Jessie Tu, on miscarriage and doing motherhood her way
30:00 Share

ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

Hey ladies, before we start, I want to ask you a favor. We're looking for feedback. I'd love to know what you think about Ladies We Need To Talk and the sorts of things you want to hear about more on our show. What do you love? What topics are close to your heart? What things have we missed? And what would you love to hear less of? We've posted a survey on the Ladies We Need To Talk website and in the show notes of the episode that you're listening to right now. If

If you could fill it out, it will help us to understand you more and help us to fashion the best possible episodes in future. Please take five minutes out of your day to fill out the survey. You'll be helping our show to be more your show. It's completely anonymous, so you can be brutally honest. Just don't say you love me because it'll make me cry. Wah! And thank you. It's the most weird and mind-boggling thing to...

fall pregnant and to have this thing that is the most ecstatic, joyful thing in the world happen. Author Jessie Tu was pregnant with a baby she had longed for. But seven weeks into the pregnancy, the dream evaporated. And then for that to go away, it's just like, I don't think we have the language for it. I think that people are uncomfortable and don't know how to sit with

grief, like the specific grief that is miscarrying. On a regular Sunday morning last year, Jessie, aged 37 at the time, was in her pyjamas in the courtyard of her house when she got a phone call telling her that the baby she thought was growing in her belly was no longer viable. She said the results have come back and they're not what we want.

The doctor didn't use the word miscarriage in the call, but Jessie would become very acquainted with that word as she waded through her loss. It's a distressing, inexplicable kind of harrowing grief that you go through. I'm Yumi Steins. Ladies, we need to talk about writing your own motherhood script with Jessie Too. MUSIC

Jessie Tu is a high achiever. She was a violinist before becoming an author and turned her classical musician past into inspiration for her first novel, A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing, which made her one of Australia's most dazzling young authors. She's also the classic Asian diasporic kid, believing that a relentless work ethic and non-stop grind gets results.

But that was something she had to unlearn in the unpredictable lottery of pregnancy. Even trying to conceive, she realised she couldn't be the model minority perfect A-grade student to get what she wanted. You spend your whole life as a woman being told, don't fall pregnant, this is how to not fall pregnant. And the moment you want to fall pregnant and it doesn't happen immediately, it is so discombobulating and...

It's such a shock to the system also because we as women are so resourceful. And what I mean is that if we want something, we know how to get it. And this one thing, this one thing that we're told is so natural and common and ordinary. The fact that it wasn't happening month to month, like for me, it was, it drove me quite insane. Like I had to get a lot of, I talked to a lot of friends about it. I sought therapy about it.

But yeah, I just felt like such a failure. And did it make the process of having sex with your partner weird or a bit more joyless? I know a lot of people said that. It becomes like a chore. For me personally, I found it fine. I guess maybe because we'd been trying for less than a year. Yeah. So maybe it would have been different. But for me personally, no, it was still a lot of fun. Yeah.

Jessie didn't always want to be a mum. She grew up in a Taiwanese family and through her young eyes, their adherence to traditional gender roles was repellent. I think a lot of it just looked kind of oppressive.

I saw the way my mother was asked, as most women of her generation were during that time, to give up her career aspirations, any kind of identity outside of motherhood and wifedom, when she got married at 24 and had four children within six years.

And then all I saw of her the moment we migrated to Australia when I was four, five, was complete sacrifice, self-sacrifice. She had no identity outside the home. She was a chauffeur. She was the cook. She was a nanny. She was a caregiver.

I just thought, I don't want to be like that. It just seems like so hard and I never want to be invisible. And to see my mother have all her labour unacknowledged, it just made me angry. It made me so angry. So funny. I'm the youngest of four as well. And I remember thinking the exact same thing about my mum. It's like, why does she have to work so hard? So being a mother to you was being...

somebody who just gave and sacrificed herself. And was unrecognized. That I think was the most bruising to my ego. Yeah, right. No acknowledgement, no thank you, no gratitude. I think I've always saw marriage as a straitjacket for women. The men go out, do their thing, they could come home and still get praised at the workplace for just being a father, just for bringing in the dough.

