This book is the Winner of the OSCLG Outstanding Book Award The loss of a desired pregnancy or the inability to experience pregnancy are intensely personal phenomena; these losses are also, in our culture at least, extremely private. Communicating Pregnancy Loss is a collection of first-person narratives about the experience of pregnancy loss. Although there is no shortage of books that help prospective parents cope with an unintended pregnancy loss or survive infertility, most of these books are authored by physicians or therapists and address pregnancy loss through the language of guidance. This book is different. It is the first of its kind because the contributors (primarily communication scholars but also healthcare personnel and other scholars from the social sciences) tell their story of loss in their own words, offering a diverse collection of narratives that span experience and identity. The authors employ various feminist theories, narrative theories, and performance theories as well as other well-known communication theories and concepts. The books narrative approach to writing about and thereby understanding pregnancy loss offers readers a method for changing the way pregnancy loss is understood personally, culturally, and politically.

Contents: Patricia Geist-Martin: Foreword: The Sacred Number Four – Rachel E. Silverman/Jay Baglia: The Politics of Pregnancy Loss – Maria Brann: Nine Years Later and Still Waiting: When Health Care Providers’ Social Support Never Arrives – Jennifer J. Bute: Honoring Stories of Miscarriage in the Medical Context: A Plea to Health Care Providers – Jennifer L. Fairchild/Michael Irvin Arrington: Looking for Their Light: Advancing Knowledge and Supporting Women by Listening to Pregnancy Loss Narratives – Julie L. G. Walker/Benjamin M. Walker: Unscripted Loss: A Hesitant Narrative of a Reconstructed Family – Elissa Foster/Jodi McGivern: A Story We Can Live With: The Role of the Medical Sonographer in the Diagnosis of Fetal Demise – Kristann Heinz/Elissa Foster: Searching for Grace – Lisa Jo Schilling/Rachel E. Silverman: When the Professional Is Personal: Case Studies of Pregnancy Loss, My Story of Pregnancy Loss – Caryn E. Medved: Infertility, Professional Identity, and Consciousness-Raising – Rebecca Kennerly: Hidden in Plain Sight: Mystoriography, Melancholic Mourning, and the Poetics of [My Pregnancy] Loss – Michaela D. E . Meyer: On the Identity Politics of Pregnancy: An Autoethnographic Journey Through/In Reproductive Time – Deleasa Randall-Griffiths: The Healing Journey – Lisa Weckerle: Once Upon a Time: A Tale of Infertility, In Vitro Fertilization, and (Re)Birth – Elizabeth Root: The Empty Woman: Dealing With Sadness and Loss After a Hysterectomy – Jay Baglia: Melancholy Baby: Time, Emplotment, and Other Notes on Our Miscarriage – Jennifer Morey Hawkins: Dying Inside of Me: Unexplained Recurrent Early Pregnancy Loss – Renata Ferdinand: Moving Through Miscarriage: A Personal Narrative – Julie Novak/Eduardo Gargurevich: Barren and Abandoned: Our Representations Left Unshared and Uncharted – Desiree Rowe: Cruel Optimism and the Problem With Positivity: Miscarriage as a Model for Living – Sherokee Ilse/Kara L.C. Jones: Turning Tragedy Into Triumph: A Hero’s Journey From Bereaved Parent to International Advocate – Rachel E. Silverman: Breaking Through the Shame and Silence: A Media-Centered Approach to Consciousness-Raising – Jay Baglia/Rachel E. Silverman: Afterword: How to Do Things With Stories.