Actress Melissa Rauch, who stars on “The Big Bang Theory,” just announced her pregnancy today in a personal essay for Glamour. What should be celebrated about her announcement, besides the happy news, is the fact that she honestly opens up about her long struggle towards parenthood, particularly dealing with her miscarriage.
She starts the essays off saying the only statement that makes her feel honest is this:
“Melissa is expecting her first child. She is extremely overjoyed, but if she’s being honest, due to the fact that she had a miscarriage the last time she was pregnant, she’s pretty much terrified at the moment that it will happen again. She feels weird even announcing this at all, and would rather wait until her child heads off to college to tell anyone, but she figures she should probably share this news before someone sees her waddling around with her mid-section protruding and announces it first.”
Seeing other baby announcements, as you can imagine, was hard for Rauch, often making her question what was wrong with her–why she couldn’t have a child. Rauch describes the moments after her miscarriage as heartbreaking, as “one of the most profound sorrows I have ever felt in my life.”
The depression lingered, which many women can attest to. She went on to explain that as “a Jewish mother-to-be,” she couldn’t help but blame herself, and keep “replaying every day of the pregnancy up until that point over and over again, wondering if there was something I did that could’ve caused the miscarriage.”
For women who have dealt with the loss of a child or any kind of pregnancy loss, Rauch doesn’t sensationalize or sugarcoat what happened to her, but just tells it like it is–and there really isn’t anything more intimate and relatable than that.
She says it best here:
“Many times in my life I’ve been able to get through difficult situations by reminding myself of the classic adage: “Everything happens for a reason.” But as it turns out—for me, anyway—miscarriage was more of a “this straight-up f*cking sucks” situation. Some things just are. The simple acceptance of this reality actually proved to be the most helpful course of action for me. This was a below sea-level moment amongst the proverbial peaks and valleys of life. There was something very healing about simply acknowledging where I was, rather than trying to completely make sense of it or wrap my head around some cookie-cutter rationale. We all process grief differently. If you are dealing with prenatal loss, I hope you find something, anything, to bring you comfort (whether it’s planting a tree, having a small ceremony, or giving a big double middle finger to the universe). The unknown is a scary place, but it’s also where hope and possibility live. I’m trying as much as I can to embrace the reality of that uncertainty.”
To all expectant moms and moms who’ve went through traumas, we see you.
It’s important to feel seen and heard–and to be that anchor other moms need.
