Redefining Us

19: Redefining Miscarriage as Birth Grief and Transformation

• Season 1 • Episode 19

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What happens when your grief is invisible to the world—but unbearably real to you? In this episode, my guest Arden Cartrette, a birth and bereavement doula who has turned her personal experience of multiple miscarriages into a powerful mission of healing and advocacy. From breaking the silence around first trimester loss to highlighting the massive gaps in medical training and support, Arden shares the truth about miscarriage that too many people experience in isolation.

We talk about the emotional complexity of pregnancy loss, why comparison can deepen our pain, and how empathy—real, lived empathy—can change everything. Whether you're a parent, a practitioner, or simply someone trying to be more present for others, this conversation invites you into a more honest and human understanding of grief and care through pregnancy loss. 

And if you need support or would like to connect with Arden you can find her at:
Website - https://www.themiscarriagedoula.co/ 
Instagram - @themiscarriagedoula

Learn more about the Redefining Us Monthly Community - https://wellmindedcounseling.com/redefining-us-community



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I wrote a book! Becoming Mommy: Aligning with yourself and finding your voice during pregnancy and motherhood, available at all major retailers - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DZT9P3RB?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_KFT90ZBDS48FDGG6DH5X&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_KFT90ZBDS48FDGG6DH5X&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_KFT90ZBDS48FDGG6DH5X&bestFormat=true

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Redefining Us, where we explore sexuality, identity, motherhood, and mental health to help women thrive authentically. Let's break free from roles that limit us and create a life where you can truly be yourself. Welcome back to Redefining Us. I'm your host, Stephanie Contrera. I'm a licensed professional counselor, and I have with me today Arden Cartrett, who is a birth and bereavement doula that focuses on support before, during, and after pregnancy loss. She founded the Miscarriage Doula in 2020 as a woman. We're experiencing pregnancy loss during the pandemic and has supported thousands of women through the highs and lows of grief after loss. Based out of North Carolina, where she lives with her husband, living children, and pets, she loves to show people the care they deserve. Awesome. Yes, let's just dive in. So glad that you're here. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day. I know life as a business person and life as a mom is a crazy life. So I really appreciate you taking time to be here today. Of course. Thank

SPEAKER_00:

you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So I'd love to hear about the work that you do with people and why you're so passionate about it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So... I am essentially a miscarriage doula, but I always love to start with like, I don't love the term miscarriage because I don't feel like it properly takes in everything that we go through with pregnancy loss. But I try to first call it first trimester birth and second trimester birth and refer to it as birth and death. But Algorithms on social media don't recognize those as terms for people to find me. And so the miscarriage doula is what I am. I started doing this work in 2020. So my first living son was born in February of 2020, only three weeks before we were on lockdown for the pandemic. I was struggling with postpartum anxiety at the time, but it was deeper than that because before he was born, I had two miscarriages and I struggled to get pregnant. And I just had this goal the whole time of like, if I could just have a baby in my arms, everything would be fine. This will all not matter in the future. And then he was born and I saw his little face and I thought, oh, that's what the two babies I lost. That's what they could have looked like. Or this is now putting a human version of those babies to my eyes. Just the psyche of it was messing me up. And so I had been supporting people I guess in a less professional way because I am very open. I have little to no filter. And so whenever I went through my pregnancy loss experiences, I talked about it very loudly on the internet and that drew a lot of attention from people because not everybody, I call it a privilege that I am so open because I don't care what people think about my openness, but there are people who can't talk openly, but they want to so bad. And so I talked really openly about miscarriage. People would find my Instagram account and I had a fertility blog and I would walk them through pregnancy loss. And so then once my living child was born, I thought, how can I do this on a bigger scale? My job working in real estate contracts did not feel important anymore. I was like, this is not making a difference in the world. Like anybody can read this contract. I don't know. It just felt so small. And so I took a course by Sisters and Lost to become a birth and bereavement doula. And their course really focused on birth in second and third trimesters. And so I saw that still that first trimester birth and lost was missing. There was still this gap. And so I focused more on first and second trimester losses. However, I've supported a lot of people through their trimester losses as well. And I don't think I knew what I was building at the time that I was building it. I just knew I needed to build something. The goal was always for people to find me before they experience loss because I want to help prepare people. I want them to know what questions to ask. I want them to understand the pros and cons of all of their options. I want them to feel like they have an informed choice, not just hearing the options and being like, well, one is surgery, so I'm going to pick something else without really understanding what's what the surgery aspect is, but also how to navigate the grief because the grief is what took me down. I felt like it was so heavy and I didn't understand why it was so heavy because I didn't know this little life and I lost them so early. I couldn't comprehend why it was so heavy. And so doing a lot of continuing education in grief and trauma has been really, really meaningful for me, but also for other people. And so now I run the Miscarriage Doula, which is an online resource and service. I talk to people one-on-one. We have support groups. We have a ton of free handouts that basically just list out all of the options and things to go to the store and buy if you're having a miscarriage at home, along with some things to help people cope in grief after loss. And so it's kind of what I do and why I do it. I feel like that's the short version and that was very long-winded.