And the women were invisible back home. I just thought that wasn't the model of happiness that I wanted to pursue. It is a modern feminist conundrum. What to do when your attraction to men seems to put you in harm's way? Maybe because it feels a little bit like I'm giving in.

to male power. In the last few years, I've consistently and very actively and stridently questioned my heterosexuality because there are moments in my adult life where I thought it's a joke that I've been fooled into thinking that getting a man to validate and love me is just all a game.

But look, she was straight. How annoying. And as Jessie came into adulthood, the men she was meeting were not making great ambassadors for dating or heterosexuality. I had, I want to say the word horrifying, but just like a series of very unpleasant dating experiences all through my 20s. And I realised upon reflection that it's because I was chasing a feeling. And the feeling is Hollywood generated. It's the feeling of being swept up.

you know, butterflies in your stomach, all of those things that we are told by Hollywood and books to feel, to know that this is love, capital L. And then in 2020, Jessie was 33 when she found a connection. There was less capital L love at first sight and more capital R for real. It really came through weeks and weeks of just hanging out with him and

and being friends first and realising that I felt completely myself and comfortable. And I know this is cheesy, but he just felt like home, as in like he just felt like someone I had known for a long time and who I didn't need to put a mask on when I was around him. That was quite revelatory. Wow, that's so beautiful.

And really the decision to become a parent was meeting my partner and realising that I can actually have a life where I parent a child and for my identity to not be totally annihilated. I think that was quite liberating. After dating for about a year, Jessie and her partner Andrew were on a weekend away in a little seaside town in New South Wales.

He and I were sitting on an embankment, like just looking out onto the sunset. And I was just overcome by sheer beauty.

like looking at the sunset, just sitting with him sitting next to me. And I just thought, I think it would be an incredible thing to bring someone who doesn't currently exist into the world because the world is and can be a beautiful place. I think for me, I'm very beauty driven. Beauty in the sense that natural beauty, good things in the world. Like there was a change in my belief system that I was no longer as cynical as I used

was before thinking this world is so you know messed up it wasn't worthy of bringing a child into but then seeing that sunset just something changed in me

Your molecules got rearranged. I think so. Nothing like true love and a sunset to get those ovaries pulsating. So Jessie and Andrew got to it, having plenty of unprotected sex and dreaming about vast oceans and sun setting skies and of course wee little tiny cute babies.

But it wasn't happening for them, and each month that Jessie didn't fall pregnant was another crushing disappointment. My therapist said that every time you see blood in your underwear, it's a little bit of grieving because it's something that you hoped that would happen and it didn't happen.

Eleven months into trying for a baby, Jessie was at the doctor's getting an iron infusion and she had what she thought were cramps indicating an oncoming period. And my doctor, I sat down, was ready to inject the iron. She said, are you pregnant? And I said, no, I'm pretty sure I'm not. And she got me to do a test and then she sat down next to me and I could sense something was happening because she was chatting to the nurses secretively. And then she turned to me and said, you're pregnant.

Yeah, and I was just really in shock. Like, I didn't believe her. Usually those cramps meant that her period was on its way, but not this time. Jessie got in the car and drove home to tell her partner.

He was elated. But I always foresaw the moment of knowing that I was pregnant. I remember thinking for the whole 11 months, I would literally put on a pair of joggers and run out on the streets and wave my arms around and scream with joy. You know, all I wanted was to be pregnant. But when the moment finally came, instead of running around screaming with happiness, Jessie was hushed by how utterly powerless she felt in this pregnancy. I was just...

wracked with anxiety from that moment on. Oh no. Yeah, because I was like, is this going to continue? The whole experience of falling pregnant, getting pregnant, having children is so fraught because you never know when anything could happen. Yeah. There is no moment of certainty. And then I, you know, I hear my parent friends say, even when you do have a child and they come out healthy, you never stop worrying. Yeah.

