Pregnancy, miscarriage, and choosing not to stay silent

Sabrina Merage Naim & Kassia Binkowski Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
Hello, Kassia

Kassia Binkowski
Hello, I am so excited to dive in today.

Kassia Binkowski
Yeah, I really, really wanted to have a conversation just between the two of us and all of our listeners and the whole world.

Kassia Binkowski
So private, so super private.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Super intimate conversation, just us about pregnancy and all of the adjacent things that happen during pregnancy or to get pregnant or after. And the stigma and sometimes shame and pressure that women face with that. It's just a lot. And we don't talk about it.

Kassia Binkowski
Right. And it comes up in every conversation, right? It comes up, you know, because of the professional implications. I mean, almost every woman we've had on the show, has talked about pregnancy or motherhood in some capacity at some point and the influence that had on her. And so it just rears its head again and again, despite the fact that so much of it, you know, is surrounded with shame and stigma and secrecy, right?

Sabrina Merage Naim
I think about Carli Lloyd, the the professional volleyball player who got released from her contract once they found out - like the day they found out - that she was pregnant. She was a professional volleyball player for almost 10 years, and then they were like "See ya. Bye, bye. You mean nothing to us anymore."

Kassia Binkowski
Or like Dr. Winnie Kirru, you know, who had to figure out how to navigate being a wildlife conservationist and being in the bush and with pregnancy and motherhood? And could she go away and what did that look like? I mean, it's just come up again and again across so many guests. However, the reason it's especially timely right now is....why?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Is because I am currently pregnant.

Kassia Binkowski
Congrats, congratulations!

Sabrina Merage Naim
Thank you. Yes. So this is my numero tres, number three. So I've been down this road before. And, and something that has really, so first, this is a disclaimer for all of the women out there, who are not mothers, but have ambitions to one day become mothers, that the one thing you should know about me is I'm the person you come to when you want the whole truth, right? I'm the person you come to when you want all of the like, gritty, dirty, like real shit about it. So for those of you who want a fairy tale version of this, this is not that conversation. And here's the reality.

Kassia Binkowski
I also before we dive in, I also want to acknowledge as somebody who has gone through infertility and struggled with that, that for any of our listeners for whom this might be triggering or painful for you - please know that. Skip the episode if you need to skip it. I've been there I get it, it's raw. But be we're also going to be talking about that and how unpredictable family planning is despite the fact that we call it family "planning." So that's going to come up and be a point of conversation as well.

Kassia Binkowski
Definitely. Thank you for that. So I want I first want to start by just acknowledging that first trimester pregnancy and for many people even longer than that, and for some people, the entire pregnancy, it sucks, it is very difficult. I am the kind of person who becomes nearly incapacitated for at least three months, if not four months. And I want to I want to just like express that truth because as a mother of two other kids, as an entrepreneur, and a business owner, who has a lot of responsibilities, and as a wife and like all of these other things on my plate, like it is extremely hard for a flip of a switch to this be like okay, you can't get out of bed anymore. Right. And in that time, there have been many, many mental health kind of ups and downs like even though I am going through something that is a beautiful wonderful like blessing and I'm happy and it's not for God forbid negative health purposes. But I am growing life inside of my body and that is a miracle in and of itself. It is extremely challenging to be feeling like shit all the time. Okay? It is extremely challenging to not be able to get up and feel energetic and go do all the things that you normally do like exercise and work and play with your kids. And it's really hard on your mental health. So for those of you who have been through that, I want to just acknowledge that you're not alone. And it's, it takes a toll, like, even when you kind of remind yourself again, and again and again, that it's all for a good reason. And thank God, it's for a good reason. It still takes a toll. And we need to be kind to ourselves, because that's just the reality. That's just truth.

Kassia Binkowski
It's your truth.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It's my, it is my truth. Yes.

Kassia Binkowski
I am the person you hate. Because I have blissfully easy pregnancies. I have a hell of a time getting pregnant and have a whole saga we can go into. But once it's there, very easy, very comfortable. And, you know, I feel so fortunate because I watch your friends like you go through it. And and I truly don't know how you're still standing most days.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah. And I'm not. Like honestly, I'm not. Okay, let's just be clear about that. A lot of days, my husband became a single parent. And he had to figure that out. And he also has work. And he also has other stuff. Like we had a lot going on the last few months, he needed to step up, because I could not and during that time, I thought so much of single parents so much.

