Feb 1, 2021
Miscarriage and Meaning: an Interview with Danielle Ireland
- Danielle Ireland
It was four or five different nurses came in one at a time and just held my hand and looked me in the eye and told me her story of loss was a miscarriage. And and I don't remember I don't remember their faces. I don't remember their names. But I just remember each each time it was like this wave of relief. And I'm still feeling it now talking about it like hearing I lost two and then I had to. I had to and I lost one and I had two more. I lost three and I had just. It was just a different expression of you're not alone. You're not alone, you're not alone. And I couldn't have been more grateful and I didn't know that I needed that at the time. I just had no idea how much I needed that.
INTRO
My guest today is Danielle Ireland. She is a speaker, actress, ballroom dancer, licensed therapist, recovering perfectionist, a wife and a soon-to-be-mother with her second child, a little girl. And we spend time in this episode talking about her work, her pregnancy, and the miscarriage of her first child, a son, who would have turned one at the close of 2020. Danielle shares on the importance of empathy, how partners can grieve differently, and why it really bugged her when people kept telling her, “I’m sorry”.
Danielle and I began our time together reminiscing about the toys of our childhood.
- Liesel Mertes
We are both children of the 80s, what was one of your favorite toys from that era?
- Danielle Ireland
Oh, this is a great question. Oh, my gosh. One of my favorite toys from that era. Well. Let's see, I was really big into my little ponies and I was really big into Care Bears and Jem and the holograms and also Barbie, I had the my favorite Barbie. There were two that were my favorites. One was the nineteen fifties Barbie. So she had like the Lucille Ball, like hair cut and bangs and have like this like old school 50 styles, black and white bathing suit.
- Danielle Ireland
I just loved her. And then there was also gymnastics Barbie and yes. So she had like bending working joints so I could make her do backflips and front flips and she was flipping everywhere. But actually a funny story about my Barbies. I loved playing with them, but I hate addressing them because I didn't have the patience for all of the little snaps. But I really loved all the shoes. So Barbies were always naked in high heels. And so that was my mom said she got some fun looks with me holding my naked Barbies with her.
As a Barbie-loving child, Danielle thought she might want to be a marine biologist. Then an archeologist.
- Danielle Ireland
And so it was either like swimming with dolphins every day, digging up dinosaur bones. And then of course, once I got the first full length movie I ever watched, this is all through. My mom's telling of it, I don't actually remember was Cinderella. And so but I remember when I started getting into live action movies and when I started to understand the concept of, oh, like, those people are pretending, especially when things were really intense, I would get nervous.
- Danielle Ireland
My parents are really good about explaining. You know, this is a make believe world. These are the characters in this world and this is what the performers do. And I was like, that's a job. And so I, I that's I think when my obsession with film and performance started and because I realized, oh, I can pretend to do all the things I want to do, I don't even have to pick one thing. And so that kind of got me on the, I think the performing arts track at the young age potentially.
Danielle studied theater in college and then worked teaching dance. She auditioned in places like Chicago and Louisville and Cincinnati.
- Danielle Ireland
But it it felt like a gamble. And I'm not a gambler at heart. I think that that's a large part why that wasn't you. I think you have to have that willingness to accept the risk when you when you pursue a career like that.
- Danielle Ireland
And I never fully took the plunge, but yeah, I still got some paid acting work up until I was, I think, twenty nine.
When Danielle started dating the man that is now her husband, she began to think about what she really wanted in life.
- Danielle Ireland
And it was the first time that I started to think about future, my future beyond what what instantly gratified me, like I the the nature of the in order to to be a dance instructor and performer and the way that I like to do it, you had to rehearse before and after your teaching hours and your teaching hours were from one to ten.
- Danielle Ireland
And so my whole world there was I mean, it was just I don't want to say small and that I wasn't enjoying it. And then I didn't love the people I was with. But it it was a very insular.
She began to ask herself different questions: what are my values? What do I really care about?
- Danielle Ireland
looking back, I think I spent a lot of time hiding as a dance instructor because it fulfilled a lot of ego. It took a lot of those boxes like I was still performing. So I didn't feel like I was wasting my college degree in the performing arts.