SPEAKER_01:

What I really heard from what you were saying is that like most helpers, there was this personal experience that then led to a lot of curiosity for you and this deep drive to have a lot of more personal understanding of yourself that then led to this deep desire to help other people who are going through or maybe might go through or have been through the same or similar situation. And I mean, in my opinion, people can argue about that with me about that. But I think those are the best helpers because there's such a passion and ability to be empathetic with the person that they're sitting across from that maybe isn't there when someone doesn't come from that place of deep curiosity and deep empathy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, totally. And I usually say to my clients, I like who I am now. I don't like how I got here, I guess. Like I would never, I don't know. It's so complicated. If I could wish away the trauma I experienced throwing miscarriages, I would, I wouldn't heartbeat. I think that some people say that they wouldn't because then it would erase those pregnancies, but I would love not to relate to these people. Right. But unfortunately I do. And then I guess, fortunately it gave me this deep understanding of feeling empathy. I mean, the empathy that I gained is, Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know if I've ever met someone who's like, I really love that I had trauma. Like, excellent. Best kisses, right? So I think that's very relatable. Like, no one wants to go through these things in order to have empathy. But since it is a part of your story, it's really amazing to me how you've really used that. I'm going to use the word trauma again. I don't know if that's how you label it. I might be putting words. It is. Okay. No, yeah. Yeah. that trauma to then help other people. So,

SPEAKER_00:

yeah. Yeah. Well, and I do think it's because I know that with your podcast, a lot of your topics are about like womanhood and motherhood. And I feel like one of the lessons that I learned from experiencing loss is to teach my children this empathy myself, instead of allowing them to just experience the worst things in the world and then gain these things. Because my parents never taught me the empathy level, but they also didn't teach me that it was okay to give part of myself to other people. So I didn't have the best examples growing up for these things that I had to learn in a hard way, if that makes sense. So I feel like as a mom, and I call them my living children because I have two children and they're my third and fourth pregnancy, I want to teach them to see people and to feel for them when they're struggling. Or if you can offer them support, do it like this. It is simple, but I feel like I was never taught things like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think it's really, I mean, I've heard the phrase a thousand times, but I'm going to just use it since it is so cliche and people know the same, but we don't have to walk in someone's shoes in order to understand their story. And so like, how do you impress upon the importance of that when it comes to even maybe some of the people that you work with? I imagine, okay, I want to speak for myself. In my own story of life, there was times where I was like, well, my situation's not as bad as this other person's or like, I'm not that hurt by this because like, look what this other person went through. So it's almost this imperative trauma thing. And I think that helps some people in my case, almost bypass being empathetic towards myself. Yeah. Yes. I do that a

SPEAKER_00:

lot with people. I was going to say, I imagine that's something you come across with the people. Yes. It is. And again, because my approach is to make sure that people are experiencing the grief and that they're not trying to bypass the grief. I will catch people, especially in support groups, they will say like, oh, well, so-and-so in the group had a loss three weeks later than mine. That's so much worse. And then they feel like they can't speak on their grief. And so I usually will stop them or talk to them privately and remind them that just because somebody has a loss, it's later than theirs. Or if somebody has a loss where there's more physical trauma involved or more medical trauma, however they feel like somebody else has it, quote-unquote, worse than them, that that's not a reason not to feel grief. My mom is very much somebody who, like that, where she is always like, well, at least you weren't diagnosed with cancer. She's literally said that to me before. And I'm like, mom, that doesn't erase what we're going through. And so my response is always, well, somebody has it better, but we still celebrate our wins. We don't just tell somebody not to celebrate a promotion at work because somebody out there is making a billion dollars a year. You know what I mean? So I think it's natural to do that. But there's that saying that comparison is the thief of joy. And I've posted on Instagram saying comparison is the thief of grief. And I find that to be true a lot of the times because people, again, talking about like the heaviness of pregnancy loss and the grief that comes with it. People are like, well, I've lost my dad. Why am I so sad about this loss? And it's a different loss. That's why it's heavy in a different way. And so seeing it all as separate is really important. But people, they compare it all the time. It's hard not to.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. I oftentimes when I work with clients, even who have had living children, but maybe it had a really difficult birth. I'm not sure if that's something that you focus on with your clients, but just even the grief around it not being the way that they envisioned bringing your baby into this world. And I imagine that probably comes up in some of the work that you do as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. There are people who... have had a living child and maybe experienced a loss after. And maybe with their living child, it was a really traumatic birth. So they were looking for redemption in this next pregnancy. And then they experienced loss. And it feels like a double blow of why can't the birth part of this go correctly? And that's a really hard thing to deal with because I do think there's grief for that experience that you've had in your head this whole time because you're In the world, we paint birth as always this beautiful, magical time. And for everybody, it's not. And then the opposite can be true as well, where people have pregnancy loss or recurrent pregnancy loss or fertility trauma, and then they're finally pregnant and things are going well, they're preparing for birth. And usually their only goal is, well, I just want everybody to be healthy. And the experience is kind of in the backseat. And I do see a lot of people not having great birth experiences because I think they spent 40 weeks not focusing on actually making it to that milestone. So I feel like birth trauma comes from loss and from full-term living children and pregnancies as well. I

SPEAKER_01:

guess what do you see as a common reason why people finally make the effort to call you and work with you?

SPEAKER_00:

Most of the time, people come to me right after a miscarriage. And I always love when people do that because then I can help them prepare for the road ahead in the first month and having the first period and then returning to everyday life. But there are people who find me a year after, two years, and it's sometimes they're still struggling to feel comfortable getting pregnant again. Sometimes they're struggling to get pregnant. Sometimes they have a living child and they're like, okay, this didn't fix anything. Like that's still there. But I would say majority of the people reach out because they they're struggling and they're looking for somebody who gets it. A lot of people are in therapy and have brought it up with their therapist. And like you said, it takes like sometimes just a level of really getting it on a personal level. So a lot of my clients are in therapy, but also talk to me as a second person for this specific thing, just to talk through what they're struggling with, especially because in society, we hear a lot of at least this and at least that. And I don't say any of those things. I just kind of will sit in the discomfort and we make a plan moving forward and, and things like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. You know, I'll speak for my experience as a therapist, but you know, there's no, class that they give you on perinatal mental health you have to independently go out and seek that information learn it it's not just something that is a prerequisite to become a therapist and even grief isn't something that's really talked all that much about in school I had to take a special elective to even learn about the process of grief we get like a week where they're like Oh, let's talk about it. And I'm like, grief is pretty impactful. And it literally impacts every single person, whether, you know, like you said, like a loss of a parent or a loss of a child through miscarriage or, you know, what have you. There's so many ways that loss can impact you and we get a week of it. So, yeah, I think. Again, I'll speak for myself. I've had to go out and educate myself about how to talk to people and explore these concepts and use that, what you said, all the resources at hand to learn because it's not just readily available and talked about commonly, whether it's in school or in the general public.

SPEAKER_00:

I've had therapists reach out to me That way we could all hop on a call together. So I have done calls where it was somebody and their therapist. And that was always really like I like the collaborative aspect of that. And then I also I have a course that teaches people of different professions of providing specific to miscarriage grief. A lot of therapists, a lot of birth doulas, which is really important because sometimes their clients can experience loss. But I think that that's like a big part of being in this professional space is realizing if I want to learn more about something, I have to actively go out and learn it. There's not just a one size fits all class or diploma or anything like that, which I think I guess is really helpful that I like to learn. So I don't I don't mind taking a lot of courses. That's fair.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think it's important for people to learn what they want to learn about. But I don't know. I also feel like it's a slight like disservice to learning. Oh, totally. Not having to be, again, in people's faces and talked about all the time.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and I feel the same about in the medical field. And I have a lot of clients who are ER nurses, labor and delivery nurses, nurses in general, OBGYNs. I've had fertility specialists as clients. They are not taught in medical school about miscarriage, not to the degree that it needs to be. It's covered in scientifically what happens and we can all figure out what happens, you know, but it's not discussed heavily. In my experience, in my second miscarriage, I ended up in the ER because I was bleeding really heavily at home. And I was in the ER for eight hours before anybody checked me vaginally, even though I was profusely bleeding. And now you've been trying to be dramatic. I had blood all over my clothes. They could see the blood on the floor. Nobody checked me. my vagina for eight hours. I had to fight them to get something stronger than Tylenol. And the biggest thing was, is that they just didn't understand how intense a miscarriage is. I think they heard me express that I was eight weeks, but my pregnancy was only measuring six weeks. And they took that as like, okay, so this shouldn't be that big of a deal. But I was covered in blood. And I have now, you know, now that I've had clients who work in these fields, they have the same experiences that I did. And it takes that for them to realize how they weren't taking it seriously before. Then there's a lot of guilt with that and, you know, other layers to their grief where they wish they could go back to all of those patients that they didn't understand what they were going through because they didn't have the education. And so I feel like when I was going through it, I was angry at the medical staff because I was like, how could you guys not know this? You're doctors. But now I have a little bit more empathy and I'm more mad at education standards. You know, we could fix that. Those are things, those are classes that we could focus on or topics to spend more than one class or one week on. And I understand the world is very big and there are a lot of things to learn about. But I feel like grief, like you said, comes up so much. And I imagine for nurses, pregnancy loss comes up, whether it's on somebody's form or from a previous experience, like still being trauma informed on these topics is important. And I just feel like we're failing. We're really failing human beings and not being more versed in it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I agree with everything you said. And I think it could be handled a lot differently, especially for people who are day in, day out faced with these types of clients. It might be quote unquote, a little bit different for just your PCP, right? That's not the thing that they're specializing in. Yeah. If you're a nurse that works on labor and delivery floor, you should probably be more educated on miscarriage and that experience.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and so in the United States specifically, because I work with people all over the world, so I've got to know like other health systems and they all kind of suck. I used to think, oh, wow, every country has it so much better. And in a lot of ways they do, but healthcare sucks around the world. And I feel like that is a really sad thing to realize. But like in the UK, they have an early pregnancy unit where if somebody has bleeding early in pregnancy, they can go there for specific care. They don't have to go to the general hospital. Like here, if you have a problem, you're going to the ER. You can go to urgent care, but they're going to tell you to go to the ER. Like you said, you're not going to go to your PCP for this. You might call your OB, but they're going to tell you to go to the ER. And so you go to the ER where they see all types of different things. And I don't know, it's just, I feel like that's the one department that I'm like, we could totally do better here because this is where people go. When they have vaginal bleeding or if they're bleeding a lot out of any hole in their body, they're going to the ER. And so I think that they think about it from a scientific term and they know they can't do anything to necessarily prevent it from happening. But I think that focusing more on the care would be really helpful. But I feel like there's a gray area, especially in first trimester care, even for somebody who's pregnant. and things are going well and they're super sick. I have a friend right now who's dealing with this. She goes to the ER, she's waiting hours while throwing up and going to the bathroom before she's hooked up with fluids after it's been days where she's not eating. And I just feel like there's a gap in the care for people, especially early on in pregnancy, whether things are going well or not. I don't know how to fix that. I wish I did.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, I would imagine funding and research are at the core of a lot of these problems.

SPEAKER_00:

And I

SPEAKER_01:

fear we're getting

SPEAKER_00:

further and further from getting that. Yes. Which sucks.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I remember when I was pregnant, I had to wait until week 10 and I was very anxious for like the first 10 weeks. I had already experienced a miscarriage and then I had experienced a chemical pregnancy, which was still a loss of itself, even though I wouldn't even say it to myself, even though it was only a chemical pregnancy, right? But the hope was there. And yeah, so I was like almost angry that I had to wait 10 weeks to see someone because my anxiety was just... every day. Should I take another test? Should I make sure that I'm still pregnant? I don't know what's going on in there. Do I need to get one of those Doppler things off the internet so I can try to hear? Can you even hear anything at 10 weeks or before 10 weeks? So I was just very anxious most of that first trimester because I don't know until week 10.