Kassia Binkowski
I mean, my heroes, I don't know how they do it.

Sabrina Merage Naim
100% Because I couldn't. It's not like I was being lazy. It's not like I was just, you know, oh, this is like a nice time to rely like no, that's not what was happening. I could not step up for all of these things that needed me. So for those of you who don't necessarily have the support systems, for those of you who don't have, you know, who just don't have the option. I am sending you so much love, I am sending you so much strength, because that shit is real. It's real. And it's hard.

Kassia Binkowski
It is. And I mean, let us just acknowledge the privilege that you and I both have. Because I know with my twin pregnancy, which was my second pregnancy, or my third pregnancy I had, I felt fine 98% of the time, but I was so fucking tired. Like when I had to go to sleep, I had to go to sleep like then. Somebody else better be there to care for my toddler. You know, I said multiple times that if I worked for somebody else, I would have lost my job because I had to just go to sleep right now. Yeah, and it might have been like 9:15 in the morning, or 3pm, or whatever it was, and my body would shut down. And so the privilege to begin to be able to do that. And to you know, just let my body do what it needed to do and have the support systems around me, you know, should not go unacknowledged, I think that's an incredibly rare and incredible place to be.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So true. And I also just want as you can hear just from the two of us, like we have had extremely different experiences in our pregnancies, which means that the array of experiences that people have when pregnant is limitless, right? Like there's just, it is a goes on forever. However, those of us who don't necessarily have a walk in the park pregnancy, we just don't talk to each other about it, right? Like it's not something that we really acknowledge because you're supposed to be glowing and happy and joyful. And it's such a beautiful time of life. And so all of those other things, the feelings and the difficulty and the challenges that we face, kind of get brushed under the rug. And, and get kind of overlooked because there are a lot of women who have difficult pregnancies that it's like, "Oh, yeah, you're going through it, I went through it, we all go through it." And that's not exactly helpful. To be frank, it's much more helpful for a community of people to kind of acknowledge the truth of what it is, and talk about it, and be there for each other and support each other through it. Right. That's something that like kind of one point that I really wanted to get by to get across here is that we should be so much more empathetic to other people who are going through this. If we have gone through it. Instead of just being like, "Oh yeah, I went through it, you're going through that whatever." It's not whatever! For many of us. It's extremely challenging and we need the support system of our female friends to like be there for us and uplift us and help us through.

Kassia Binkowski
Well and to ask the questions and to show up with the support and like we just need to build the air that dirty laundry a little bit more freely. Sabrina, let's take a step back. So this is your third pregnancy?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah.

Kassia Binkowski
You have a daughter you have son.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I do.

Kassia Binkowski
This was a planned pregnancy.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It was.

Kassia Binkowski
How far along are you right now?

Sabrina Merage Naim
14 weeks.

Kassia Binkowski
Okay, so at the time of recording your 14 weeks, yeah, you are due in....

Sabrina Merage Naim
August.

Kassia Binkowski
Good because that math was early this morning. Get there fast? How has this pregnancy compared to the others?

Kassia Binkowski
Honestly, it's been increasingly worse with each one for me. For me, maybe because my body is older. Maybe for other reasons. Maybe there are other things going on in my life that have made it especially challenging.

Kassia Binkowski
Speaking of older is this technically a "geriatric pregnancy?"

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah.

Kassia Binkowski
Where's the line?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Oh, yes.

Kassia Binkowski
Can we can we name can we like, that's so rude! They called it anything else?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Well, they're actually I mean, bless my OB, she's smart enough now that she has never used that term with me. And she also thinks that's silly and ridiculous, and kind of arbitrary. So she never made me feel like that. And frankly, more and more women are getting pregnant in their late 30s and early 40s, mid 40s. And having like, perfectly healthy pregnancies, right? It just requires that we take a little bit more precaution with certain things, and do you know, additional tests and whatnot and fine, like, if that's what we have to do, then that's what we have to do. But, you know, just a generation ago, most of our parents and whatnot were like getting married earlier and having kids in their 20s. And, and that was the norm. And it's not really anymore for a lot of us in this country in this generation, especially in urban areas, right. So we're kind of faced now with, I actually had a really interesting conversation with my parents, which is that today, I have two living grandmother's who are in their 90s. And they have dozens of great grandchildren. Okay, dozens, both of them. And they have lived long enough to see four generations of their family grow and expand, my parents likely will not have that luxury. My dad's already in his 70s. And my kids are like little little, right? So it's kind of a new thing that we're faced with in terms of like, the how many generations will be living at the same time. That's an aside. One thing that I really want to talk about, though, is for many of us, and and I don't know, I don't know if this is like a cultural norm or broader. But many of us have a tendency to hide our pregnancies for the first trimester. Because that is the time when we are at most risk for miscarriage and other issues. Right.