- Danielle Ireland
And it was fun to tell people that's what I did. It was fun. It was fun to wear costumes like it filled it. It was fulfilling in some respects, but it didn't force me to ask myself deeper questions is kind of like living your life on a cruise ship. It's like it was like living in a party atmosphere, which was it served a purpose.
- Danielle Ireland
But it wasn't until I started asking those harder hitting questions that I realized that, oh, if this part of my life wasn't here, I would have a lot of serious gaps, like a lot of big gaping holes in my identity, my purpose, how fulfilled I really was.
So she began to ask herself what environments felt best? And moved throughout a series of jobs. She worked at a cosmetics counter, selling organic skin care, then was a store manager for a fashion brand. Then there was a day spa. Each stop made her wonder if she would ever find a place to land and led her to want to work for herself, which she started to do as a beauty consultant and blogger, helping women find clothes and cosmetics.
- Danielle Ireland
But what I realized really quickly was that after working with a woman, maybe twice, she found her, matched her foundation and she knew how to curl her hair. She started talking to me about much more intimate things, like we've had three kids and my husband and I are having sex anymore. I have gained weight over the last few years and they just don't feel right in my skin like that. It was those moments that I started to feel what I call just like electricity.
- Danielle Ireland
It just was like tingling in my body. And it was it was it may have hit me all in one moment. It certainly would make for a better story if it did, I don't honestly remember, but I just felt so struck each time some woman would open up her heart to me, share some vulnerability with me and just expose something deeper and richer. And I just wanted to dive into that question with everything that I had. But I felt kind of stunted by what I felt like was a lack of of training.
- Danielle Ireland
And so I felt like I had to keep censoring myself with all this. Has been my experience with this or my opinion would be this, but I wanted to offer more with that type of conversation.
- Danielle Ireland
And that was really the first time that I thought, oh, is that is this what therapy is? This is what counseling is, because I hadn't even received therapy or counseling up until that point in my life. And so the year my husband and I got married, I decided I wanted to go to graduate school and pursue this.
Danielle began graduate school in counseling.
- Danielle Ireland
And so that's started around thirty, thirty years old.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah. And I met you like. Right as you were officially finishing up your degree. I think you. Just had a turning and a final paper.
- Danielle Ireland
That sounds right. Yeah, and what was that close at now that we're in pandemic time prior to it seems like a blur.
- Liesel Mertes
When did you finish up your degree?
- Danielle Ireland
So let me think. I graduated in May 2017. And I, I remember graduation was Mother's Day, so I think it was like, may I say something. But I remember graduation was on a Sunday and I began working in a private practice the very next day like I took no time off. I felt like once I understood and had a vision and what felt like not a track, but like a breadcrumb trail of, oh, this is going to get me where I want to be and I think I'm on the right path for myself.
- Danielle Ireland
And I felt that certainty and for the first time, probably who knows how long. I also felt and this is I think now insert the trigger for uprooting my anxiety and all my fears and self doubts and insecurities.
- Danielle Ireland
But it was I realized what I wanted to do at a time where I felt like, oh, my gosh, if I just wasted however many years trying to find this life, that's what I felt at the time. And so I attacked pursuing my degree and then jumping into work with such intensity because I felt like I was trying to catch up and and prove myself and also try to beat my biological clock because I you know, having children wasn't at the top of my mind at that time of my life, but I knew it was coming up in a couple of years.
- Danielle Ireland
It's funny being six months pregnant now. I have no idea how quickly that would how quickly those those things would come together. But I really felt like I was constantly racing the clock. And so when I met you. If it was right around the time I was finishing my degree, I, I felt like I was always trying to stay a couple of months ahead of where I really was. And yeah. So I that time feels like a blur to me too, because I think I was just living in my head for such a long time.
- Liesel Mertes
I am I have my own particular resonance within my own story of that. It's and I hear a little bit in you, but for me it was not even necessarily external voices telling me, like, you haven't achieved enough or you've wasted time or you need to be somewhere different. It was very much an inner voice that was just driving me of exactly. The anxious is the right sort of a word, like I thought I would have been somewhere different, but now I'm here.
