Disclaimer: I wrote this really fast. I'll try and find any spelling or grammar errors later.
I recently read the 'Tiger Mom' article about the asian way of raising children. It was an interesting read because quite frankly, I lived that to some degree going up and how difficult it was to tell my parents about our losses, and our problem.
A little background on my asian upbringing: I'm actually a former refugee and immigrant to Canada. In fact, my parents were one of the boat people who fled Vietnam in 1980 and I was born in a UN refugee camp. No joke! For the first 4 years of my life in Canada I actually had no country I was a citizen of!
I had the traditional "You will do this because we said so, and we don't have to explain anything to you" kind of parenting. When I didn't listen or did stupid things, I was sometimes spanked, hard. There were incidents that I shall not mention beyond today, more than eyebrows would be raised if someone discussed it. Those of you who know who Russell Peters is will know the phrase, "Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad..." as funny as it is when he says it, there's nothing funny when it's your own dad. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I didn't provoke it. I once turned on the sprinkler while my dad was painting the house. Ooops.
There were also things I recall like... coming home with 80+% on my report card and my dad (and to a degree, my mom) upset that I didn't get 100%. Boys always want to impress their dad and I was no exception. Even today at the age of 30, I still find myself from time to time doing things thinking he'd be proud of me. I'm getting a bit off topic... I tend to do that.
So what does this have to do with recurring pregnancy loss? Well, I remember telling my mom when we lost our first baby. At that point, we had no idea that we had a genetic translocation mumbo jumbo problem. I told my mom that it was unfortunately quite normal to lose a pregnancy here and there.
For those of you that know my mom, this will not surprise you. She said it was because April was doing things 'wrong'. Some of the things I recall were: too much walking, our home had too many stairs and the "extra" exertion from the stairs was to blame, and eating the wrong things. She reinforced herself by saying "yup" at the end of her suggestions. She also at one point suggested April do nothing but lay in bed for a month. "yup".
Asian parents like my mom and dad 'teach' their kids by telling them what to do and expecting their kids to just do it because mom and dad "said so". That's the expectation, and that's how they were raised. You will often find asian parents (especially immigrant generation) doing things this way and getting frustrated when their kids don't "listen".
They also expect the oldest sibling to "teach" the younger siblings in a similar way. I'm the oldest of 4, and I often get the, "Your sister isn't listening to what we tell her to do. You tell her to do it". Of course, this doesn't work cause I was raised in Canada so my replies generally are "I'm not the parent, you are".
So now that you know the background, you can kind of see where this is going. When I told my mom about our RPL the responses could be preceived as borderline insensitive. I didn't tell April most of them cause quite frankly, it would not have contributed to her healing in any way shape or form.
I tried to explain it to her from how I thought April felt - it feels like we lost our baby (and we did). Her response was basically telling me that I was foolish for thinking about it like that and I was wrong because at that early stage, you can't consider the fetus a baby yet. Technically in a clinical and emperical way she was right. However 'telling' someone how to deal with their emotions is like yelling at the rain. No one will listen to the yelling.
I also explained that it's much more emotionally traumatic for her because she has the physical symptoms and hormones which make her 100x more emotional.
My mom's response: "Tell her....." argh. Mom. I tuned her out.
That's the Asian immigrant parent way of helping their kids and their kid's problems. Telling them what to do. I love my mom and dad, but they are not who I turn to if I have any issues like this. Especially anything that brings up a lot of emotion for me. I can't blame them either, it's how they were raised and that's all they know. Many first generation immigrant parents are probably the same way too. You can't change them, so you deal with it the only way you can : by not including them in when you have certain problems.
So who did I (personally) turn to for all the losses we have if it isn't my wife? Good question. When I find out one of these days, i'll let you ladies and gents know.
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