Kassia Binkowski
And God forbid that that happen, and we have to acknowledge it publicly.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Exactly. So that's something that I want to talk about. Because for my first two pregnancies, I was totally sucked into that. I similarly had very difficult first trimesters, and I had to hide it. And I had to kind of hide myself away. But anytime I went out in public, I had to pretend like I wasn't feeling ill, because I wasn't supposed to tell people that I'm pregnant in my first trimester. And the more and more I thought about it, the more I recognize that that is just feeding the stigma and shame that is put on women who do end up having miscarriages, which is, unfortunately, but the reality very common, how many what was the rate you looked up?

Kassia Binkowski
That's like 20%. Right now, they say between 10 and 20. But that number is actually grossly low because of the number of miscarriages that just don't go reported.

Kassia Binkowski
Don't get reported, like people just miscarry at home or whatever. And don't don't report it.

Kassia Binkowski
People miscarry before they even know they're pregnant. I think that's a huge piece of this. Right? Yeah, it's like the really early ones that just never get counted. Because you don't even know that that's happening.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right. Right. And that is something that's also very common, but for those, those women who do know that they're pregnant and then miscarry, and the shame that is put on them that their bodies aren't doing what it's supposed to do or have betrayed them or whatever the hell right, and then having to deal with that solo, because they didn't confide in their communities that they were pregnant. And so now they're going through something alone is really a shitty thing. Like it's just really shitty to me. And so for this pregnancy, I made a very conscious decision that I was like, the basically the moment that I found out I was pregnant. I wasn't gonna hide it. I wasn't gonna hide that I wasn't feeling well. I wasn't gonna hide that I am pregnant. I wasn't like announcing it from the rooftops like I didn't create like an Instagram, you know, announcement. But I was like really open with people that this is what I'm going through right now. And I thought a lot about well what happens like I'm I am having a geriatric pregnancy, the rates of potential miscarriage go up significantly what happens? Well what does happen?

Kassia Binkowski
I can tell you you talk about it like you talk about a broken leg are you talking about a surgery. Like you talk about like any other medical experience or diagnoses that you endure. You know, I had a, my saga is kind of long and sorted but essentially had three years of undiagnosed infertility. Which means I was was seeing infertility specialists, you know, trying to navigate that, but there was no clear reason. All my tests came back normal. I was young, I was healthy. All of my levels were fine. But I still couldn't, couldn't get pregnant and couldn't carry a pregnancy. And miscarried when we finally got pregnant, miscarried at 10 weeks. And told my family right away because I also here's the other thing, like at that point, I don't think I told anybody I was pregnant because we were in the throes of infertility. And so we knew it was delicate. But also, like, as soon as I miscarried, I told people because I needed support. Which kind of just pulled back the curtains of like, well, what are we hiding in the first place? Why, you know, the worst case thing just happened. And I had to reach out immediately to the women in my life, because that's who I lean on. It's like, I went to my tribe, and I and I leaned on all of the people who had experienced this before me, I found it at some point that, you know, my mother and this and, and a close friend, and like, all of these women were like, "Oh, I had one too." And I was like, "Well, why the fuck did you tell me that two years ago, when I started on this journey, and you knew that it might not end with unicorns and rainbows?!" But we don't ever talk about that. You assume that you're going to get pregnant and carry a pregnancy and never endure a miscarriage. And that's just not true. And that's also okay. That is a very normal part of childbearing is it often ends in that outcome. So I think what was interesting for me was that that, that miscarriage and my immediately reaching out to the women in my life to support me through that miscarriage made it clear how silly this stigma we have, and the need for secrecy around the first trimester is.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, and unfortunately, I think it's so rooted in the history of women are on this planet for one reason, and one reason only, and that is to bear children.

