief journey or maybe you're just listening so that you can better support someone that you know is grieving and really struggling, having a hard time. But in the entire process, remember to take care of yourself. That's the piece we forget so so many times. So do that for me, please, and don't forget to come back next week, as we all continue to live in grief.