Communicating Pregnancy Loss
Narrative as a Method for Change
Summary
The loss of a desired pregnancy or the inability to experience pregnancy are intensely personal phenomena; these losses are also, in our culture at least, extremely private. Communicating Pregnancy Loss is a collection of first-person narratives about the experience of pregnancy loss. Although there is no shortage of books that help prospective parents cope with an unintended pregnancy loss or ‘survive’ infertility, most of these books are authored by physicians or therapists and address pregnancy loss through the language of guidance. This book is different. It is the first of its kind because the contributors (primarily communication scholars but also healthcare personnel and other scholars from the social sciences) tell their story of loss in their own words, offering a diverse collection of narratives that span experience and identity. The authors employ various feminist theories, narrative theories, and performance theories as well as other well-known communication theories and concepts. The book’s narrative approach to writing about and thereby understanding pregnancy loss offers readers a method for changing the way pregnancy loss is understood personally, culturally, and politically.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the editors
- About the book
- Praise for Communicating Pregnancy Loss
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Foreword: The Sacred Number Four
- Acknowledgements
- Rachel
- Jay
- Introduction: The Politics of Pregnancy Loss
- Definition: Pregnancy Loss
- The Case for Pregnancy Loss Narratives
- Previous Studies: A Brief Overview of Pregnancy Loss Literature
- A Narrative Approach to Pregnancy Loss
- The Chapters
- Section 1: Pregnancy Loss and Social Support
- 1. Nine Years Later and Still Waiting: When Health CareProviders&’ Social Support Never Arrives
- Communicating With My Midwife After Losing My Baby
- Reflections on How Health Care Providers Can Provide Support to Grieving Women
- Time Does Not Heal All Emotional Wounds
- Wanting TMI (Too Much Information) but Getting NEI (Not Enough Information)
- Providing the “Right” Support at the “Right” Time
- Disconfirming Messages Create Distressful Situations
- Looking Toward a Healthy and Supportive Future
- 2. Honoring Stories of Miscarriage in the Medical Context:A Plea to Health Care Providers
- A Nagging Discontent
- A Narrative Medicine Approach
- The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Narrative Medicine
- The Aftermath
- Concluding Thoughts
- 3. Looking for Their Light: Advancing Knowledge andSupporting Women by Listening to Pregnancy Loss Narratives
- Jennifer’s Story—and Ann’s Story: 2003
- Michael: December 3, 2001
- Michael: Fall 2006
- Michael: February 2008
- Michael’s Story—and Barbara’s Story: Spring 2013
- Conclusion: Our Stories
- 4. Unscripted Loss: A Hesitant Narrativeof a Reconstructed Family
- Our Narrative
- Resisting Silence: Scripting Theory and Narrative Practice
- Section 2: When the Personal Is Professional
- 5. A Story We Can Live With: The Role of the Medical Sonographerin the Diagnosis of Fetal Demise
- Elissa: Experiencing Diagnosis via Ultrasound Examination
- Considering the Role of the Sonographer
- Jodi: Patients Respond in So Many Different Ways
- Responding to the Patient Whose Child has Genetic Anomalies
- Diagnosing Fetal Demise
- Acknowledging a Common Humanity
- A Story We Can Live With
- Elissa: Narrative Ethics and the Sonographer’s Role
- Notes
- 6. Searching for Grace
- 7. When the Professional Is Personal: Case Studiesof Pregnancy Loss, My Story of Pregnancy Loss
- 8. Infertility, Professional Identity, and Consciousness-Raising
- Note
- 9. Hidden in Plain Sight: Mystoriography, MelancholicMourning, and the Poetics of [My Pregnancy] Loss
- Since You Asked
- Crying in the Cat Box
- Dancing With the Dead
- Remembering Mother’s Day, 1999
- A Gift
- Momma Loves You
- Pink or Blue
- Parable: Metaphor for Method
- New Questions, Partial Responses
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Section 3: Space, Time, and Pregnancy Loss
- 10. On the Identity Politics of Pregnancy: An AutoethnographicJourney Through/In Reproductive Time
- 11. The Healing Journey
- Reflecting on the Journey
- 12. Once Upon a Time: A Tale of Infertility, In Vitro Fertilization, and (Re)Birth
- Separation
- Initiation
- How to Make a Child
- Return
- Eggsistential Crisis
- My Infertility Narrative as a Hero’s Journey
- Problems With Viewing My Infertility Narrative as a Hero’s Journey
- 13. The Empty Woman: Dealing With Sadness and Loss Aftera Hysterectomy
- My Narrative of The Empty Woman
- Reading the Operative Report: Shame
- Deciding to Have Surgery: Stress
- Leading Up to the Surgery: Singleness
- Watching Julie and Julia Post-Surgery: Surprise Sadness
- Teaching Classes Post-Surgery: Secrecy
- My Analysis of The Empty Woman
- Identifying Underlying Expectations
- Ideology of Choice
- Ideology of Romantic Partnership
- Ideology of Successful Independence
- Engaging in “Self-Making”
- A Marginalized Woman
- An Empty Woman
- Conclusion
- Section 4: Without the Sense of an Ending
- 14. Melancholy Baby: Time, Emplotment, and Other Noteson Our Miscarriage
- October 2010: Old Friends
- Friday, September 12, 2008
- Spring, 2009: Interpreter of Maladies
- Late Summer, 2009
- Saturday, September 13, 2008
- September 2008: Ritual
- February 7, 2010 (Super Bowl Sunday)
- Today
- Notes
- 15. Dying Inside of Me: Unexplained Recurrent Early Pregnancy Loss
- Loss #1: On the Way to Fetus but Stopped at Embryo
- Loss #4: The One That Got Stuck
- Loss #7: Another “Near Miss”
- 16. Moving Through Miscarriage: A Personal Narrative
- Sitting Up
- Crawling
- Falling Down
- Standing Still
- First Steps
- 17. Barren and Abandoned: Our Representations Left Unsharedand Uncharted
- Health and Fertility/Infertility
- Beginning Context
- Understanding Our Infertility Journey
- Julie’s and Eduardo’s Representations as (Patient) Parallel Charts
- Unshared, Uncharted Representations and Fragmented, Woeful Affiliation
- Notes
- Section 5: Reframing Loss
