Lakeysha was one of those girls who started each day with masturbation to “clear the energy and start my day on the right foot,” the Washington D.C. native tells me. Then she had a miscarriage. “Suddenly, I wasn’t so interested in my body anymore.”
The 28-year-old, who asked to be referred to by her first name, says she didn’t know true grief until she lost her baby. “That kind of grief is totally different than when my grandma died,” she explains “I felt as if I had done something wrong. Along with the grief of losing the child and why this even happened, I just didn’t feel I trusted my body anymore.”
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As a psychologist specializing in women’s reproductive and maternal mental health, I’ve heard practically everything about pregnancy loss and life afterwards—along with the silence, stigma, and shame that comes with it. Over the years, as more and more stories surfaced, I realized there was one topic in particular that wasn’t being discussed amidst the grief of miscarriage: masturbation.
Given the fact that pregnancy loss is still shrouded in antiquated silence, it makes sense that this topic is taboo. Sex is practically necessary for procreation, and returning to intercourse after a loss is often an inevitability, even if it’s a fraught one. But what about the way our relationships with our own bodies change after a miscarriage? How do we relate to ourselves, find self-pleasure, and re-acclimate with our reproductive organs when no one is watching? I reached out to dozens of women like Lakeysha to get their raw, unfiltered opinions on one of life’s most intimate experiences. Here’s what they had to say:
“I Didn’t Deserve Pleasure”
A majority of women report feelings of shame, guilt, and self-blame following pregnancy loss. In many of their stories, there is a pervasive idea that the trust they once had in themselves has been stolen.
“I felt betrayed by my body. I still do. It felt like it wasn’t my own. I felt very attuned with it before my losses, but they have taken a toll on how I relate and feel sexually. Sex is bound up with trying to conceive now, and masturbation is an afterthought. It’s the last thing to come back for me, I guess. Pleasure is the last thing to return. Masturbation is the opposite of stress relieving for me. It’s not going to help.”
–Jenny, 31, four miscarriages, from outside London
“My miscarriages made me hyper aware of my body, and not in a good way. I became hyper-vigilant about what my reproductive system was doing. For me, trying to masturbate after my losses felt very textbook, almost clinical. I no longer felt like my vagina was for pleasure anymore, it was simply for making a baby. It was easier to have sex after my loss than it was to masturbate because sex was for us. Masturbation felt selfish. Something so sacred [my stillbirth] happened there, so it felt selfish to not include my husband.”
–Rachel, 33, two miscarriages and one stillbirth, from upstate New York
“I just didn’t feel connected to my vagina, that area where the trauma happened. I didn’t want to touch it, inspect it, look at it. Sex was practical— I wanted to get pregnant again. But I wasn’t interested in pleasure at all. I felt like I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t want to give myself any good feelings.”
–Leata, 28, one miscarriage, from London
“I felt guilty if I were to experience pleasure in any way, sexually as well. The return of joy is something I felt guilty about. It takes time. I’m working on it.”
–Paula, 31, one infant loss, from Poland
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“Honestly, it hasn’t occurred to me at all. Usually I would masturbate in the shower, but since the miscarriage I feel l like I don’t deserve pleasure. When I’m in the shower, I’m only thinking about my loss and what’s wrong with my body, not about pleasure at all. My body feels unknown to me right now. I feel like I’ll have to relearn how to experience pleasure with myself again through masturbation.”
-Karen, 28, one miscarriage, from Alaska
“Before my loss, I masturbated. During pregnancy too. But right now, I feel my body has failed me. I don’t want to experience pleasure. When my faith restores in my body, I imagine I’ll return to normal.”
–Mitika, 30, twin miscarriage, from India
“It Was Worth Trying”
Putting masturbation on a to-do list might not seem very sexy, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, orgasming can promote a sense of connection with oneself.
“After my miscarriage I was in shock at first and I went to masturbation for comfort. As an escape. A couple of times. And then I completely shut down sexually. I masturbated 3-4 times, like as self care or I thought maybe it would improve my mood, based on orgasm. The oxytocin didn’t do anything though. I just didn’t want to have a vagina.”
