The "Curse" of the Pregnancy Test
were women in the past spared the grief of miscarriage?
A small portion of this post is an excerpt from my book Lost Gifts: Miscarriage, Grief, and the God of All Comfort
Have you heard of the curse of the pregnancy test? You might have if you’ve experienced a miscarriage. Often when a woman miscarries, she’s met with assumptions about women in the past: “It was easier back then. Women didn’t know they were pregnant because they didn’t have early pregnancy tests like we do today.” Many believe that not having a confirmed pregnancy saves a woman a lot of grief. But is that really true?
We have been blessed with much scientific advancement in our day. While you and I can reach under our bathroom sink to grab a pregnancy test, the first somewhat reliable test to detect HCG (the pregnancy hormone) was only available through a doctor in 1970. At-home tests came on the market as recently as 1978. This means, until more recent years, women had to rely on signs in their own body, from the missing period to the onset of nausea, to determine if they were pregnant. And that’s exactly what they did.
Nicholas Culpeper, an English physician in the 1600s, wrote that the signs of a pregnancy were “loathing of meat, pewking Pica, or preternatural appetite and vomiting.”1 One husband penned in a diary entry in November 1650, “my wife apprehends she breedeth.”2
This isn’t shocking. Many of us feel the evidence of our baby before we ever see the positive test that proves it. Last year, I experienced what I believed to be a very early miscarriage. My period was late and the symptoms in my body told a familiar story. Three very faintly positive tests were followed by negative ones the next day. I began bleeding soon after—the experience of which (even at only a couple days pregnant) confirmed my suspicion. I was miscarrying.
Many of us have felt the change within our bodies prior to confirming with a test. One wonders, is it really logical that the majority of women in earlier times who fell pregnant and then miscarried shortly after were so aloof to the happenings of their body? Though they didn’t have the access to testing we have today, we shouldn’t be too quick to assume that they must not have known they were pregnant and therefore didn’t grieve as deeply.
In my research for my book, I found evidence that women (and men) in the past absolutely grieved the loss of babies in the womb in the early stages of pregnancy. In 1657, a woman named Mary Carey wrote a poem about her own early miscarriage. She begins, “What birth is this; a poore despised creature? A little Embrio; voyd of life, and feature:” She miscarried early enough that she couldn’t discern her baby’s features. Yet, as she continues, she acknowledges her grief and considers this baby to be just like all the rest of her children—a baby with a soul:
Seven tymes I went my tyme; when mercy giving
deliverance unto me; & mine all living:
Stronge, right-proportioned, lovely Girles, & boyes
There fathers; Mother's present hope't for Joyes:
That was great wisedome, goodnesse, power love praise
to my deare lord; lovely in all his wayes:
This is no lesse; ye same God hath it donne;
submits my hart, thats better than a sonne:
In giveing; taking; stroking; striking still;
his Glorie & my good; is. his. my will:
In that then; this now; both good God most mild,
his will's more deare to me; then any Child:I also joy, that God hath gain'd one more;
To Praise him in the heavens; then was before:And that this babe (as well as all the rest,)
since 't had a soule, shalbe for ever blest:3
Though Mary’s baby was “voyd of life, and feature” she grieved her child even as she fought to submit her will to God’s plan. Then there was a man named Sir William Masham who wrote in a letter in 1631 that his wife was “yonge with child and hath mis carryed this day.” “Young with child” seems to mean that his wife had not been pregnant long. He continued: “It is the greater griefe to us, having bene thus longe without; I praye God sanctefye this affliction to us.”4 Women were not the only ones who grieved miscarriage; their husbands did as well.
The point is, it wasn’t always true that couples in the past didn’t know they were pregnant and therefore also didn’t know they were miscarrying. Many knew without the proof of two pink lines on a test. I wonder, would it really have been better that they hadn’t known for sure, as some assume?
Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question. I’m sure it’s more complicated than I realize. Because, of course, the grief of miscarriage is something that one naturally wants to be spared from. But miscarriage is the loss of a real, live baby who is known by God. I think what pricks my heart is that when people say it was better for women in the past because they didn’t know for sure that they’d miscarried, I think about how thankful I am to know about my own babies in heaven. I would never desire to un-know them; it was a gift to carry all of them for all of their days on earth. When someone claims the curse of the pregnancy test, it feels like they are saying it is better that my babies would have never been known, even if that is not what they intend.
And it isn’t what they intend—I know statements like the one at hand are meant well. Our loved ones wish to spare us from suffering. But to know that God created life in our womb is a blessing, not a curse. Even if we only knew of our baby for a short time. With great joy comes grief at the loss of the gift. But there was still joy to begin with. Knowing about my babies changed me. The joy and the grief of them made me the mother I am today. And I am so thankful for the pregnancy tests that testified to their lives, some of which remain the only evidence of their precious lives that I have left.
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Nicholas Culpeper, A Directory for Midwives; or, A Guide for Women, in their Conception, Bearing and Suckling their Children (London: Peter Cole, 1662), 156.
Josselin, The Diary, 220. quoted in Jennifer Evans and Sara Read, “‘Before Midnight She Had Miscarried,’” Journal of Family History 40, no. 1 (December 29, 2014): 3–23, https://doi.org/10.1177/0363199014562924.
Mary Carey, “Upon Ye Sight of My Abortive Birth Ye 31th: Of December 1657,” Poetry Explorer, https://www.poetryexplorer.net/poem.php?id=10046105.
Barrington Family letters 1628 -1632, edited by Arthur Searle, Camden Fourth Series, Volume 28 (London, 1983), 220. quoted in Jennifer Evans and Sara Read, “‘Before Midnight She Had Miscarried,’” Journal of Family History 40, no. 1 (December 29, 2014): 3–23, https://doi.org/10.1177/0363199014562924.
I imagine women also used to be more in tune with their bodies because they had no access to modern birth control and therefore more likely to know. I’ve had two losses that were too early even for a drug store test to register, but my body knew without a doubt, and my heart did too.
I think there’s something about the initial phase of grief (at least in my experience) that says, “I wish I never knew,” or “I wish God just hadn’t given me a child whom he was just going to take again so early on.” But with the passage of time, and submission to God’s good plan, there can be a looking backing with gratitude for that little life, and an anticipatory looking forward to the joy of meeting that child in heaven.
Enjoyed this read, thanks!