So how much future imagining did you do in the first weeks of that pregnancy where you're kind of, you're projecting forward? Not much, to be honest. Did you imagine what sort of mother you would be? An angry one. Oh, great. Why is that? Because of your mum? Because I'm just a very angry person. LAUGHTER

I'm quite impatient. Like if someone doesn't... Describing me, everything you say, I'm like, oh my God, this bitch thinks me. Yeah, like if someone doesn't do something the way I want it in the timeframe I want it, I like just like... Just fucking hurry up.

What about your child, your future child? Could you picture them? I tried not to, to be honest. Yeah, yeah. I know I had friends who when they were pregnant, they would send me, you know, the tracking apps that would tell you how big. I could not do that because if I did miscarry, I didn't want to imagine this as a potential human being because I didn't want to jinx myself. Yeah.

Like most intelligent, reasonable women with overachieving anxiety and a human growing inside their body, Jessie was obsessively Googling. I read on some website that said the most dangerous, like quote-unquote dangerous time for a pregnancy was week seven to eight.

Oh, well, that's doom and gloom. Yeah, yeah. And then so when I hit around six, seven weeks, I started worrying a lot because I was like, every day I was like, is it going to be today? Is it going to be today? Jessie was seven weeks pregnant when she noticed there was light bleeding. But physically, she was feeling fine.

I had a friend who said, it's normal, some women spot during pregnancy. It doesn't actually could mean anything, just go for a blood test. And then I think one or two days later, my doctor called me and she said, are you sitting down? And I guess that's never a good opener. She wasn't sitting down, actually. She was standing in her courtyard on a very bright, sunny Sunday in April, and she stayed standing as she got the news.

And she said, the results have come back and they're not what we want. She just kept saying, they're not what we want. And I was like, what do you mean? Can you just tell me if I've miscarried? And she said, I don't think this will be a viable pregnancy. She kept using that kind of technical medical language that I just, it frustrated me. It made the whole experience even more alienating and lonely. Mm.

She couldn't just say the words, yes, you've miscarried. She conveyed to me that my HCG levels had gone down. And then I consulted Google later and it said, when HCG levels go down during a pregnancy, it means the pregnancy is no longer going to continue. I hopped on the phone with a friend who's a GP, discussed it, but they were also trying to just evade the whole, yes, you've miscarried. Like they just didn't want to say that to my face.

After Jessie took that phone call in the morning, she went to a family lunch for her mum's birthday. So my family, as traditional as they are, we're very, very transparent with each other. I'm very open with my parents and my siblings. They knew the journey I had been on to try and conceive.

But because I was so anxious about the pregnancy, I didn't tell anyone. It was just my partner and I because there's this ridiculous rule that you're supposed to wait till 12 weeks. I'm saying it's ridiculous because I just hate any kind of

sort of assumed law about things like that, like when to tell people. And so we didn't tell them. And so I rocked up to this gathering and I knew I couldn't hide it. I couldn't just sit there and pretend. And so I sat down and my parents and I, we speak in Mandarin together. And I said to them, my Mandarin is the equivalent of like a nine or 10 year old. So my vocabulary is not very good. So I didn't know the word for miscarriage.

So I basically sat down and said, "Mum, I have something to tell you. I was pregnant and now I'm not." I found out this morning. The doctor told me. And yeah, it was, I mean, I like, crumbled into a ball of mess.

Jessie's relationship with the Mandarin language is complicated. Like a lot of children of migrants, she spent her younger years absolutely determined to be an excellent English speaker and consciously narrowing the use of her parents' native tongue. The day of that family lunch, Jessie didn't have the words in Mandarin to tell her mum what was happening in her body. It was only much later that she could face looking it up.

I had to Google what the word miscarriage was and it's liu hai. And liu hai is two words which mean like flow and asset. Flow as in like kind of flow out and then an asset like a property. Liu hai. Yeah. It was, to me, it felt a bit comforting because I guess at that point I wanted to feel like what had happened to me was not the loss of property.

a human life even though it was but like just something that was not meant to become a human being like I found comfort in the language the sort of clinical separation of like the flowing of acid the sort of letting like something out of your control basically like the way the river flows the water flows down a river and

The following day, we went to the early pregnancy clinic and did an ultrasound. And that's when they said, yes, it's confirmed. There's no heartbeat. And that ultrasound, was that the one where they put it on your belly? Yes. Yeah. So you're looking at the screen looking for a fetus. Well, I think I was a bit too upset at that point. I didn't look at the screen. So you told your family. Did you talk to other people in your life about having a miscarriage? I did. I was quite...

