Chapter 10: The Experience of Recurrent Gestational Losses: Semiotic Strategies of Dynamic Self-Repair After Sequential Ruptures

For many women, pregnancy represents the experience of a waiting period, an event that is somehow imagined and expected (personally and socially) to happen, with a predictable ending: the birth of a new life and the beginning of motherhood. However, for some women, this relatively predetermined course between conception and childbirth suffers an unexpected result—the loss of one’s child before or during birth. In some cases, this loss does not occur just once, but several times. Part of the difficulty, beyond the loss of one’s precious newborn, is the loss of an idealized type of family, the loss of the social role of mother, and the loss of a certain control over the woman’s own body and life—all of which are contained in the experience of pregnancy and the emergence of motherhood. Therefore, the experience of successive gestational losses threatens these women’s sense of self, as individuals experience the repeated loss of a child and the constant loss of hope for becoming a mother, in addition to the repercussions of the meaning of motherhood on the family system and structure.