Kassia Binkowski
Oh, absolutely.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And if you can't do that, or if you can't do that to, you know, some level of satisfaction, then you are worthless. Right? Right. That is the message that women have been getting for millennia. And it I mean, I think even about, like, the time of the Salem Withc Trials on the east coast of the United States, where women were literally burned at the stake for being infertile. Okay, so that like, really sordid history of what pregnancy and motherhood, how that's connected to a woman and her body and her worth her self worth identity. Yeah, her identity, this is society's definition of her worth. It's so kind of it's so intertwined. And it's sorted, it's like really unhealthy. So a lot of what we've tried to do in this show, is separate that out. Like the conversation we had with with a sociologist Orna Donath, where she talks about the fact that we are living in a time where it's the first generation of women who are allowed finally to say, "Actually, I don't really want to be a mother, like that's not in the cards for me, that's not my ambition." And hey, guess what, not only is that, okay? It means nothing in terms of your worth. It means nothing in terms of your contribution to society or who you are as an individual or your potential. Right. And so being able to acknowledge that and also to acknowledge that for those of us who do want to be mothers who have gone through that road, who that there are a lot of things that are not rainbows and unicorns that we should be talking to each other about, and that we should be leaning on each other as a tribe. So that we can all go through this in a little bit more of a healthy, uplifting way where like that pressure gets just diminished.

Kassia Binkowski
Well, I mean, like you said, any way you cut it, like no matter what your journey looks like, it's hard. Getting pregnant and caring and pregnancy is hard. We do not need the pressure of social expectation on top of that, of how we're supposed to look and feel and function.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right.

Kassia Binkowski
Either during the pregnancy or when a pregnancy ends. Like we don't like that. Can we just strip that off the table for now?

Kassia Binkowski
Not even to mention, like, what happens to our bodies after the baby.

Kassia Binkowski
Is not great? Try twins. Really not great.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Oh, god. I can't. I can't imagine that. No, I mean, I I've had, I've had like, Look, I've had to have conversations with my doctor, "Am I going to become incontinent after my third pregnancy?"

Kassia Binkowski
Right. real conversations. Normal conversations.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right. And like, do those hemorrhoids ever go away?

Kassia Binkowski
Oh god they're the worst.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I mean, you know, there's just a lot of things. There's a lot of things that happen, like do those stretch marks last for ever? So look, what what I wanted to what I wanted to bring up and this is like, very, it's a personal journey. For me, it's a personal journey for Kassia. It's personal for all of us, in that our journeys are so unique to us are so different. Some of us like Kassia, have breeze pregnancies and good on you. But like what you're saying, it was so hard for you to even get there, right? Like we all have, we all struggle with something.

Kassia Binkowski
We all have our thing.

Sabrina Merage Naim
We all have our things. So this is not a conversation to say that all of us experienced this in the same way. It's a conversation to say that we all experience it in our own unique way. And that's okay. And that's beautiful. And that we need to be there for each other, we need to talk about it more openly.

Kassia Binkowski
Absolutely. I mean, when you we kind of started speaking about this potential episode and airing this conversation a couple of months ago, maybe a month ago. And I had to laugh because as somebody who went through infertility, my experience with miscarriage and the stigma around miscarriage and whether or not you know, you told me very, very early on, and and whether or not you were going to air that are what that would look like and how public you would be and, and all of that was fascinating, because once I finally got pregnant a second time, it was it was through infertility treatment. But as a result, everybody knew, like, what stage of treatment? Are you in? When are they going to do this procedure? When are they going to do the next procedure? So was there are how many days until you know something, and it felt like I felt so exposed, and so vulnerable? And my pregnancy was just so on the table for everybody to talk about, you know, it felt like being asked "Well, what position were you in? When did you have sex when you conceived? " You know, I was like, I would never ask you that. Like, you don't get to know that. So my, my first successful pregnancy was just on the table, like everybody knew when it happened. And therefore when I had at this point, now we're talking about my third pregnancy with my twins, I actually was much more discreet about it. And I was like, I am going to now get through that first trimester and, I am going to hold the cards here and decide if and when I want to tell people and and so it was like the exact inverse of you know how you've experienced this.

Sabrina Merage Naim
But you know, what I love about that is that was 100% of your choice. And it had nothing to do with shame. It just had to do with you wanting to experience something for yourself.