I'm an oversharer. Yeah.

I like was telling, like, I wouldn't say strangers, but just people I met. I remember a few days after it happened, I hadn't seen a very sort of distant acquaintance at this book event. And I just told her immediately, I just miscarried. And it was so, like, for me, it was cathartic because I wanted people to know what I'd gone through. And then often what would end up happening is that once I revealed my miscarriage, honestly, half the time the women I spoke to, they would say, I also miscarried.

have experienced miscarriage. And that's my way of connecting and connecting through grief, you know. I really needed to do that just to centre myself and my story.

And also hear from these women who nine times out of ten went on to become mothers that I could become a mother one day, even though this has happened to me. Interesting. So it's part of the process. I think so. Yeah. That's a really beautiful way to look at it. Why do you think there's still a taboo around talking about miscarriage? I think that people are uncomfortable and don't know how to sit with

like the kind of specific grief that is miscarrying. It's the most weird and mind-boggling thing to fall pregnant and to have this thing that is the most ecstatic, joyful thing in the world happen and then for that to go away. It's just like I don't think we have the language for it and I think that people don't know how to react when someone says, I've miscarried. I think a lot of people...

are just uncomfortable or embarrassed or just would rather not go there. We turn away from things that are ugly or messy or inexplicable. People want to comfort you, but I guess a lot of people just don't know how to, especially men. Oh, really? They were the most speechless? I think men are still not rewarded for being emotionally intelligent. And so I know that

Part of the reason I was so vocal about my own miscarriage was that I had a male acquaintance friend who didn't want his, like his partner had miscarried and he didn't want it to come out. I just think any kind of blanketing of things that happen in our life is unhealthy. Like maybe there's someone who's listening right now who can think of something that, you know, is private things in our lives that should remain private. Poo. Yeah.

Talking about poo at dinner table. Yes, okay, yes, that's true. I think talk about poo with people that love to hear about poo, but not at dinner. Yeah, just not at dinner. Not at dinner. Yeah, yeah. But on the whole, like, everything about life, especially the most private things, should be aired out. After the miscarriage, Jessie started trying for a baby again, pretty much straight away. Because I'm an insecure high achiever. You're such an Asian. Yeah.

So is that the only reason why? Was the clock ticking as well? Absolutely. Yeah. I was like almost approaching 37, I guess. And with each month, I was just thinking, oh, my chances, biologically speaking, are getting lower and lower. How did it feel to want this thing so desperately, but not be able to control the outcome?

It can drive you mad. And I think it drove me mad. Yeah. It was one of the most challenging things I had to negotiate psychically just to come to terms with this may not actually happen for me ever. To try and accept that, I think, was a giant leap for me. And I really pursued that line of thought every day because in my 20s, when I was really struggling to find a male partner who I

could see being with and who respected me as an equal. Like I struggled real hard to be in a healthy relationship. And I remember during that time struggling in dating, just thinking this might not actually happen. Like I might just be alone for the rest of my life. And to try and just think that is okay is a huge psychological, emotional endeavor, I guess, with this whole baby making process. This is completely out of my control. You have some news.

I'm currently pregnant, yes. Congratulations. Thank you. How are you feeling about it? I'm in my second trimester now. Okay. But the first trimester was harrowing and unpleasant. A lot of crying for absolutely no reason. A lot of inexplicable emotions, highs and lows. The crying would come in the oddest moments and I couldn't explain it. And I think I was maybe grieving the life that I...

was going to now no longer have because of this impending baby about to come out into the world. And I felt so bad because I know how much I wanted this baby. I just kept thinking I should be elated and that's it. I should only have this one side of emotion because I had been on the other side of not being pregnant and known and being so jealous of women who were pregnant. And then for me to be pregnant and then not

Being grateful for it, I felt I was somehow morally corrupt or I wasn't being fair to the God. Like, I'm not a believer, but I was like, why am I not grateful? Jessie spoke to a midwife about that guilt and was told that it is really common to feel guilty and something that a lot of pregnant people go through. It's like, fuck, I wanted this for so long, but I'm also feeling terrible all the time and it sucks.

