Episode 41: Emily “Gwyneth Paltrow Rocked Apple” and She Doesn’t Want a Lemon Baby
Emily miscarried in March of 2021 and she struggled with how the experience felt so shameful. It was her job to keep him alive and growing, after all—right? Except, one of the worst parts about miscarriage is that it isn’t caused by the action, behavior, or even body of the pregnant person in the majority of cases, but despite this information, there’s still a lot of confusion and silence around this topic.
“Mention the baby” is written all over the hashtags for miscarriage and pregnancy loss because ohmygosh—do people really think mothers-to-be have forgotten and they might somehow need a reminder? Emily’s unborn son is always on her mind. Whenever someone says his name, her heart still rings with joy. Because so much of him *is* joy, and he brought more love than she knew possible. And now he's dead.
To hide his memory would take away the last bit of what Emily has left of that love. So, Emily has made one request: mention the baby.
Producer’s note: This episode felt apropos in light of fifty years of a legally enshrined right to abortion in the United States brought to an end after the Supreme Court overturned its landmark ruling made in 1973. The loss of Roe vs. Wade means that millions of women across the U.S. no longer have their right to an abortion guaranteed by the constitution, and Emily’s present and future career is impacted by this decision.
For the Love of Climbing is presented by Patagonia. Additional support is from deuter USA, Gnarly Nutrition, Allez Outdoor, Ocún, and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA).
Music is by Chad Crouch. Additional music is licensed by Music Bed.
Cover photo by Kika MacFarlane.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
(KATHY KARLO): This podcast is presented by Patagonia. Not bound by convention, Patagonia’s in business to save our home planet.
- This podcast is sponsored by deuter, one of the leading backpack brands that will help you hit the trails with confidence and comfort, but most importantly–your snacks.
deuter has a history of first ascents and alpine roots. Their head of product development even climbed Everest once, in jeans (hashtag not fake news.) deuter is known for fit, comfort, and ventilation. Founded in 1898, deuter believes in good fitting backpacks, so you can focus on way cooler things like puppies, pocket bacon, and gettin’ sendy, whether at the crag or in the alpine.
(FEMALE VOICE): Today we’re going to talk about “allez”. “Allez” means “come on!” in a way, or to encourage. Ok! We are done with the simple and normal uses of “allez”, now let’s cut to the chase:
(KATHY KARLO): Allez Outdoor Personal Care products are made by climbers for those who love the outdoors. Their rich and repairing ingredients for their skincare collection are inspired by desert landscapes, and their simple and recyclable packaging makes them eco-sustainable. Allez commits to protecting the open spaces that we love by partnering with the Access Fund and 1% for the Planet. That’s Allez Outdoor: “A-L-L-E-Z”). Allez Outdoor—made by climbers, for those who love the outdoors.
- This podcast gets support from Gnarly Nutrition, one of the leading protein supplements that tastes “whey” better than they need to, because they use quality natural ingredients. So, whether you’re a working mom who runs circles around your kids on weekends or an unprofessional climber trying to send that 5.13 in the gym, Gnarly Nutrition has all of your recovery needs.
The only question you need to ask yourself is: Are you a sucker for anything that tastes like chocolate ice cream? (Yeah, me neither.) Gnarly Nutrition is designed to enhance your progress—and taste like a milkshake, without all the crap.
(MALE VOICE): Ocún?
(bell dinging)
(FEMALE VOICE): No.
(MALE VOICE #2): Ocún?
(MALE VOICE #3): Nope.
(MALE VOICE #4): Ocún?
(MALE VOICE #3): Really?
(FEMALE VOICE #2): Ocún?
(NON-GENDERED VOICE): No!
(KK): Who is Ocún? More than prolific crack climbing gloves, Ocún has been making innovative gear engineered for climbing to improve your performance since 1998. Their climbing shoe designs are all original, developed and manufactured in Czech Republic and one hundred percent gender neutral. Beyond their sticky rubber, Ocún is renowned for their hardware, harnesses, and the biggest lightest crash pad on the market. Find your new favorite climbing shoes and accessories at Backcountry, Moosejaw, Camp Saver, and Amazon.
- This podcast is sponsored by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Because you listen to this show, we know that responsible recreation is important to all of you.
Increasing visitation and rapid expansion of human-powered recreation has adverse impact to the delicate desert ecosystem. What climbers and other recreationists need are more thoughtful land management plans, which can help minimize the impact of camping and recreating in fragile desert environments.
Help protect the places you love to climb by asking the Bureau of Land Management to better manage recreation. Visit suwa.org/recreation (that’s S-U-W-A) or text UTAH R-E-C to 52886 to get started and protect wild Utah.
- This episode talks about miscarriage and is told through the lens of Emily Young. We acknowledge that this one woman’s experience.
On June 24th, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade, ending the right to abortion. Take care of yourselves while listening, and reach out to trusted healthcare providers and professionals for help. Visit fortheloveofclimbing.com for additional resources regarding abortion rights.
(FEMALE NEWSCASTER): Fifty years of a legally enshrined right to abortion in the United States has been brought to an end after the country’s Supreme Court decided to overturn its landmark ruling made in 1973. It means that tens of millions of women across the U.S. do not have their right to an abortion guaranteed by the constitution and individual U.S. states are now legally entitled to ban the procedure.
Nearly half of America’s fifty states are expected to do so, and thirteen have already passed so-called “trigger laws”, which outlaw or severely restrict abortion automatically following the Court’s ruling. It is a momentous decision which has delighted and enraged Americans. While our North America registrar Sarah Smith is at the Supreme Court for us now, Sarah.
