The charmed life isn't always so charmed

Lily Allen's angsty lyrics about heartbreak and deadbeat boyfriends may have made her an international success but in a candid interview, she talks for the first time about her widely publicised miscarriage:

"I couldn't even compute the emotions going through my head, but I was having to put out a press release about my miscarriage... I had this public sympathy for about five days and then everyone was on my case again and I didn't know what was happening to me… I just didn't deal with it at all. I didn't even start beginning to deal with it until the baby's due date. Then it just hit me like a house collapsing. I have therapy on and off but at that time it really helped me. Then I started to deal with it and move on. I still get sad. I still think. I don't mark (what would have been) my baby's birth but it's always there. […] I've had really bad, unbelievably awful times, but if I hadn't had them I wouldn't get the happiness I've got now. I'm very grateful because I could have turned down a very different path. It could have been awful. It really could."

Although I said in an earlier post that miscarriage isn't a news item (and it isn't), I think it's a great step forward for famous women to acknowledge that the a celebrity life is not always happy or easy or glamorous. On the same note, Sarah Jessica Parker spoke to Parade magazine and acknowledged that post-baby weight loss is very hard for 'real' women. "I hear a lot of actresses pretend they don't have help, and that can't be true," she says." It's really unfair to working women in America who read celebrity news and think, 'Why can't I lose weight when I've had a baby?' Well, everyone you're reading about has money for a trainer and a chef. That doesn't make it realistic. They don’t have the kind of help that I have if I need it," Parker tells PARADE. "I’m allowed to be a working mother because frankly, I can leave my child with someone I trust and love and a lot of mothers can’t do that."

Miscarriage is not a news item

There must be something wrong with me this week *feels forehead*

First, I feel sorry for Kourtney Kardashian, and now I feel sorry for Celine Dion.

For those of you that aren't with it, Celine announced her second pregnancy a few weeks ago after many years of unsuccessful IVF cycles. Turns out she has had a miscarriage, which for non-famous women is bad enough, but when you're famous and you already jumped the gun and did the big tell-all, the whole backtracking and justifying can make a terrible situation even worse. What makes me enraged is that 1) Celine Dion's miscarriage has become a 'news' item and 2) all of the headlines (544 of them to be exact) in the last two days are referring to her 'failed' pregnancy with a good dose of underlying moralising given that she is in her 40s and her husband, well, he's much older.

In case everyone in the world has forgotten, miscarriage is a natural part of reproduction. It happens and even though I will never forgive Celine for bringing 'My Heart Will Go On' into the world, give the woman a damn break. After all, this exact situation is what supposedly drove Lily Allen into a serious depression following the media explosion surrounding her miscarriage last year.

Lily Allen: depression following miscarriage

Poor Lily Allen.

She may come off as a boozy trash-talker (with a striking wardrobe, I might add) but nevertheless in People she recalls her difficult times following her miscarriage last year.

I wrote about how inappropriate the worldwide announcement of her pregnancy loss was at the time:
http://babybumpproject.blogspot.com/2008/01/another-inappropriate-day-in-uterus.html

Nevertheless, she says she went to a 'nuthouse' following the miscarriage:

"I stayed there for three weeks. I was really depressed because of the miscarriage and I'd kind of lost the plot a bit. It was quite a nasty time," she says."Maybe if I had stayed pregnant and had the baby then things would have worked out between me and Ed," she says. "I don't know. You could drive yourself insane thinking about it."

Ah geez, girlfriend. If you have learned anything from the movies or Lifetime television for women, everyone knows you never have baby to keep a man. Look how well that worked out for Victoria Beckham?

Source: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20253684,00.html

Angel gowns: when pregnancy ends in heartache

I came across a really interesting concept recently that made me think about an issue that I tend to forget as I rant about pregnancy, losing baby weight and the fatuous lives of celebrities. Dana, from Unique Christening Gowns in Melbourne, pointed me in the direction of her online store as a reminder that sometimes pregnancy ends in heartache. After all, according to the Bonnie Babies Foundation, one in every four pregnancies ends in a loss from miscarriage and stillbirth. Over 17,000 babies are born prematurely, many of them often struggling for life. The organisation provides free grief counseling for couples that have lost a child due to miscarriage, stillbirth or prematurity.

Dana creates beautiful gowns for parents to bury their babies, 'angel gowns', a product that is strangely non-existent in the mainstream market. As grief counselors tell grieving parents to find a way to connect with their babies' short lives, often having a proper funeral is an important way for parents to farewell their children meaningfully. I have heard over and over again from women who have miscarried how angry they are when friends and relatives respond to their grief with the statement that they can just 'try again', implying that a miscarriage is not the loss of an actual 'life' to many women. A number of women in my study told me that it took them months and even years to feel confident enough to try for another baby after so many previous disappointments.

Sources: http://uniquechristeninggowns.blogspot.com/search/label/angel%20gowns
http://www.bonniebabes.org.au/about/

Talking about miscarriage

IM BACK...to reality, that is. I said goodbye to sun, sand and surgery yesterday and will be blogging as per usual from now on.

Great article today in the New York Times about the persistent silence around the experience of miscarriage and is a nice antidote to John McCain's dismissive statement about women's 'health':
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/health/views/21case.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

A British group of women is discussing their experiences of miscarriage and insensitive doctors on Mumsnet: www.mumsnet.com

Read more about it here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article4964678.ece

Another inappropriate day in uterus news

"Lily Allen suffers miscarriage"

This is definitely a time when I yearn for the days when the contents of a woman's uterus wasn't the subject of 'breaking' news.

Source: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article3209538.ece

Nicole Kidman: miscarriage or miscommunication?

Everyone is talking about Nicole Kidman's recent interview with Vanity Fair magazine where she apparently 'bares all' about Keith Urban and the miscarriage she had when she was married to Tom Cruise. As all of the gossip websites are onto the story and publishing tidbits of the interview, Us Magazine published the headline:

Nicole Kidman: I Miscarried Tom’s Baby'

This makes me so insanely angry. As usual, blame the woman. First of all, Nicole Kidman never says in the interview 'I miscarried Tom's baby'. This headline makes it seem as though Nicole's body was inadequate to carry a pregnancy to term. Nicole is the source of blame as if she had the power to control whether she would miscarry or not. Furthermore, why is the fetal death referred to as 'Tom's baby'? Was Tom pregnant? Since when is it 'his'? Just because he was the 'father', why wouldn't the headline say that she miscarried her own baby?

None of us have any idea how Nicole Kidman felt about this pregnancy. Did she think of it as a 'fetus' or a 'baby'? We don't even know at what stage in the pregnancy she miscarried but the use of the word 'baby' makes it seem as though she and Tom lost a 'child'. In fact, Us says:

"In a revealing interview in the October issue of Vanity Fair, Nicole Kidman admits that she and Tom Cruise lost a baby early into their marriage."

I think this is really misleading and unnecessarily sensationalistic. It's great that Nicole feels secure enough to talk about her experience openly but it is unfortunate that emotive language has to be attached to her miscarriage and even more so, this article basically suggests that she failed in her reproductive duties as a woman because she was unable to carry a pregnancy to term.

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/nicole_kidman_2