- Liesel Mertes
But now I wish I was further along. And it's it's a mental game to be constantly churning within.
- Danielle Ireland
Oh, no, you're you're you're absolutely right, and you're you couldn't have I mean, because I could not have been more supported and encouraged by the people around me. There was no one in my life, no one in my corner looking over my shoulder saying, why didn't you figure this out sooner? Are you sure you shouldn't be further along?
- Danielle Ireland
That was one hundred thousand percent. My own internal critic and yeah, that that had chatter because I remember I remember the first day being an orientation for the graduate program and it was like it would pick new things to make me feel small about that voice, would pick new things to make me feel small about on a daily basis. But I remember the big one when I was in the program was I was probably one of two hundred and fifty graduate students in the program I was in.
- Danielle Ireland
I think 10 were over the age of twenty three that because they most people went directly from undergraduate school to graduate school. And so there were a handful of people like me who realized at some point later in their life that they wanted to go back to school. But I just felt so out of place.
- Danielle Ireland
And I remember this kind of orientation exercise where like, let's have everyone go around and say what your undergraduate degree was. And it was political science and social work, social work and psychology, sociology and psychology, family health and wellness and sociology.
- Danielle Ireland
And I was like theater. I just felt so oh God, I felt so out of place.
- Liesel Mertes
You also talked about, you know, the sense of like your biological clock and a built in and the sense of time horizons that also was at play when we first met. Would you tell me a little bit about your pregnancy that preceded this one?
- Danielle Ireland
Oh, of course. Of course. Yeah. So that was two years ago now, I think. Oh goodness. Yeah. So I have right around 2018, so about a year into my work at my first practice. My husband and I decided we wanted to start trying and trying to conceive a baby, and it's that that and I haven't revisited this in a while, but spending my entire adult sexual life trying to prevent pregnancy and then thinking that we're just going to lift the barrier and it's going to happen the first time, it even though logically I understood that, I think emotionally I thought, like, sure, we'll try it.
- Danielle Ireland
We'll have sex a couple of times, bing, bang, boom, we'll get pregnant. Easy peasy. And that just wasn't our journey. It took us about a year to get pregnant the first time. And I was about I was just like three days shy of entering my second trimester when I miscarried our first pregnancy. Our son and. Yeah, it was a crushing, crushing blow, and that's when Julie Kratz, I think was the one who suggested I meet with you and.
- Danielle Ireland
I'm so glad I did, but, yeah, we we met for coffee, and I didn't even know what we were going to meet about. I just I just said yes. Well, I'm really glad that I did. Yeah.
- Liesel Mertes
And I'm you know, even to hear you say that, I'm shocked that two months into your not two months into your second trimester, I mean, that's also like there's never an easy time to have a baby die. But that's also like you've you've spent, you know, a number of months at that point, like anticipating and thinking about it, not even to count, you know, the whole year of I imagine like you said, I think your term was easy peasy. Lemon, Sweezy, I'm thinking how did that year unfold prior to conceiving? And as I said, now it's just as the years go by and the more I get to hold stories of people with their journey towards building a family, the more I realize, like there's not just one on ramp and off ramp like people.
- Liesel Mertes
Stories are way more complex than we often get a chance to give voice to an emotional journey.
- Liesel Mertes
How did that year like how is that feeling for you in the midst of all of these new professional stresses as well?
- Danielle Ireland
Yeah, I was the first time in my life I was disappointed by my period, which was so strange because I have thought of I can remember more times in my life where I got my period and it was like, oh, thank God. You know, I guess we would kind of high five each other. Like, we're good, we're good. And it was such a different sensation. And I think that it. Over time, what I didn't realize was happening and I wasn't letting myself acknowledge that I was starting to feel disappointed by my body.
- Danielle Ireland
Each month I would get my period. I felt like I was letting us down and I was letting myself down and my body was letting me down in. What's interesting, even expressing it that way, is I have recently just been catching up with the girlfriend and I she asked me what my intention was for twenty, twenty one. And last year my intention was, was trust and just in everything, just how could I trust myself more deeply? How could I listen to myself more, how can I honor that that more.