(SARAH SMITH): Protests have been growing here outside the Court all day as people absorb this dramatic news. Whether you agree with the ruling or not, this is a seismic moment in America, as almost five decades of guaranteed abortion rights have been immediately and totally reversed.
As they hear the news from the Court, there’s jubilation from anti-abortionists:
(crowd cheering)
(FEMALE VOICE #1): Life won today!
(second woman joins in)
Life won today!
(SS): “Life won today”, they chant, celebrating a victory after almost fifty years.
(crowd yelling and talking in the background)
(FEMALE VOICE #1): You know, I’ve seen the devastation abortion has wrought on our country on a communal level and on a personal level. And this—it’s so vindicating to know that we can now take tangible steps to lessen the violence of abortion in our country.
(crowd chanting)
(SS): Fury from those campaigning to keep the guaranteed right to abortion, promising to fight back.
(YOUNG FEMALE VOICE): It’s not the will of the people, and this country’s supposed to run off of the will of the people! I’m twenty-one and I’m terrified!
(YOUNG FEMALE VOICE): We have a lot of work to do to make that happen, but we will never give up.
(SS): It’s fifty years since there was last a significant decision on abortion rights in America and—
(YOUNG FEMALE VOICE): —and it might be another fifty more—
(SS): —and it might be another fifty.
(YOUNG FEMALE VOICE): —Sure. But we’re not gonna stop. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what they say—again, abortions will continue, they just won’t be legal and women will die from botched abortions.
(SS): It’s obvious; this ruling is not going to end the arguments over abortion in America. In fact, it will inflame them. In this deeply polarized society, abortion is already one of the most divisive issues. Even the president is powerless to change the Court’s ruling.
(RECORDING OF PRESIDENT BIDEN): With this decision, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court shows how extreme it is, how far removed they are from the majority of this country. It made the United States an outlier among developed nations in the world, but this decision must not be the final word.
(SS): Abortion rights have been fought over for decades.
(RECORDING OF MALE VOICE): Good evening. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions.
(SS): In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in the test case of Roe versus Wade that women must have access to abortion across America—a decision totally reversed today.
(RECORDING OF DONALD TRUMP): It is my profound honor to be the first president in history to attend the march for life.
(crowd cheering)
(SS): As president, Donald Trump deliberately appointed three pro-life Justices to the Court, making today’s ruling possible. He says, “God made the decision.” In fact, it was six of the nine judges.
(EMILY YOUNG): So, I’m Emily. I grew up in a navy family. So, the most interesting place I lived was Moscow, Russia when I was ten and eleven. But the best place I lived was Honolulu, Hawaii where I went to high school. I was really lucky that my dad got extended so I could finish high school there.
My husband and I were living in northwestern North Carolina in a little town of Piney Creek—five hundred and twenty people. Nobody—
(laughs)
—has ever made it to knowing that town. We met working at a kids adventure summer camp. And we lived there before we moved up here to Vermont on the border of New Hampshire for medical school, and I’m in my fourth year at Dartmouth.
(KK): My good friend Katie Bono reached out to me in June of 2021 about her friend and colleague, and four months later, I was driving across the country from Moab to Vermont to meet Emily and Bill for the first time.
(EY): We have to relocate because I’m going to residency next and there is no family medicine residency at Dartmouth. There are many great options. I wanna do rural and full-spectrum, which means from birth to death. So, family medicine doctors can deliver babies.
It doesn’t make a ton of sense always, when you’re in the middle of a big city, but when you live in a rural place where there are no OB GYNs—like, I did my family medicine rotation for med school in Valdez, Alaska and there are three family med docs who run the entire hospital.
They take care of the in-patients who aren’t so sick that they have to go to Anchorage, they run the ED, they deliver the babies, and then, they do all the out-patient visits. So, I’m gonna do something like that. And some of the good options include Idaho and Montana and West Virginia and Tennessee, Utah.
(laughs)
There are a lot of options. I’ve applied to seventeen.
(KK): The work that Emily is doing is deeply important, especially in light of this summer’s events. Currently, many providers are now afraid to prescribe medication such as misoprostol and mifepristone, however, pharmacies may be in danger of violating civil rights should they refuse these necessary medications linked to abortion.
Emily is changing the world, in several ways. Both through her work as a doctor and by sharing her story on this podcast. At the end of most interviews, I ask guests what does resilience mean to them? Here’s what Emily had to say:
(EY): Well, I just finished a palliative care elective that I created. I did the regular palliative elective last winter and I loved it! That’s care of critically ill patients. We worked with all these extra team members that I didn’t get to know very well, and I wanted to come back and work with them. So, I spent three weeks with the chaplains and the massage therapists and the visual artists and got to see a bunch of different team members.
And I was working with one of the social workers who spent a long time talking to me about post-traumatic growth. We talk a lot about post-traumatic stress and disorder, but I think one thing that we don’t always talk about is how people can have these really traumatic events in their lives and have growth from them. It doesn’t just have to be something that took them down—it can also bring you up.
That was her definition of resiliency. She had a nice little graph that showed—like, you kinda drop down from stress and aren’t doing very well. And then, you can stay down or you can come back to a little below where you were before, you can hit back where you were. And then, post-traumatic growth, or resiliency, is when you come back and you improve even better from the challenging experience.
(ALEX HONNOLD) (to himself): Ok, I’m Alex Honnold. You’re listening to the love of climbing podcast. It’s a funny, sad, somewhat uncomfortable podcast—
(louder)
I was like, “Wow, this is the opposite of my podcast. But, you know, here we go!”
