Equally Awful

Did you hear that Leah Messer had a miscarriage?  UGH.  Here is the full story from OK! Magazine.

When I heard the sad news I had been ironically working on a post about the fact that Leah Messer was pregnant again.  A cheeky post that went something like this:

If you know I love Teen Mom, you also know that I have mixed opinions about it's overall worth to society.  I've asked the question before (here) and I'll ask it again: is Teen Mom teaching teens about how truly difficult it is to be a teenage mother or is it glamorizing teen pregnancy?  I think, and I could certainly be wrong, that the founding idea behind Teen Mom was to encourage the use of birth control (and celibacy).  I haven't come across any statistics on whether this principal has in fact affected the general teenage population, but when it comes to a specific teenage individual, Leah Messer, we can now say with certainty that the whole importance of birth control message didn't resonate.  She's nineteen and recently announced that she's pregnant, again.

I was actually inspired to write a post about Leah's Messer's pregnancy by one of my favorite NSB followers who emailed this question: why haven't you covered the Leah Messer pregnancy?!  A solid question given my juvenile obsession with the Teen Mom franchise.  Of course it was blog worthy news, but I was biding my time as I searched for my angle.  So, I started the post (above) but couldn't figure out where to take it.  Then, news of the miscarriage hit the internet and my angle found me.

Pregnancy is major.  It can be major good or major...not good.  That's because not all pregnancies occur under ideal terms.  It's easy to think of the married couple in their thirties who get pregnant after thoughtful consideration, financial planning and a month of hot, unprotected sex.  Of course that's not always the case.  Pregnancy can also be the result of a couple teenagers having a one-night, supremely awkward romp session after drinking far too many Natty Ices.

aka Natty Ice

Miscarriage, on the other hand, is pretty much always awful - whether you're sixteen or fifty, a billionaire or poor as hell, ready or not ready.  There is no upside to discovering a pregnancy and then losing that pregnancy.  For a woman whose discovery of pregnancy is major good, loss of that pregnancy is awful.  Totally and utterly devastating.  For a woman whose discovery of pregnancy is major not good, loss of that pregnancy is still awful.  Losing a pregnancy won't erase the emotional turmoil that occurred while the pregnancy existed.  And, even in major not good cases, unexpectedly losing a pregnancy may still provoke sadness.  A loss is still a loss, even if it's accompanied by a sense of relief.

Upon hearing news of the miscarriage, my heart hurt for Ms. Messer, even if she did ignore the good word of Dr. Drew.