Kassia Binkowski
Absolutely.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And not be so exposed and vulnerable about it. And I think that is 100%. Okay, when we feel pressured to keep that secret, because of the shame and stigma, that's where the line gets crossed into not okay, totally different. So for me, it was about I am being I am burdening myself Additionally, by keeping this secret, because I have to pretend like things are okay. And I'm not okay. And I would much rather have my tribe of women surrounding me and saying, like, how can I support you and you know, taking some nuts out of their bag to like, give it to me when they see that I'm starting to fade or whatever. And that is true. And my friend did that. And I love her for that.

Kassia Binkowski
Oh, the food. I mean, you just need so many calories. Yeah,

Sabrina Merage Naim
Al the food. All the calories. And by the way, it is extremely interesting when you are super nauseous and feel like you want to throw up all the time to force feed yourself because that's the thing you need, but like, okay, we go through that. I think the difference is holding that close to yourself because that's your choice. And that's what makes you feel comfortable. That's beautiful. Doing it through shame. That's the thing we need to work through.

Kassia Binkowski
Or the fear. Yeah, it's like about the fear of how will I possibly handle this if it doesn't go well.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah.

Kassia Binkowski
If I don't get the outcome that I want here.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah.

Kassia Binkowski
Afraid of those those repercussions. How have people responded, I mean, as this being the first pregnancy that you opened up about earlier than your first trimester, or during your first trimester?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Generally, very positively. People are always happy when someone who intends to get pregnant, it has gotten pregnant, you know. And it's funny because my husband was talking to one of his friends. And he told him and the friend asked, "How far along is she?" And he said, "Pretty early on." And he was like, "Wait, are you supposed to tell me so early?" And he, he actually gave, my husband gave the explanation as to why we are talking about it. And the friend was like, wow, that's actually really cool. You know, it kind of opened a curtain for him, someone who, similarly with his wife has had multiple children and pregnancies and all of that, and they, they've decided to hold that information close to their chest, for the first trimester. And I make no judgments about why or, or anything like that. But the fact of the matter is, when when they started talking to each other about the possibility that it could be some other way, it was kind of eye opening for him. And I think that's kind of what I'm trying to do here is expose the fact that there can and should be multiple ways of going about this, as long as we are living our truth.

Kassia Binkowski
Right. And as long as we normalize all of the possible outcomes, right, like honoring that story, and yo feeling safe enough and confident enough to share it early forces you a little bit to come to terms with like, I don't know how it's gonna go.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah,

Kassia Binkowski
But I do know that I'm still gonna reach out to the people in my life, regardless of the outcome. So I think part of part of being able to, like, you know, let go of that weight and disregard the pressure to carry that pregnancy in secret also forces us as, as a society or as your close circle, to then talk about all of the different ways that this could go down. And also just to talk about like the misery of the first trimester for you. Right?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right.

Kassia Binkowski
As soon as you're willing to open up earlier, as soon as we can, like, brush off that stigma for a second, it then kind of cascades into all of these other conversations that we we need to have.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, and the big part of that, for me is, is exposing the difficulty of the first trimester for me means that the people who are in my tribe, the people who care and love, love me and support me, will surround me even that much more either way, right? They are the ones that will, will come and help and ask, what do you need? And how can we be there for you, whereas if I were going through that alone, I would have one person to be there for me and God bless him. He's an amazing person, amazing father, but like that's too much. It's too much to ask of one person. No, nobody should have to carry that weight. So all of this to say to the Mamas the want to be Mama's the women who don't want to be Mama's, all of you are beautiful your experiences are, are important or true are unique to you, but also are valid and the shame, the pressure, the stigma, the whatever that we carry with us, whether it is something that we recognize and are very aware of, or it's something that feels a little bit under the surface, like it's time to excavate that, from our experience. It is time to dismantle that and throw that shit away. Because it's not serving you. It is not adding to your experience. It is holding you back. And we need to be a tribe of supporters for each other. We need to be there for each other. We need to be empathetic, empathetic, and acknowledge the whole array of experiences. Good, bad and ugly.

Kassia Binkowski
Yeah, I mean, We just need to talk, right? We just need to talk with each other to each other. We need to be able to air all of those stories and normalize all of these experiences. And that only starts if we're each willing to step up and share our own truth.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Love you mama's.

Kassia Binkowski
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