(laughs)
(upbeat music)
“I’m Alex Honnold and you’re listening to For the Love of Climbing—”
—is it “to the”? Or “to—“ Do you say “to For the Love of Climbing Podcast”?
“I’m Alex Honnold and you’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast.”
Yeah. Yeah, I see it.
“You’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast. This is not a climbing podcast. Well, sorta. It’s a funny, sad, and somewhat uncomfortable podcast about choosing vulnerability. Here’s the show.”
Easy cheesy!
(KK): Hey—another quick heads up. Around minute twenty-nine, Emily discusses in-depth details about her miscarriage.
(EY): Oh, we’ve always known that we were gonna have kids. I think both of us have always known. A part of why I fell in love with Bill was he’s the first person I met that I thought to myself, “Oh! Having you parent my children would make them better—
(chuckles)
Like, most of the men—boys—who I had dated before had been like, “Oh, you would be hard to raise a child with.”
(laughs)
You kind of are one yourself.”
(KK): Yeah, raising you!
(both laugh)
(EY): Yeah. And Bill—I mean, I think it maybe helped that I met him working at a kid’s summer adventure camp and saw him from the get-go working with kids, and I was like, “Wow, you are really good at this in ways that I am not. I would love to raise kids with you.”
(KK): Mm, what kind of ways?
(EY): He is very calm and very self-assured and just has this way about him that he convinces other people that everything’s gonna be ok. He is incredibly responsible. If you tell him to do something or you put a challenge in front of him, you know for certain that it’s going to get done. He is going to make it happen, he is going to make you ok.
Never complains! Like, will give up his extra layers and extra snacks to whomever it is that he is taking care of, whether that’s the camp kids or me or our group of friends. He takes care of people really well without ever feeling like you’re an imposition. He doesn’t let you see him shiver.
(laughs)
He doesn’t talk about being hungry until we’re in front of the burger at the end of the day. Yeah, I think he makes people more adventurous because they feel so secure that he will be there to catch them.
We have been married for a little over three years—together for seven, and have always talked about our future including kids and, “Oh, when we have kids” this and “When we have kids” that. And I was surprised at how much societal pressure I didn’t realize I was feeling to not get pregnant before marriage, because after we were married, I was like, “Whoa, now I really wanna have kids!”
(laughs)
And we got married right before I headed off to med school. And so, for the past three years I’ve been having conversations with classmates and with people in administration and just figuring out—how can this fit in? And there’s a lot of traveling for clinical rotations, and that would have been a hard time to have a small child around. So, I think we were always planning on trying to have a kid after the travel of third year wrapped up.
(KK): Emily’s life wasn’t always clinical rotations or regretting every single nap she passed up as a child. Before school, Emily’s adventures with Bill went beyond summer camp.
She was introduced to climbing at Devils Tower when she was younger, and later, she and Bill went back and climbed the Durrance Route to the summit. Last summer, they climbed the Diagonal in the Adirondacks, and in 2016, Bill proposed to Emily while they were climbing in the Linville Gorge.
(EY): And I was looking in the top of his pack—we always carry a ziplock full of toilet paper. And this time, it was a hell of a lot of toilet paper.
(laughs)
And I remember going through the top of the backpack, grabbing out random stuff, and seeing this ziplock that’s stuffed full of toilet paper! And I was like, “Whoa, is your belly doing ok? What’s up with you today?” And it turns out, before he proposed that he had wrapped the ring box in all of the toilet paper. So, good thing I didn’t need to poop that morning.
(both laugh)
(KK): Bill and Emily have had a lot of adventures, some climbing and others not. But between both of their schedules, they manage to make time to climb.
One crag, in particular, became one of Emily’s favorite places to visit. The walls weren’t particularly tall, maybe fifty feet at most. There are a couple of sport routes, a couple of topropes, and just one little trad climb. But this little crag that was only thirty minutes away from their home started to mean something.
(EY): Each time we’ve gone there, we’ve seen a ton of people with little kids everywhere from like, I don’t know—maybe a three-month-old baby to five-year-olds. And it’s got a good area for people to park blankets and sit and watch and talk and climb.
And so, I felt a lot of hope when we’ve been there before about like, “Ah! Look. People are still out here doing this. You can keep climbing with kids.” I love the big long adventure days, but it’s ok if there’s a few years where we just hang out at the side of a little crag with our kids.
(KK): It wasn’t a world-class destination by any means, but the fact that it signified that Bill and Emily could start a family and keep climbing in their lives meant everything.
Emily started climbing in 2014. She loved big, long, adventurous trad climbs, but she also wanted to become a mom. This climbing area was on the way home from her OB’s office, where she and Bill would visit many times during the end of 2020 and 2021.
(EY): My first miscarriage was on December second. I was five weeks pregnant—had only told Bill. We were thrilled. We’d gotten pregnant on our first try, and I have a very cute video on my phone that I’m never gonna get rid of, of me telling Bill that we were pregnant by putting a pacifier in the dishwasher—his job is to unload the dishwasher. And him being like, “What’s this doing in there?”
(laughs)
He was confused for a little bit longer than I expected. And him saying, “Well, that was really easy!”
(laughs)
That phrase! We were so naive. That one—
(inhales)
—losing the baby who we call “Poppy” —because, in my head, she’s a little girl. That’s who I picture, so I use the word “she” but we don’t know what gender. She was the size of a poppy seed, going on an apple seed. And we were planning the future and already loved her, but also, we were kinda scared. This is our first time being pregnant. We were like, “Holy cow, this did happen a lot faster than we expected!”