We're meant to be just grateful. We're just meant to be ecstatic and excited. I think the excitement is coming now only because the nausea has faded a bit. But when you're nauseous, like you can't think of anything else. Yeah. It's horrible. Yeah. Tell me about telling your parents that you were pregnant.

I just said to them very casually one day, oh, my period hasn't come in a week. That's all I said to my parents. And then the next time, because we hang out quite regularly, and the next time I saw them maybe two weeks later, I was like, yeah, it still hasn't come. So I think the implication... Oh, my God. Are you serious, Jessie? Jessie?

So I just said, and then by, I guess by fourth or fifth week, I was like, oh, I think I'm pregnant. And how were they reacting? Were they just giving you side eye? Like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. They're very, very understated people. Yeah. They were just like, okay, cool.

It was just like a day-by-day thing because they knew what had happened in the past to me. So they were like, okay, well, just take care of yourself. Like I've seen a new side to my dad I've never seen before. He's been so caring. I don't know. He's a man of that generation and suddenly his youngest daughter is pregnant and he's like, every time he sees me now, he's like, how are you? How's the baby? How are you? Like he asks me questions whereas like my whole adult life when I see my dad, like he doesn't ask me questions. Yeah.

Very undemonstrative people, your parents. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Have you allowed yourself to start making plans for this unborn baby? The only thing we've done is have casual conversations about names. Okay. That's all.

When Jessie was young, she saw her mother's motherhood and marriage as painful and endless servitude. But as she steps into being a mum herself, she sees a future where she gets to keep a hold of who she is. I'm being a mother in 2025 as opposed to in the 80s and I won't be a mother of four. I have more resources. I live in a country that has so many wonderful resources for women and

going through pregnancy and going through a lot of mental health changes in the early years of motherhood and a society that is more open about encouraging women to talk about the practice, the state of being a mother. I'm very grateful for all of that. And I am in a relationship where my male partner doesn't believe in gendered roles. So I think it will be different. I hope it will...

I hope it will be different. There is so much in our lives that we want to control but can't. We can't control finding the right person to fall in love with. Although, by God, we can try. We can't control the mysterious moment when a single sperm cell swims up to an egg and in that precise second dives in. Although we can and do try to control that too.

And we certainly can't control the random moment when the heartbeat of a fetus just stops. Jessie too formed a tough shell and a ferocity to cope with the world she grew up in and that served her. But she's learning to surrender control to the unpredictability of this messy life. She's softened into loving a good man. She's softened into letting her parents comfort her.

And guess what? The truly awful parts? They were made way more bearable by sharing her pain with other women. So yet again, at the end of another Ladies We Need To Talk episode, I'm thinking about holding my ladies real close and also staying away from sunsets. I have too many kids for that. You said that you like fighting adversity together with friends.

The thing that I want to recommend is extreme bushwalking with...

What makes it extreme? Well, it's got to be hard. Okay. And you need to carry all your shit on your back. Oh, okay. And then you need to camp overnight and invariably someone will hurt themselves or fall over or shit their pants. So we're talking about poo now. And then you overcome it together and then you experience nature and sunsets and like food when you're so hungry. And it's incredible. Do you think that could ever be in your future? Yeah.

I'm not a fan of camping. Yeah, I could see it in your face. As soon as I see it, I was like, oh, she's out. I've lost her. I've lost Jessie. But everything outside of sleeping on a sleeping bag? Yes. LAUGHTER

I'll convert you, I reckon. I'll drag you into my cult. This podcast was produced on the lands of the Gundungurra and Gadigal peoples. Ladies We Need To Talk is mixed by Anne-Marie de Bettencourt. This episode was produced by Elsa Silberstein and Katie O'Neill. Supervising producer is Tamar Kranzwick and our executive producer is Alex Lolbach. This series was created by Claudine Ryan. MUSIC