- 18. Cruel Optimism and the Problem With Positivity: Miscarriageas a Model for Living
- On (Not) Writing Experience
- Miscarriage as a Model for Living
- Notes
- 19. Turning Tragedy Into Triumph: A Hero&’s JourneyFrom Bereaved Parent to International Advocate
- Homeground
- Call to Adventure
- The Guides
- Hero’s Initiation
- Discovering Our Shield
- Council of Heroes
- Instruments of Power
- Confronting and Summiting With the Shadow
- Confronting Obstacles and Blocks
- Rewards and Renewed Homeground
- Conclusion
- 20. Breaking Through the Shame and Silence: A Media-Centered Approach to Consciousness-Raising
- Notes
- Afterword: How to Do Things With Stories
- Personal
- Cultural
- Political
- Note
- Biographies
- Editor Biographies:
- Contributor Biographies:
- Glossary of Terms
- Appendix: Pregnancy Loss in the Media
- Pregnancy Loss on Television
- Pregnancy Loss in Literature
- Pregnancy Loss in Film
- Celebrity Accounts of Pregnancy Loss
- References
- Index
- Series index
Acknowledgments
Together, we would like to thank all of the authors who have contributed to this collection. Without your voices, your time and your commitment, this book would have never been possible. We value your engagement with this project and to creating change in the way our world communicates pregnancy loss. In addition, we would like to specifically thank these authors: Michael Arrington, Maria Brann, Jennifer Bute, Jennifer Fairchild, Renata Ferdinand, Jennifer M. Hawkins, Rebecca Kennerly, Michaela Meyer, Julie Novak, Deleasa Randall-Griffiths, Elizabeth Root, Ben Walker, Julie Walker, and Lisa Weckerle, each of whom participated in a peer-strengthening process for each chapter. We would also like to thank the membership of the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender (OSCLG) who were instrumental in the growth of this project. We would especially like to thank Elaine Gale, Deborah Ballard-Reisch, Laura Ellingson, Jessica Elton, Robyn Remke, and Maggie Quinlan for their feedback and support of this project. And finally, we would like to thank the people at Peter Lang who made the book a reality. Thank you to our editor, Mary Savigar, who saw promise in our idea as we wandered through the National Communication Association’s book showcase pitching the idea of pregnancy loss to a number of presses. We would not have this book without your vision and belief in our project. Thank you to the production team, including Bernadette Shade and Phyllis Korper. And thank you to Gary Kreps, the series editor, for recognizing the importance of pregnancy loss in the realm of health communication.
My sister and my mother inspired this collection, and so I would like to thank you both. Your experiences initiated my quest for understanding the culture of loss, a culture I hope this book will help transform. I also want to thank the friends and family who shared their stories of loss with me as I shared with them my interest in better understanding the experience of pregnancy loss. And finally, I would like to thank my partner, Abby, for her compassion and support through the many hours, days, and months it took for this collection to be complete.
Jay
I’d first like to acknowledge Athena du Pré who has served as an unofficial mentor to me. Thank you for your kind words about my research. At DePaul University, the students who populated my “Narratives in Health Care” graduate seminar informed the Afterword with their thoughtful responses to the interdisciplinary world of narrative. I’d like to acknowledge Nikki Zaleski, Kate Bollier, Andrea Dixon, and Michelle Hill. Each time I investigate the communicative body (and its problems) I am compelled to consider those talented professionals who help me look after my own: Brian Stello, Virginia Vidoni, Britt Tagg, Charise Rogoski, and Samantha Lotti. Finally, my partner, Elissa Foster, has dedicated her health communication expertise, her fine writing and editing skills, and her love.
Introduction: The Politics of Pregnancy Loss
“The personal is political.” So said Carol Hanisch (1970) in the title of a short essay that examined the uses of consciousness-raising and crystallized the relationship among public issues, episodes of personal impact, biography, history, and feminism. Consciousness-raising (CR) was employed as a way of meeting, a method of gathering women together and sharing voices, and a way of verbalizing experiences around topics—such as sex discrimination, domestic abuse, and access to birth control. The power inherent in CR stems from the notion that giving voice to experience generates awareness. The women who populated those early CR groups would bear witness to each other and this action, this simultaneity of listening and speaking through storytelling, resulting not only in awareness, but also in political energy. As co-editors of this volume we—Rachel and Jay—believe that pregnancy loss is personal and political. And through this volume we give voice to a diversity of pregnancy loss experiences.
In this introduction to this volume, we offer some terminology related to pregnancy loss, we provide a rationale for this collection, and we situate the collection within the relevant body of literature of pregnancy loss scholarship. These sections are followed by a discussion of how narrative has been employed in the interdisciplinary field of health communication. We close this introduction with a preview of the chapters contained in this book.
Definition: Pregnancy Loss
Details
- Pages
- XVI, 351
- Publication Year
- 2015
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781433123962
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781453913840
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781454197713
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781454197720
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781433123979
- DOI
- 10.3726/978-1-4539-1384-0
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2014 (March)
- Keywords
- infertility identity experience story
- Published
- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2015. 351 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