And nobody else knew that we were pregnant or had started trying to get pregnant. A couple of close friends and my sister knew that we wanted to have kids during medical school, and so, I reached out to a handful of people when I was having the miscarriage. And people were really nice and supportive, but it wasn’t a lot of people.
(KK): Miscarriage is actually a lot more common than most people know; it’s why many couples delay announcing pregnancy until the end of their first trimester. Miscarriage isn’t caused by the action, behavior, or even the body of the pregnant person in the majority of cases, but despite this information, there’s still a lot of confusion, silence, and shame around this topic.
Emily was already on her palliative elective when she miscarried for the first time and kept going to work, grateful to be busy and for the ability to dive in and take care of patients. And then, something happened: Emily got pregnant immediately afterward, which was both great and really difficult. At the time, Emily had an OB rotation in Concord and then flew to Alaska.
(EY): I was in Alaska the next four weeks of my pregnancy by myself, and I slowly started to believe that we were gonna get to keep this baby. I remember some really great ultrasound moments, like watching the little baby flip and wiggle on the screen. I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s mine!”
And then, Bill flew out to meet me when I was twelve weeks pregnant. We had a really wonderful vacation for a week in Alaska, and we went into some gift shops and we were picking out the things that said “Alaska” and “Grandma” on them—so that we could tell our parents.
And I don’t know if I knew, but I know that I was nervous. I’d been so, so excited to just get this ultrasound and get the picture and send everything to people. But then, kind of on Friday or Saturday when we got home, I started being nervous and like, “I don’t really wanna go to this, I know I have to go to this, it’s gonna be ok; I don’t wanna go to this, I’m scared about this.”
And I wanted Bill to come with me, but they had the Covid policy and you couldn’t have a support person—you had to go alone. And I was trying to get Bill on the phone so that he could listen while we had our ultrasound, since he couldn’t be there. I was struggling with wifi and reception down in, kind of, in the bowels of the hospital.
(KK): Bill and Emily had returned home to Vermont from Alaska. The test was scheduled for a Monday. Emily and Bill would mail the photos of their now-larger baby to parents and friends to announce their pregnancy. In Alaska, watching her belly grow and grow, Emily had become so sure.
But then, Monday came. Emily felt tiny and her stomach was in knots. She asked the technician if she could record it for Bill, but no videos, he said. “We’ll get you plenty of pictures,” he promised. He was cheerful. Emily was still anxious. The technician did a couple of sweeps of her abdomen and then stood up. Back in a flash, she was told. A new technician came in, much less cheerful.
Emily had performed dating and anatomy ultrasounds on patients before, and in the back of her mind, she knew that they shouldn’t have any trouble finding her thirteen-week-old baby. The technician moved quickly as she scanned Emily’s belly. She moved left, and then right. And Emily knew.
(EY): And I was asking her, “Can I please make sure that I get some pictures for my husband? I’m so sad that he can’t be here.” And she was like, “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
So, I think I knew that something was wrong. I was also watching on the screen and I remember thinking to myself, “Why is my baby so blurry?” And she was really quick, and then, she put out the doppler calibers that measures movement and you see a pattern for the heartbeat and you measure the distance between the pattern to get the rate—the heart rate.
(inhales)
And she just turned that little tool on for a second and a half and turned it off, and I was like, “Well, that was dumb! You need to go longer to measure the heart. It was all static. There wasn’t any pattern. You weren’t even on the heart.” What was she doing?
And then she brought the radiologist in with her, and I don’t think the radiologist even got out the “I’m so sorry” bit. I knew. And I screamed and cried and...
(Emily trails off)
Alone is a good word because so few people know, especially depending on the timing of your miscarriage. So few people share their experiences, so you don’t know who to turn to, who might relate.
(pauses)
The healthcare system often doesn’t have anything to do to help you when you’re having a miscarriage, and there’s not too much to do during or after the experience. So, you go from expecting all this support from your healthcare providers to it being gone.
I think, because so few people share about their experiences, there are fewer resources than I would have expected.
(pauses)
Yeah. Alone is a good word.
Miscarriage is difficult, in part, because there’s almost never a reason given. And when you don’t know why it happened, you run through all of the possibilities. And almost all of them either lead back to random unlucky chance, which is hard to accept because it means there’s nothing you can do to prevent it in the future, or it goes back to you.
There’s an impossibly long list of do’s and don’ts for pregnancy. Don’t eat lunch meat—but actually, the real major cause of listeria is sprouts—so, don’t eat green, leafy things, anyways. Don’t have raw fish or cured meats. Don’t sleep on your back! But when do we start the “don’t sleep on your back” bit? Don’t drink a drop of alcohol—but also, people in France drink and—who knows?
There’s just so, so many things that you’re supposed to do or not do while you’re pregnant—exercise! How much is too much? Is there a level? And there’s nobody else you could possibly blame for your baby dying. It’s a random, unlucky, terrible chance—or it’s you fault.
The reassuring thing about it being my fault is that, if it’s my fault—something that I did, that means there’s something that I can do in the future to prevent it. And if it’s terrible, random chance—there’s nothing I can do. Both feel awful—the self-blame and the “it being totally out of control”. So, I think a lot of us choose the blame route.
(KK): Around minute twenty-nine contains graphic description of Emily’s miscarriage.
(EY): I would like to share this bit just because it was surprising to me and I didn’t know it was going to happen. So, James had died only a couple of days before the ultrasound. So, he was large. He was like a twelve week plus sized baby—fits in one hand, but fills up a hand.