- Danielle Ireland
But I think this year my word is pleasure because I think about my body and there's to kind of bring it back to this to the what you asked and my story a little bit. I think when I left dance and these other these other jobs that I did like once I stepped into. Kind of committing to graduate school. I didn't realize it, but I think I really splintered off from my body because I was so consumed with my mind and my own thoughts, like my anxiety, my fear, my insecurity became all consuming.
- Danielle Ireland
And I just I voted my body off the island and I lived in my head, which was so unlike what my experience has been basically performing and dance, it's a very kinetic it's a very connected mind body experience, and I lived in that world my entire life and I didn't know any different. And so I didn't even realize I wasn't self-aware enough to know, like, oh, what you're experiencing is anxiety or oh, what you're experiencing is depression, like in your depression is manifesting itself as anxiety.
- Danielle Ireland
I just didn't have the tools or the language or the any way of knowing that. And so with the miscarriage, the if it's. If I can be. Maybe bold enough to say it this way, I think the gift or the lesson. In. In light of that loss was that the pain was so acute and it was so it took such a hold of everything that it was the first time in however many years I'd been in that state where the head trash was gone, like the the chatter, like the silence.
- Danielle Ireland
And the grief was there was just there was silence in my head for the first time. And I just sat in the suck of all of that. And I don't know if I can't. No, that's not the case for me now, like the head trader, like it's returns, she's she's she's come back. So I didn't hold on to that forever, but I experienced it and I I felt like I recognized it. And I think that that helped me start to return to my body and return to myself.
- Danielle Ireland
And I just. Again, I'm really hesitant to say that I'm grateful because I don't want I don't mean in any way, so I'm grateful for the loss of that life, but I am grateful that I took a lesson from it that can inform my life forward, because otherwise, I think for me, if if there wasn't some meaning in it, it would have just felt like a terrible, awful, awful. Indescribable waste and giving that experience some purpose is helpful for me and my healing, but I just if anyone's listening that's going through an experience like that, I in no way, I don't think that's necessary or required.
- Danielle Ireland
It just that was what was helpful for me.
- Danielle Ireland
But as far as the conception journey leading up to that, I was so focused on my plan and my timeline that sex wasn't as fun. Yeah, it was more pressured. I know that my husband felt that, too, in his own ways.
- Danielle Ireland
And and it was hard. I was playing the comparison game a lot. It was really hard to not compare myself to friends who got pregnant by surprise or friends who said, yeah, I just tracked my period on an app for a couple of months and it happened on month three, like each month that ticked by that it wasn't happening.
- Danielle Ireland
I was feeling more and more lost and I ended up finding out that I was pregnant after I had scheduled an appointment to meet a fertility specialist. We were going to schedule a time to do some blood work. And my period was late. And I was I was already, I think, two weeks pregnant when I went to.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
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MUSICAL TRANSITION
- Liesel Mertes
Again, as we noted, miscarriage, it's actually way more common than our public discourse would indicate, where the assumption is that, you know, every pregnancy is a healthy baby. And, you know, as soon as you get that test, you should start decorating the nursery and plan, which I think can oftentimes mean for people that go through miscarriage is that you end up giving the news to lots of people who have no idea like what do or say?
- Liesel Mertes
What were some of like the most tone deaf or hard responses that you absorbed after a miscarriage?
- Danielle Ireland
Yeah, what a great question. Well, I'll say that. I think part of the reason why I'm so open and willing to talk about this in general is that I was given the again, I don't even know if this is the right language for what this experience was, but I can't think of a different way to describe it. So the experience my husband and I had at the emergency room because I ended up delivering my son at home and we took him with us to the emergency room because I was hemorrhaging pretty bad and it was just really physically taxing experience.
- Danielle Ireland
And I think I probably also went into shock and just lots of those things. But I remember I'll just I'll never forget the grace and the kindness and the warmth and also, I mean, it's bringing tears to my eyes, thinking about it, too, because had this happen during COVID having to be there by myself, I just can't imagine. I thought about that when I thought about women who undoubtedly have experienced this during shutdown and have had to be separated during that time because my husband was with me every second and laid in the bed with me most of the time, but.
