This week marks the 10 year anniversary of starting my independent academic career. Aside from meeting a few people during my interview, I knew no one in Amherst and our closest family was 400 miles away ¹. We were fortunate to have had my mother-in-law help us drive and unpack. I was also able to con a couple of graduate students into helping us unload the truck with the promise of pizza and beer. For anyone in this position, this would have been a high. I imagined my first weeks being occupied submitting my first proposal ², rifling through a VWR or Fisher catalog, meeting with sales reps, and getting to know my new colleagues. Instead, the day after we unloaded the truck we drove to the hospital in Northampton so my wife could be induced to deliver our dead unborn child.

We broke the trip up into two days. We got up early and left Madison hoping to beat the Chicago traffic and stopped in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania on I-80. The next morning everything was normal until Sarah noticed she was spotting. Thankfully, the only hospital for miles was at the exit where we spent the night. I still remember the nurse coming into Sarah’s room in tears to give us the news that the baby was dead at about 18 weeks after conception. To this point we had three kids and never had a miscarriage. To say this was a blow is an understatement. Numbed, we continued to drive the rest of the way to Amherst. I still have no idea how Sarah could go another day knowing that the baby was dead ³.

The morning of the 10th we walked up to the maternity ward nervous and meek. It felt like every nurse and doctor looked at us thinking, “This is a place of birth, not death - you should not be here”. I’m sure this wasn’t what they were thinking, but we never got that champion like we did for each of our other deliveries. After being induced, Sarah went through labor like any other woman - all along knowing what the result would be. We held the baby’s remains, buried the baby in a local cemetery, and had a grave stone placed. In the following weeks as I tried to regain my enthusiasm, Sarah and I would visit the cemetery to mourn. We didn’t know how to tell or ask the people we were getting to know in Amherst to help. We felt horribly isolated. The kids were too young to know what was going on, but were a great consolation. The reactions we received from friends and family were all over the place: “You know, miscarriages are really common” … “Things will get better when you get back in the saddle” … “This will be a distant memory when you get pregnant again” … “You are lucky to have the kids you have” … and on and on with empty, sometimes offensive, but always well meaning pity ⁴. Thankfully, a friend from Madison called and got straight to it, “Pat, this really sucks and you have every right to be pissed off.” This is a line that I have now repeated to an unfortunate number of friends since then. Sarah and I are very grateful for our children and have been profoundly changed by the three other miscarriages that we have had. We also appreciate that there are women who have had a much worse experience. The pain from each of our miscarriages has dulled. But we can never stop asking “what if?” while being so grateful for the wonderful personalities and gift of the subsequent children.

We would move from Amherst 3 years later. Sometimes I wonder whether my unhappiness in Amherst and desire to move was because we started our time there with such a horrible event that reinforced the feeling that we didn’t belong. During my time in Amherst we grew to know some wonderful people and I had great colleagues. When I was offered the job at Michigan my dean was willing to offer me anything to stay. I met with him as a courtesy, but the lack of a community to support my family in Amherst was making me miserable and Michigan was an amazing opportunity. Since coming to Michigan we have been enveloped in an community of other families and the professional opportunities have been everything I hoped for. More recently I was given an offer for a position that would have moved us from Michigan. Michigan was not able to match the offer. In the end we declined the offer because we feared the prospect of having to start a new community.

You can be guaranteed that bad things are going to happen in life. Having a tight knit community of peers in Madison made a number of life-sized potholes bearable. We leaned on that community during our miscarriage, but a phone call can only do so much. Good things did happen in Amherst and I learned a lot about myself and being an academic. I’m grateful that we had the ability and means to move to Michigan and feel so lucky and undeserving to have the wonderful community we have here. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing 10 years from now, but I know we will be strengthened by a wonderful community.