But he was right on the edge of whether to have him at home or in the hospital. When babies are sixteen weeks and above, you definitely have them in the hospital and there are a lot of policies in a variety of hospitals that, I think, make that less terrible than it already is.
For example, so, if James had been sixteen weeks in size, I would have had him at the hospital. Nurses would have cared for me like any other laboring mom. Depending on the hospital, he may have gotten a birth certificate or a death certificate with his name written on it. Somebody would have done little baby footprints and little baby handprints.
At Dartmouth Hitchcock, they have a photographer on call who, when there’s a baby that’s dead going to be born, they’ll come in and take nice photos of the baby. And all of these things Dartmouth Hitchcock puts into a memory box. Oh, there’s little gowns to swaddle them in or little cradles that are knitted, depending on the size of the baby.
And all of this stuff gets saved. And most parents choose to take it home with them. Some parents say, “No, thank you. You hang onto it.” And they’ll hang onto it for up to a year. And the nurse who runs this program told me that every single patient who has declined to take it home has called them within a month and said, “Actually, I would like this stuff, please.”
I, however—my baby was small enough that it was reasonable to miscarry at home. There are three options. One is you can do expectant management, which is just—you expect that this will work itself out on its own and eventually, your body will figure out that the baby is dead, and you’ll start bleeding and all the products of conception will come out.
There is medical management, which is, “I don’t wanna wait. I just wanna do that now.” There are a couple of options for medications you can take that’ll dilate your cervix and start making you bleed and everything will come out. And then, there’s surgical management, which is going in to get a dilation and evacuation, or dilation and curettage, where they scrape everything out and you’re asleep for that procedure.
I chose the middle one—I feel more comfortable in my home and I don’t know how I realized this, but I just knew that I wanted to see him, and you don’t get that option with the surgical management. I also knew that I was not gonna wait. Like, it’s not alive. It doesn’t feel the same as my baby—I want it out.
What they didn’t tell me is what to expect—
(laughs)
It is totally fine—there are so many ranges of “everything is fine to do”, but I think it’s really helpful to know the options. It is totally fine at whichever gestation you are to just let everything fall into the toilet and flush it without looking. That is completely ok.
It is also fine, which I was grateful to know about from diving into the miscarriage world after losing Poppy, that if your baby is six or seven weeks or bigger, it might be large enough that you can catch it. So—like, grab a colander or whatever you want, and you can stick that underneath you on the toilet seat and it will catch what comes out.
Yeah, at eight weeks around the size of a blueberry, you might be able to start seeing stuff from that size on. And so, that’s what I did ‘cause I wanted to see James. I wanted to hold him, I wanted to bury him. But it’s totally, again, totally fine to flush whatever comes out—I did not wanna do that.
So—misoprostal, which you can take it orally, but things work a lot better and faster if you take it vaginally. It was a terrible, awful night of lots of cramping and puking and shitting, ‘cause those are side effects of the misoprostal. But around two something in the morning, something felt different and my water had broken, and it was pretty quick after that.
And he came out. I rinsed everything out in the sink from the colander and he was laying there, the size of a peach. He fit in my hand. I took a couple of pictures because I know some pathologist friends and I wanted to see like, “Do you notice anything about him?”
One big downside of having him at home was that I couldn’t send his body to pathology to get them to take a look and see what his chromosomes were. If I had done the surgical option, the D&C or D&E, I could have had that.
(MALE VOCALIST):
Morning birds
Honeycomb
Glad you left me with all your poems
Sorry now
Doesn’t work
Flowers blooming in the dirt
I don’t wanna break
Nothin’ I could change
Shadows fall
In the light
God I wish we didn’t fight
What I have
Yet to learn
How to rest on the money burned
Try to run away
Nothin’ I could change
Try to run away
Each new day has a sun
Closer now than it was, this time
While I’m here
You’re my ghost
This haunted house has become a home
(EY): Then I wrapped him up in a washcloth, and Bill came in and Bill was helping me, and it took a lot longer ‘cause the placenta had to be delivered and there was a lot of bleeding after that still.
And I still do think it’s kind of crazy that they’d send me home to do all of this without any instructions about what to expect. I know I’m a medical student, I know I should know a lot of this, but it’s different when you’re a patient.
But then, yeah. I wrapped James up. I went back into bed. I left him sitting on the sink wrapped up in a washcloth, all covered up. Babies’ bones haven’t hardened by then, so they’re kinda weird baby shaped. But they’re all cartilage, so they’re really jello-y and wiggly. And I just—I was feeling terrible and didn’t know what to think and so, I wrapped him up in a washcloth and I left him sitting on the sink.
When Bill and I got up in the morning, I knew I had to go back to the doctor’s office to get a rhogam shot, which is if your blood type can be A or B or AB or O, and if you’re negative, you need rhogam to make sure you don’t make antibodies against the next baby—if it were positive and the other one was positive—anyway.
(KK): Emily and Bill woke up the next day and brainstormed where they should take him. Where would be a good spot? And on the way to Emily’s OB was their crag, the place where they had had so many fond memories and dreams of their own. They both thought it would be the best spot to bring James, and so they did.
(EY): Bill had a great idea to stop at the co-op and buy some flowers. I had James still wrapped up in his washcloth, and we left him in the car while we went in for my rhogam shot. And then, driving home—we had plenty of time. We had the flowers, we had him—found a spot, I think, far enough out of the way that no dogs would find him.