- Danielle Ireland
But the the hospital staff, in particular, the nurses that were working on that shift because it was around three o'clock in the morning, so it was third shift. Oh, my God, these women were like angels on Earth. And we were probably in the hospital, I think somewhere between seven and nine hours. And as I said, it was probably when there was like a shift change going on. I don't know when it was exactly, but it was towards the end of our stay, about four I can't remember.
- Danielle Ireland
It was four or five different nurses came in one at a time and just held my hand and looked me in the eye and told me her story of loss was a miscarriage. And and I don't remember I don't remember their faces. I don't remember their names. But I just remember each each time it was like this wave of relief. And I'm still feeling it now talking about it like hearing I lost two and then I had to. I had to and I lost one and I had two more.
- Danielle Ireland
I lost three and I had just. It was just a different expression of you're not alone. You're not alone, you're not alone. And I couldn't have been more grateful and I didn't know that I needed that at the time. I just had no idea how much I needed that.
- Danielle Ireland
But the gift of that experience for me. It just made it so clear that for me, my healing would it it didn't require silence that you really needed to come through my expression of that.
- Danielle Ireland
And so. And thankfully, thankfully, I didn't keep the news of finding out I was pregnant to myself, but my husband and I, we were told we were preparing to do like a photo shoot with the sonogram and we were going to do a gender reveal. We were in that planning stage. And so thankfully, and I know that this is such a personal thing for everyone to handle in their own way, but I'm grateful that I. That because people understood the joy and the excitement.
- Danielle Ireland
And the pregnancy, I didn't have to explain as much about the pain of loss. I didn't feel like I needed to play catch up with two different conversations at the same time.
- Danielle Ireland
And so when we got pregnant this current time, we got pregnant a second time. I remember my husband initially felt very differently than I did. I wanted to tell everybody, not announce it on social media, obviously, but I wanted to let all of our friends and family know because for me it was like, I need them to know that I'm in this experience because I just it's what I need to feel safe and secure.
- Danielle Ireland
And he he wasn't so sure. He was like, well, but what if what if we experienced the same thing again? And I just. My my perspective on it was that. Keeping my joy, like, stifled or trying to cut my joy back wouldn't prevent or protect me from the loss if it happened. So I needed to let myself fully feel the joy because. That was the only way forward from for me. And so he you know, but I also wanted to honor and respect his needs.
- Danielle Ireland
And so we started telling a few people at a time, a little at a time. But I would probably say for him, his stress level probably really didn't go down until the 20 week ultrasound. Yeah, he probably didn't feel I would say he didn't feel that confident until then, but. But yeah.
- Liesel Mertes
Well, and what you say there highlights something that is resonant with my own experience, which is that grief is such a profoundly isolating journey, like two people's two people's grief, even if they're even if it's like you and your partner and you both lost a child, can just manifest itself so differently in different moments. And those those conversations can feel hard when when both people are saying, like, I need or I want something different in the midst of that.
- Danielle Ireland
Well, and I don't even know if I can give us full credit for that. We we scheduled a session with so we have a therapist that we see individually, but have also seen maybe three or four times and four couples work and we just can't see eye to eye. And we scheduled an appointment the week. That following week after it happened, I don't remember the exact timeline, and it wasn't because there was a rift between us, but we both just we just somehow knew and or felt like we needed to check in with Brian.
- Danielle Ireland
And he said something that I am so grateful for. How can you give each other the permission to to need to walk through your grief differently,? And I didn't fully understand what that meant, but that, putting that conversation at our minds, like how can because, for example, I could handle one social interaction a day. So what would happen? So the first maybe eight days after it happened, I have one friend at a time. I don't remember managing it either.
- Danielle Ireland
It just seemed to happen that way. But like one girlfriend would reach out and she would want to come over and she'd either bring food or wine or whatever, and we would just sit around and talk or she would listen for a couple of hours. And that was it. That was all the energy I had.
