PostSecret and Orgasm and Stillbirth and Superstition

One of the truly criminal things about stillbirth is that it is so hard to talk about, so hard to think about, so hard to figure out, that if it happens to you, you will no doubt make shit up about it. The PostSecret postcard that I'm borrowing here pretty much sums up the kind of nonsense that gets proliferated by our own guilty conscience--by our desperate need to know why on earth this thing has happened to us (must have been that sip of coffee, or the long hot shower I took on Thursday). If you don't know anything about what PostSecret is, try clicking here. (knowing a little bit about why someone would send such a postcard might help you understand my despair at having discovered it). The postcard text reads
i THiNK i CAUSED HER TO BE STiLLBORN FROM AN ORGASM i WiLL HAVE TO ANSWER FOR iT SOME DAY
But here's the thing... it simply isn't possible to cause stillbirth from an orgasm. Orgasm is something your body expects to happen, pregnant or not... and I don't care if you're the woman or the man having an orgasm, an orgasm will cause, at the very worst, absolutely nothing else to happen except a bit of joy, a bit of endorphin... good stuff, not bad. My third child was stillborn. And if there was any credible evidence that stillbirth via orgasm was even remotely possible, believe me, I would have found out about it. We researched, we prodded, we tested, and we found nothing. Sometimes the fact is that a baby is stillborn, and there is very little scientific reason for it. Everyone will want to know (including the mother and father) “what happened.” And there is no answer. “The baby was stillborn,” is the answer. Not, “I did a, b and c, so the baby was stillborn.” Just, “the baby was stillborn. And that's what happened. And that's all that happened.” Not very comforting. Not at all. But a whole lot more comforting than believing that you caused your baby's death by orgasm, by sipping coffee, by standing too long in a hot hot shower. When your baby is stillborn, all of these thoughts become your thoughts... be they crazy thoughts or sane ones, and so long as you weren't involved in activities that would otherwise put your own body in peril, all of them are impossibly off the mark. And even though the mother and father will be impossibly off the mark, they are not to blame for having these thoughts either. And they are not to be ridiculed. They are to be corrected, as gently or as forcefully as necessary. They are to be moved away from what I think of as stillborn superstition. The mother and father may have to be pulled away by force. Or they may have to be reminded quietly, again and again. Or they may have to be coaxed with beer and chocolate. But they must not be allowed to believe the ridiculous for long, because even the ridiculous may seem to be true if we believe it too long. There is a multitude of information on orgasm/sex during pregnancy, and it almost universally claims that lovemaking either does not harm the fetus, or is in fact good for it (see Mayo or March of Dimes or Dr. Sears). To believe otherwise is what damages us as human beings. It causes us unreasonable anxiety and makes us lose faith. There are many things we can do to ourselves and our bodies that can harm an unborn baby (drugs, alcohol, smoking, extreme sports), but sex is not one of them. My wife and I have just welcomed our fourth child into this world, and during his gestation you can be sure we played a bit of the stillbirth superstition game. (I was convinced for awhile that we should not go out for Mexican food because before our stillborn child was born we had gone out for Mexican food... so I certainly know where the author of this postcard is coming from... and we eventually did go out for Mexican food, just seven days before he was born, healthy and happy and not even a trace of Molé sauce.) He is here now. With us. Lovely and wiggly and squeaky. Unharmed by orgasm or sip of coffee or long shower (or enchilada). And thank God. I don't know if any of us would have survived otherwise. Finally, for anybody looking for information on groups that help grieving parents, we have found the MISS foundation to be of great value. They do a world of good, and they are underfunded and underappreciated, likely because, as I said, nobody likes to talk about stillbirth (or death, for that matter). But stillbirth happens. And it happens to a lot of people. And if it happens to you, you will not be unchanged. The MISS Foundation can help: The MISS Foundation. Blessings. I'm listening to “In The Yard, Behind The Church” by Eels from the album Blinking Lights And Other Revelations.
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