We brought a little, tiny trowel that our friend had given us back in Yosemite and we told him that we loved him so much. I planted a lot of flowers each time I went to visit. And each time we went, we planted more flowers and tried to make this little meadow grow. And they were all from the Vermont Wildflower Company, so they were all native Vermont plants.
And then, this is a bit that I hadn’t told you, yet. I think, mid to late June, we went back to visit and somebody had put up “no trespassing” signs and had ripped all of that down and squashed everything. And I still struggle a lot with the guilt from that—the “if I hadn’t dreamed so big, if I had just stuck with that one daffodil plant, nobody would have known.”
But I really wanted this nice little spot where people could sit and a lot of flowers were growing. And it didn’t seem to—I didn’t think it would be hurting anybody.
Bill was really helpful in going home and looking up what was going on with that little crag, and it turns out that they had been having issues with squatters—non-climbers and people who were just living there and, I assume, probably not treating it super well. And so, I think—I hope that we were just caught in the middle of something unfortunate.
I still really don’t think that anybody would’ve minded some flowers and—
(laughs lightly)
—a little stone spot to sit.
That day, in June, when we came back and found that everything had been destroyed, that was maybe the second worst moment of my life. And I don’t really understand why I did this or how I did this, but I reached down on the ground right where his daffodil plant had been and I imagined that I was scooping him up.
(pauses)
I couldn’t leave him in a place where somebody was destructive and angry, so I imagined that I was scooping up his little soul and I carried him with me as Bill drove us back towards our house. But I also knew that I couldn’t have the feeling or the thought of having his soul inside our house
That would be too much, and I had to put him down. If I didn’t put him down somewhere—I just knew I couldn’t do that. And so, I had Bill stop by the river next to our house and talked to James again and imagined putting his soul—putting him down into the river and letting him be free and adventurous, and all the waterways are connected.
So, I guess in one way, it’s nice that I don’t feel too tethered to this area—that I think it will be easier now to move when we have to move for residency. That I can just imagine that he can go anywhere he wants to and to visit him and love him, I don’t have to go back to this one spot.
(KK): We’re going to take a short break. We’ll be back.
- The scale of climate change can make an individual feel hopelessly small, and Molly Kawahata knows this feeling well. As a former climate advisor to the Obama White House and an alpine climber with dreams of big summits, Molly dedicated her life to taking on seemingly insurmountable challenges. But it’s her personal struggle with mental health that gives her a profound understanding of how to harness the power of the mind to create change.
“The Scale of Hope” follows Molly as she prepares for an expedition in the Alaska Range while working to create a new climate narrative that centers her favorite question—What can I do to help? It’s a story about struggle, hope, and what it will take to solve the greatest issue of our time.
Go to Patagonia.com/climbing, or visit the Patagonia YouTube channel to watch “The Scale of Hope”, streaming now.
(EY): Yeah, I was just surprised at how little is out there. There’s Still Standing Magazine—it’s an online magazine that has since stopped publishing and doing stuff. I would love to send them some writing! They have a lotta really great things that are written—only a couple of them are really about the experience of like, the moment of having a baby be born that was dead, and what do you do with it afterwards?
I think that I am different than some people in how interested I am in the logistics of things—like, I wanna know: how does this work, though? How do we get from A to B? It’s also really helpful to know the details of what to expect and, like I said before, I think I make better decisions when I know what to expect.
And, obviously, as you can tell, this is really hard to talk about and really hard to share, but I hope that there are some other people who might be reassured—‘cause there was some writing that I read and the very details lining up and feeling that similarity made me feel less alone.
There was one woman who wrote about her baby who was bigger and kept in a “cuddle cot”, which is a cooling cradle for the baby to keep its body colder and prevent it from decomposing too soon. So, you can have a day or two with it.
(sniffs)
And I remember her talking about how worried she was that her baby was cold and needing to warm them up and keep them safe, while also realizing you can’t. The baby’s dead—it’s ok that it’s cold.
And I had a really hard day when it was a very cold and rainy and wet day and being like, “But what if James is out there alone and cold?” And knowing it doesn’t matter—but also, it does matter, in my heart.
(KK): Emily’s right—it does matter. And it also doesn’t. And—the point is that grief around miscarriage is going to look different for everyone. Considering how common miscarriage is, the lack of information available to pregnant people, mothers, and parents-to-be is still so limited. Emily is one of many women out to change that.
(EY): I think I wish I knew what the three options were and what would happen to my body. I’m really grateful that I knew about the colander option—to be able to catch your baby if you want to look at them.
It’s also ok—I wanna throw this in there—if you do catch your baby to look at them, you can put them back in the toilet. Like, that is fine too! You don’t have to go out and bury them—there’s a whole spectrum of options, and all of them are fine. Whatever seems to sit best with you and your family.
I feel like there were a lot of things that we didn’t cover in medical school. Certainly, nobody told me that you could catch your baby if you wanted to or that there were burial options that would be pretty cheap. That was not covered. And I think that those would be really helpful.
I’ve heard stories from other women who have miscarried or had stillbirths and the large end of the spectrum of providers who made such a difference ‘cause they were really wonderful and helpful and had all the right things to say and offer. And then, providers who just had no fucking clue and said really unhelpful, awful things.
I guess you were maybe asking about this earlier, about how can people be actually helpful and supportive—allowing the grief. The people who told me, “This is horrible. I am so sorry and I am here with you.” Those were the people who made me feel like my grief was real and allowed and there was space for it, and that made all the difference—they were the safe people to be around and talk to.