- Danielle Ireland
And at the time, we had two weddings coming up. I think one was the weekend after it happened and another was the following weekend. And I needed to really withdraw and kind of cocoon up.
- Danielle Ireland
And my husband, he's actually more of an extrovert than I am. And and so. We were able to, I think, process in a healthier way with that supportive of our therapy session and also looking at what does it really mean for me to need to be by myself or to not want to show up at a wedding and not I couldn't I just couldn't handle the stimulation of being around people.
- Danielle Ireland
And I didn't want to see their faces and I didn't want to see the like. So I don't want to handle I just couldn't handle that. But I think my husband needed to be out and about and needed to be with people. But he was caught between not wanting to feel like he was abandoning me. Right. Or wanting to honor himself. And I was caught between not wanting to put him in a position where he felt trapped, but also needing to honor my own needs.
- Danielle Ireland
But I don't know if we would have had the language for that. Without, I think, the support of our therapist at the time and
- Liesel Mertes
And so what ended up happening?
- Danielle Ireland
You know, was that like. I couldn't commit I basically I just wasn't willing to commit to any plans until moments before because I was like the waves can hit at different moments and they're like, I may I suck. I just don't know how I'm going to feel. And so I went to one of the wedding receptions and I stayed until they served cake.
- Danielle Ireland
And then I was done and and it was OK, like we were we were able to to get through it. And I think that that lesson has been such a. It's really helped, I think, just transform the way we support one another and how we're able to hold space for the fact that our needs are different, which is so much easier said than done. But when when you're when you're knee deep in grief, it's it's hard not to want to hold other people responsible for your pain.
- Danielle Ireland
But in truth, I think what we both realized is like. It's a shared experience and we're supporting each other, but even in that we're not responsible for each other, which is. It's hard, but it was it was really helpful. And I find sometimes hand-in-hand with that is.
- Liesel Mertes
I don't know, there's kind of the romantic myth that your partner should be able to fulfill, like physical, emotional self actualization needs, which is, you know, kind of a bogus premise, even when things are completely stable, let alone when you're both deeply compromised.
- Liesel Mertes
And to be able to say, like I can, I can give you something and I don't want to pull back entirely. But really, like I, I find in my own story and in those that I've worked with, like you, you need people outside of your partner to be able to kind of hold some of that emotional ballast because it's a big ask, you know, to say to the other person, like, please be my everything in this time where so many important aspects of my world seem really unstable.
- Danielle Ireland
And it's just you're asking someone to fulfill an order that they just can't. It's kind of like emotional arrest. It's I want you to be responsible for fulfilling all of my sexual needs and fantasies. Know what I know what my needs are and something that I hear a lot in sessions and I'm sure with couples and I'm sure has come out of my mouth, too. But that sense of well, you know, I've told you this before or you know this about me.
- Danielle Ireland
So that that idea that like if I've told you something about myself once, you're now forever held accountable to not disappointing me in that way. And that's I think that's a really that's a fine line. And it's a tricky space because I think. And this is, I think, a big part of my own journey for the last couple of years, like I'm still in, I'm not far enough away from it to feel like I've got a really clear grasp on this.
- Danielle Ireland
But where when I become more when I take more ownership for my own experiences, my just the experiences of my life and the less accountable I make David to that happiness. It's more like I feel more of a freedom in a permission, like we're bearing witness to each other's lives and we're. Which is really what I think I want more than anything is to feel seen and heard, which is what validation really means.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
- Liesel Mertes
As you think about your journey with miscarriage, what do you wish if you could just, like, plant a knowingness in like the general consciousness? What do you wish that people knew about the pain of. Yeah, and, you know, it sounds like very visceral and embodied your particular manifestation of miscarriage.
- Liesel Mertes
What would you say, gosh, what would I want someone to know?
- Danielle Ireland
Oh, when I realized I never answered the question of my tone deaf comments, but I would say.
And I don't and you could probably navigate the how how this would actually look in action better than I can, because this is more, I think, your expertise.
- Danielle Ireland
But I would say that one of the things I felt. Often, which is probably why we're so selective of who I chose to see in those early stages was that I had to manage the other person's pain on my back. And so I went from it. So but I think thankfully, I either was self aware enough at the time or understood enough about that through other experiences of grief or my training, like I was able to kind of maybe shield myself a little bit.