SPEAKER_00:

That is also a crazy aspect to me. I guess I'm biased because I I only support people in loss, although I also support people in pregnancy after loss, but they've experienced loss before. And so if I had a client who was in your situation, I'd be like, well, do you want to be seen before 10 weeks? Because let's make that happen here. I literally write out the message for them to send to their doctor to advocate for that earlier ultrasound. Or we talk about what are the pros or the cons of having an earlier ultrasound on your mental health? Like, is it going to help? It depends on people's stories. And I think it's totally... ridiculous to wait. That's what the norm is because I think about it from my standpoint, like my first pregnancy stopped growing at six weeks. If I didn't have my first ultrasound until 10 weeks, that's already over four weeks that the pregnancy has not been progressing, that my body has been pregnant. And then they're going to want to confirm another seven to 10 days later, right? And so I'm just going to keep being pregnant and That's so dangerous if I start bleeding and I don't know what's happening. There's just so much that then if you call and you're bleeding, they're like, oh, that could be normal. Just wait another week and come in. And I don't know, I just feel like it could be so much better. Or even just, you know, having a spot on... an OB's website of resources in case somebody has a miscarriage over the weekend or starts bleeding. So that's a lot of things that I have set out to do, that I've set out to change, making sure that that information is accessible. With my first miscarriage, I was given my options and I was terrified of having a miscarriage at home. Like nothing else terrified me more. I Googled, what is a miscarriage really like? And I was just met with Reddit threads where people talk about how it was a heavy period. I feel like people were afraid to be honest because I don't think that that was their experience. And now I've met thousands of women who have not had that experience. Of course, there are people who have that, but there's a scale of normal. And instead of telling us the scale, I was like, oh, this can't just be a heavy period. I already have heavy periods. How much heavier could it be? That's alarming. And so I was not prepared for having my miscarriage at home. And I wasn't prepared for the amount of blood. I wasn't prepared for the pain. Now that I have what feels like lived 10 lives, I recognize that what I experienced were contractions at home. It was very birth-like. And I think that it was really brushed off because pregnancy stopped growing at six weeks. But I think that there's a lot of factors that aren't taken into account whenever we think about pregnancy loss and I mean, I've had people who have the quote unquote, I say quote unquote chemical pregnancies, not because I don't think that they are real, because I don't like the term. I call them early miscarriages, is those can still be really heavy. And the consistency of the bleeding can be abnormal where it's really concerning. It's just across the board, we are so unprepared. So my goal has always been to be a resource or to provide that information a little bit easier for people because I couldn't find it. And I don't want people to not be able to find what they need

SPEAKER_01:

yeah and google isn't always your friend right but if you can find the right resource on google yeah which just sounds like you have a lot of information on your website that people can get educated rather than just reading of no offense to reddit but a reddit thread right it's maybe not the most educational information there

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. And so I do have a lot of people who find me from Googling specific key terms about miscarriage. And even on Reddit, there are people who have shared my resources there. So I feel good that even if somebody ends up on Reddit, there's still a chance that they get that information. I have made information for doctors and I've sent it to them for free. I'm like, please just give this to people. I don't even care. I don't care if I'm broke for my whole life. I just want people to know this stuff because I think about myself and the thought of somebody else feeling as hopeless as I felt, literally, that breaks my heart. I know that there are still people who don't have access to information because they're not thinking about Googling it or maybe it's happening so quickly. And I feel like those are the things that keep me going because I hate this is a reality for so many people.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, let's share with everybody where people can find you and how they can connect.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I guess the best way is my website is miscarriagedoula.co, not dot com. And Instagram is where I am most active. It's just Instagram at the Miscarriage Doula. I provide a lot of content there. I provide links to the free handouts and our support groups and things. So those are probably the two best places to find me.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. And I imagine a lot of your support groups are virtual or are they in person in North Carolina?

SPEAKER_00:

Everything we do is virtual. I do have in-person clients whenever they're local to me, but everything is offered virtually.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. Yeah, that's fantastic. Thank you so much for being on Arden. I feel like I learned a lot. I'm sure people that were listening learned a lot. So yeah, I really appreciate your time. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for tuning in to Redefining Us once again and share with other people so other people can continue to listen to Redefining Us and we can get into more listeners ears. If you follow us or subscribe or leave a comment or review, that'd be greatly helpful for other people to find us and also just for me to get some feedback. What do you guys want to hear me say? What do you women care about hearing? I'm totally open to Thank you so much for joining us today. So you can be in the know with all the things that are happening in the redefining us community. Once again, thank you so much for listening and keep being awesome.