Offering very small, immediate ways of making things helpful—like, bringing dinner. That’s a great way of an actionable way to improve things. But all of the talking about, “Oh, this is how it’s gonna be ok,” or “This is why it wasn’t that bad,” or “At least, look on the bright side here,”
“Oh, it’s ok. We’ll get you another one.” —is a great answer for when you spill your coffee. It is not an ok answer for when you lose a baby!—that just diminished how much that sucked in the moment. And—it’s great if you spill your coffee—not if your baby dies.
(KK): Almost like a knee-jerk reaction, the righting reflex is the strong urge to offer the solution to someone else’s problem. It’s that urge to make someone or something “right”, to fix them. As healthcare providers, Emily and so many others have been trained to know what’s best for patients. And, thank god for that. But from losing James, Emily has learned a lot about grief.
(EY): I also really struggled with the righting reflex. I had one lovely hospice patient who told me that she just wanted to die already, and I had no idea what the heck to say—
(laughs)
—to that. And so, I tried to rope her back into the Randy Travis book that we were reading out loud together. And then, after losing James, last month I had a patient come in who was pretending things were ok, but I could tell that they weren’t. And I asked her about it, and her grandfather had just died a few days prior. And he had lived with her; they were really, really close.
And after going through this and experiencing firsthand helpful and not-so-helpful responses, and learning from a really wonderful online community, I have a better sense of—“Oh, I don’t need to make this better. I can’t fix this. I can just tell you I’m so sorry.”
And one of the best gifts that people have given me for James was asking for me to tell them about him. And so, I asked her to tell me about her grandfather and what are some of your best memories with him?She was crying, but also smiling and laughing as she shared some about him teaching her how to ride a bike. I feel like I have a better handle on grief now and I’m very grateful to my babies for teaching me that.
Ok, so brief tangent about babies and fruits: we keep using fruit comparisons throughout all the apps for what size the baby is at what week. And before we picked James, we were calling him our “Peach” because he was the size of a peach when he died.
And I had a meltdown in the car one day driving home—like, called Bill sobbing. I was like, “I can’t have another baby named after a fruit! I “Gwenyth Paltrow-rocked-Apple” and I don’t got that! I don’t want an apple baby! I don’t want a lemon baby!”
(laughs)
So, we decided that the next time we got pregnant, if that baby died, we would name it “Bowen”. Sort of like our rainbow baby, ‘cause even if this one doesn’t make it, it’s still our rainbow baby.
But, on that note, we also have some good news, which is that I’m seventeen weeks pregnant now and things are going really well. We got our chromosome testing and it’s all normal. Baby’s growing, length is right on track. I started feeling it move, which is a really funny feeling!
(laughs)
Initially, there were a lot of moments I was like, “Ooh, am I about to have some really bad gas?” Like, “No, no. Oh! Oh, that’s a baby—that’s not gas.”
(KK): Emily now wonders how many other surprising flowers she’s hiked past that are actually a memorial to a beloved pet or miscarried child. And she and Bill will always have that crag, and the short but powerful time with their son James.
Emily continues to honor that time, and the knowledge and empathy she’s gained from James and Poppy, as she trains to be a full-spectrum rural doctor. On March 19th, she matched to her top choice as an attendee to the Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana. She, Bill, Bec, and five-month-old Theodore moved to Missoula, Montana this summer.
(EY): The hospital likes to use the first day of your last menstrual period, which puts our baby in early to mid-March—March seventh. But the ovulation strip, which I argue are probably more accurate—‘cause my periods were all over the place after losing James, puts this baby’s due date on James’ birthday. So, exactly one year later.
Yeah! We’ll see when it shows up. I kinda would like to have a day that’s just for James. But I also do appreciate that this feels a little bit like James and Poppy sending this baby to us.
(iPhone rings)
(EY): Hello!
(KK): Hi!
(EY): Hello.
(KK): Hi, how are you? How’s the baby doing?
(EY): So, Theodore is now four and a half months old. And he is growing just as he should. He’s smiling, he’s laughing—we’re having a lotta fun. I’m really grateful that my husband is a phenomenal stay-at-home-dad—
(Kathy laughs)
—and he’s also been a really good baby for adventures. We’ve taken him rafting a bunch of times, ‘cause Missoula has some amazing rivers right downtown. And we’ve taken him climbing—we’ve made it work. It’s certainly been an adventure and a learning curve with a baby, but we’ve gotten outdoors climbing with him!
(KK): You’re amazing.
(EY): There are also some difficult logistics when it comes to nap time.
(KK): Mm.
(laughs)
I mean, yeah. To be fair, when I go out cragging—I always wanna take a nap.
(Emily laughs)
I understand, Baby Theo!
(EY): It’s also been really great—I’m at a wonderful program with people whose values and time outside of work aligns with mine. I’m really, really happy here. And I’m really lucky that I’m at a RHEDI program, which is reproductive health education and they guarantee that I will get training in abortion. And that is really important to me because abortion is healthcare.
I remember vividly how, even though I loved James with all of my heart, once I found out he was dead, I immediately wanted him out of my body. And the idea of waiting an extra eighteen hours for a possible D&C or surgery to get him out was not acceptable when the alternative was—I could go to CVS and get medication right now and start the process of getting him out.
So, even though managing miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy is not abortion, these laws are really concerning for healthcare providers and, in some places, providers are becoming uncomfortable managing those because you prescribe the same medications and you do the same procedures.
But our program luckily is also already strongly contingency planning just in case it becomes illegal in Montana. We’re getting a lot of folks from other states coming in, and I’m really grateful that we’re able to serve those people—I’m sorry that they have to travel so far.