- Danielle Ireland
But there were a handful of times even with close family. Where I felt like I had to continue to nurture them through their disappointment in my loss. And so it was more so than any one particular comment,
- Danielle Ireland
I think the one I probably heard a lot was, which makes sense. I mean, it would be very instinctive, which is like, I'm so sorry. But it was it was that was a tough one for me to receive because they they did nothing wrong.
- Danielle Ireland
And so I think there could be a difference between. I'm so sorry that this is your experience. I'm so sorry that this is what you and David are going through. I'm so sorry that you're in this pain. But I think what it felt like people were apologizing to me a lot and. That's. That was. Tricky and I think also probably the most tone deaf, which in the grand scheme of things really wasn't that bad.
- Danielle Ireland
But I remember my general practitioner saw her for a physical maybe six months after it happened.
- Danielle Ireland
I don't remember exactly. And she, having never been pregnant herself, in her own words, she she was very matter of fact, I think probably from like she's an expert in the body, therefore an expert in what happened with my body. But she said. You know, because I actually never blamed myself for the miscarriage, I'm grateful for that that wasn't that wasn't a manifestation of that particular grief for me. I didn't I didn't think that I had done anything wrong.
- Danielle Ireland
I mean, I felt like my body had let me down, but I didn't think like, oh, I shouldn't have jumped up and down that hard or I shouldn't have. I didn't I didn't, thankfully, have that part of it. But she said, you know what, I'm sure this is so tough, Danielle. And I'm sure no matter what I say, you're going to blame yourself anyway. But I just need you to know it's not your fault.
- Danielle Ireland
And it was just so I felt so brash and I felt like she was speaking on an assumption of what my experience was rather than ask me about it now. And that I remember kind of ruffled my feathers and rubs me the wrong way. But but thankfully, I don't think I experienced too too much in the other way. Yeah. I don't remember feeling disappointed by people very often, thankfully.
- Liesel Mertes
What has do you feel like there has been or what has been the carryover into this next pregnancy as you are now six months long? Have you? You know, it's you can't you can only live your own experience like you can't imagine, like, well, what would have been like to have a second pregnancy without that. But can you pull a thread through to say it has felt different because of this?
- Danielle Ireland
Oh, it has to. Without, without a doubt, I, I remember in the first couple of days, it may have been the second day after the miscarriage.
- Danielle Ireland
I remember thinking how remembering how caught up I was in my body changing and the bloating and my belly and my swollen boobs and like all of this, all of the stuff. And I remember sitting outside with a friend feeling just empty and saying I. God, just in a day like I would trade all of that for all of that discomfort, I would take it all back like I want all of that back. And but I couldn't have known I couldn't have known that without the loss.
- Danielle Ireland
Like, I. I don't know. And it's not to blame my myself prior to that miscarriage, because that was what I was experiencing at the time and that was what was true for me at the time. But I was. I think I was. Feeling caught up in the physical changes and feeling like home less attractive and this and this and then the loss just kind of snapped my focus after my priorities back.
- Danielle Ireland
And to be perfectly honest, I don't think I even knew how much I wanted to be a mother until I lost my first baby.
- Danielle Ireland
And not to say that I wouldn't. Love that boy, if he were here, has his first birthday would have been on December twenty third, so assuming he would have been born on his due date, but. I I've walked through the experiences of this pregnancy, still feeling them, I still have my moments where I've complained. It's not to say this is I don't I don't want to say like I have been an angel in this whole pregnancy.
- Danielle Ireland
It's been like a gift from the mother. And I was like, no, no, no. Like, I've still had plenty of, like, moments to kvetch and and and wine. But this ring of appreciation and this sort of Tuzer were like this thread that's pulled through is just massive, massive amounts of gratitude.
- Danielle Ireland
Like I can feel her kick right now. Every time I feel her move, it's just so exciting. And I know I have no doubt that being able to see her and hold her and touch her and smell her will be enriched because of what was informed from from the first experience.