–Jess, 31, one miscarriage, from Dallas
“Masturbation was really about stress relief for me. I just used my fingers. No porn, no toys. I wanted to feel ecstasy again. I wanted to feel the opposite of sadness. I wanted to forget. Masturbating helped me forget for a moment. In the mornings, I was flooded with reality, and I wanted to escape this new reality and masturbation temporarily helped with that.”
–Raquel, 36, one stillbirth, from Ecuador
“I felt like I needed to release pent up energy so I zoned out and watched porn to get off. It was not in a loving way. I didn’t feel anything. It was just a release of energy.”
–Leata, 28, one miscarriage, from London
“I accept myself as a sexual person that has sexual needs. I am a sexual being. I accept this.”
-Ann, 53, three miscarriages, from Massachusetts
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“I actually masturbated a few times in the past couple of days, not for pleasure, but to help induce the miscarriage along, hoping that orgasm would help contract the uterus. It was pleasure mixed with medical [advice] and not a very pleasant objective. The orgasms didn’t help at all in terms of releasing the remains. It didn’t help from the emotional or physical perspective. I was hoping to feel a sense of release. I didn’t. But I did learn that self-pleasure can co-exist with grief.”
–Alena, 33, one miscarriage, from Russia
“It Helped Me Feel Like Myself Again”
Being in touch with ourselves physically might actually help us see our bodies as natural and good again.
“I’m a very sexual person, and I was having trouble feeling like myself sexually after my loss. I’ve always seen masturbating is an act of self-love and self-care. I touch myself when I feel good. Probably about three weeks after my loss, I felt my self-identity and my sexuality come back and then I felt more apt to be sexual with my husband as well. I was taught that sex is for procreation, so masturbating takes my mind off of getting pregnant and our fertility struggles. It’s for pleasure only. I can’t control my fertility, but no one can take my sexuality away from me. It helped me feel like myself again.”
–Jessica, 31, one miscarriage, from Sacramento
“We shouldn’t feel guilty about experiencing pleasure while grieving. There is nothing wrong with self-pleasure. We need that break. We need that five minutes, even if it’s five minutes. You don’t have to feel just one thing. There’s nothing wrong with feeling pleasure while you’re grieving a loss.”
–Sasha, 29, one miscarriage, from the Dominican Republic
“Masturbation was the only way I could reach orgasm, actually, because I wasn’t performing. It was just for myself. After my stillbirth, it was very difficult for me. My husband had taken care of me in a new way that was so vulnerable and intimate, but not sexy. When I was masturbating I didn’t have to think about him or his thoughts. I had sort of a lack of self-consciousness when it came to masturbating. The shower became a refuge for me. I pushed my grief aside. I relearned how to enjoy my body and be spontaneous. It was an active step toward self-care to masturbate.”
–Rachel, 33, two miscarriages and one stillbirth, from upstate New York
“I masturbated this morning and masturbated last night too. Me and my vagina still have this relationship. I still know her. Even though things have happened and I lost trust in her after the first loss, I reconnected with her. I’m not seeing this loss as a disconnected from my vagina, or myself. I am ready to masturbate. I’m ready to get back to my life.”
–Lakeysha, 28, one miscarriage and one ectopic pregnancy, from Washington, D.C.
If not for the cultural stigmatization surrounding pregnancy loss, we might not think of pleasure and grief as mutually exclusive. What if we upended all this silence and shame and replaced it with nuance? Masturbation certainly isn’t the only way to reconnect with ourselves and regain confidence in our sensuality, but it’s a comforting option that can, if we let it, encourage healing.
Jessica Zucker is a Los Angeles-based psychologist specializing in women’s health. After experiencing a second trimester miscarriage firsthand, she started a social media campaign @ihadamiscarriage, with the aim of replacing the antiquated silence surrounding this topic with storytelling. Her first book is due out in Fall 2020.
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