So, I went online and got myself some abortion medication so I could have them at home. It’s called Advanced Provision of misoprostol and mifepristone. Aid Access and Forward Midwifery are two places that you can get Advanced Provision of medications for abortion online. Also—I gave you that link for Plan C pills, which is another great place to find how you can get abortion medication online. It took eleven days before they were at my doorstep.
(KK): Mm.
(EY): And I can’t imagine being in the same position if I had another baby die inside me and having to wait that long, or having to search for a provider who feels comfortable providing me those meds, or to even have to travel across multiple states. So, I feel more comfortable now, having them at home and I think that this will become a more normal thing.
(KK): Yeah. Yeah, it’s been such a powerful experience for me, personally. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you speaking so candidly and the importance of it, too—especially right now.
I guess I have one last question: What gives you hope, right now? You talked about what you feel grateful for in this situation—what gives you hope?
(EY): I am hugely impressed with my class of co-residents and my whole program. The faculty and the residents there, as well as the staff, are incredibly supportive of us getting this training and taking care of our patients—because abortion is healthcare. And people—doctors, providers—will push really hard to be able to still serve their patients.
(KK): Yeah. Yeah. You’re doing amazing work. I just am so grateful there are people like you that exist, Emily.
(laughs)
Like, truly.
(EY): Thanks, Kathy.
(KK): The work that Emily is doing is deeply important. Visit fortheloveofclimbing.com for additional resources regarding miscarriage and abortion rights.
Resources for Pregnancy Loss Patients + Abortion Resources
Support Groups:
Hope After Loss, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support Group, Wednesdays at 8PM, Zoom: www.hopeafterloss.org/online-support
Rachel’s Gift, Thursdays at 7PM, Zoom, and links to in-person support groups by state: www.rachelsgift.org/infant-loss-support-groups
Postpartum Support International, Pregnancy and Infant Loss for Moms, Fridays at 1:30PM and 4PM: www.postpartum.net/get-help/psi-online-support-meetings/
Share, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support Group, 1st, 2nd, and 4th Tuesday of the month from 8PM-10PM, chat format: nationalshare.org/online-support/
Online Magazines:
Still Standing Magazine, for all who are grieving child loss and infertility.
Sharing Magazine, pregnancy and infant loss support.
Refuge in Grief (all grief—not specific to pregnancy loss).
Glow in the Woods, for baby-lost mothers and fathers.
Still Mothers, living childless after loss.
Personal Blogs:
Podcasts:
Life After Miscarriage (Note: many episodes more birth stories after loss than about the loss itself.)
Books:
I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, a Movement, by Jessica Zucker. Psychologist’s story of her 16wk miscarriage at home and healing; very inclusive of all people and experiences.
If You Really Knew Me: A Memoir of Miscarriage and Motherhood by Mary Purdie.
Holding on to Love After You’ve Lost a Baby by Gary Chapman PhD and Candy McVicar. Trigger warning: pro-life near the beginning.
From Father to Father: Letters from Loss Dad to Loss Dad, edited by Emily R. Long
Three Minus One: Stories of Patents’ Love and Loss, edited by Sean Hanish and Brooke Warner.
They Were Still Born: Personal Stories about Stillbirth, edited by Janel C. Atlas
Surviving Miscarriage, You are Not Alone. Hints for Healing: A 30 Day Plan to Guide You Step-by-Step to Emotional Recovery by Stacey McLaughlin, PhD. Typical self-help structure.
Celebrating Pregnancy Again: Restoring the Lost Joys of Pregnancy After the Loss of a Child, by Franchesca Cox.
Empty Arms by Sherokee Ilse
Empty Cradle Broken Heart by Deborah L. Davis
Healing Your Grieving Heart for Teens by Alan D. Wolfelt. For teenage parents.
The Next Place by Warren Hanson. For siblings.
Lifetimes by Mellanie and Robert Ingpen. For siblings.
How I Feel: A Coloring Book for Grieving Children by Alan D. Wolfelt. For siblings
The Fall of Freddie the Leaf: A Story for Life for All Ages by Leo Buscaglia. For siblings.
Courses:
Thirty-day, daily, online writing course on grief ($165) with other participants and frequent debriefs: https://refugeingrief.com/writing-your-grief/
There is also an at-your-own-pace solo version ($99): https://gumroad.com/l/wyg-solo
10-page PDF workbook of prompts to get you to draw and write and answer the same ten pages as many times as you want ($10): https://refugeingrief.com/shop/#shop-wyg
How to Support Someone Grieving:
Basic overview with a 4min video about sitting with someone else’s grief and pain: Refuge in Grief
How to Help a Grieving Friend: 11 things to do when you’re not sure what to do.
Counseling:
Miss Foundation | The MISS Foundation provides support for families struggling with traumatic grief. They provide Family Support Packets with information and resources for bereaved parents, grandparents and siblings. Upon request, they can connect you with a volunteer HOPE mentor.
Handouts for Patients:
Additional resource list: Hope After Loss
Saying Goodbye (helps normalize actions in pregnancy loss)
Remembering Your Baby (ideas for things parents can do)
Additional Resources:
Bedsider is an online birth control support network for women 18-29 operated by Power to Decide, the campaign to prevent unplanned pregnancy. Power to Decide works to ensure that every young person has the power to decide if, when, and under what circumstances to get pregnant—increasing their opportunity to pursue the future they want.
Reproductive Access for medical information.
Plan C provides up-to-date information on how people in the U.S. are accessing at-home abortion pill options online.
Laura Borichevsky, for sex education and activism.