- Danielle Ireland
Like, I think I was so focused on how my life was changing, what it might cost me and what I might be losing, that actually the whole experience, losing the whole experience, like losing the whole pregnancy, it just flipped the priorities.
- Danielle Ireland
And like this pregnancy because I didn't slow down. I didn't slow down on my production. My like the amount of clients I was scheduling, my expectations for myself. I didn't stop to rest. I just felt like I had to keep trucking along like life was normal.
- Danielle Ireland
And and so I needed to keep producing and doing and doing all the things I'm like I'm just going to do, like with a baby. It's no big deal. Like that's why they have baby born until just like the baby on and you get right back to life. And I think again, it was that old anxiety of I can't slow down, I can't stop because it'll all slip away.
- Danielle Ireland
But this this first trimester actually was a lot more uncomfortable than the first pregnancy. I was a lot more sick. What we're tired and knowing what I knew from before it was, I just gave myself a lot more grace, took a lot more naps, I reduced my my client schedule. I had breaks between clients, which I never did before. It was just I would just kind of knock out client, client, client, client, maybe get a little bit of time to eat client, client and then onto the next thing.
- Danielle Ireland
And I scaled way, way back. And what's incredible, too, I mean, my little daughter has already been such a powerful teacher for me and she's not even born yet.
- Danielle Ireland
But I've actually been able to do more by pushing less in specifically in my professional career. Like this has been a really, really remarkable year for me professionally in terms of what I've been able to put out and I've cut. At least my expectations and my schedule way, way back, way, way back.
- Liesel Mertes
Danielle, thank you for sharing so many aspects of that wisdom. I also want to be cognizant of your time. Is there anything else that you would really like to share that I didn't ask a question that led you into?
Danielle Ireland
Such a good question, I'm going to borrow some of these questions in my office because they're so good. Gosh, no, I can't think I can't think of anything. Other than.
- Danielle Ireland
I'm grateful to have this time to get to share with you and and your listeners and the people that you connect your material with.
- Danielle Ireland
And I'm just incredibly grateful that I was introduced to you at a time where I didn't even realize how much I needed to know you.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah, I am so glad to continue to watch both of our paths unfurl and I celebrate this new little one, I celebrate not only the birthing of a physical child, but you did. You gave birth to lots of things and initiatives in a pretty barren year. That is 2020.
- Liesel Mertes
So if people want to know more about you and your work, is your website the best place to go?
- Danielle Ireland
Yes. So danielleireland.com will show links to a guided journal called Treasured that I created this year. I'm also leading a workshop called the Unleashing New Relationship Workshop. And the link to participate or learn more about that is there. And then there's more information about me and blog content and my social media links are all housed there. So that's a nice, easy space for people. Or my podcast, if they want to read more.
MUSICIAL TRANSITION
Here are three helpful takeaways from my conversation with Danielle:
- There is power in sharing your story of loss.Miscarriage is often a private burden, unseen to a wider world unless the parent chooses to share. Danielle shared how meaningful it was to have multiple nurses come up to her in the recovery room to share that they too had lost a child in miscarriage. They spoke words of hope and camaraderie to her in the midst of a very dark time…and gave her confidence to know that her healing journey did not have to be silent.
- Partners grieve differently.As her therapist asked her, “Can you allow your partner to experience grief differently than you?” What does it look like to give the other person space and allowance? This is deeply resonant with my own experience of walking with my husband through our seasons of parental loss.
- “I’m sorry” can sometimes sound redundant or abstract to a person suffering.I often tell people that saying “I’m sorry that is happening to you” can be a really good go-to phrase, but this take-away is a good reminder that there is no one-size fits all approach to comfort. For Danielle, the “I’m sorry” felt hollow. Which brings me to the point 3b. Pay attention to the person you are communicating with. If they seem like they aren’t responding to your phrase, whether it is “I’m sorry” or something else, file that information away and try something different the next time you interact with them, like “I was thinking of you and how hard this must be.” The best comforters are those that pay attention and are consistently adapting to the person in front of them.
OUTRO
You can learn more about Danielle at https://danielleireland.com/