Recently, when I was around 10 weeks pregnant, I went in for a dating ultrasound.
My midwife wanted to confirm my baby’s due date, because we suspected that I was actually 9 weeks along, or maybe 11 weeks.
The radiologist discovered that my baby was dead – had died at 8 weeks and 4 days… whenever that had been.
We all know that miscarriage is always a risk, but it’s still a shock to go in for a routine ultrasound with a seemingly healthy pregnancy… and then leave in tears talking about getting a D&C.
A week later I was sedated and the remains of my baby were scooped out of me.
I was heartbroken. I was grieving.
But I was also very lucky: I had immense amounts of support.
I had friends texting me constantly asking what they could do to help. My house smelled like roses, because the girls at work sent me a big bouquet of flowers. My neighbours invited our son over for dinner so we wouldn’t have to fake cheerfulness with him, and left cookies in our mailbox.
The love and support I received contrasted violently with the experience of a friend, who was fired from work after her miscarriage, who got no flowers, no cookies, and whose grandmother and mother-in-law both hurt her frequently by nagging her to produce a baby.
But it’s not a fair comparison – you see, I told people about my miscarriage.
My friend did not.
The conventional wisdom – in our part of the world at least – says that you shouldn’t even tell people that you are pregnant, lest you miscarry. Better to wait until the second trimester, when your risk of miscarriage drops dramatically.
The implied assumption is that you don’t want to tell people about your miscarriage, so it’s better keep your pregnancy a secret until that danger has passed.
I want to know: Why don’t we want to talk about miscarriage?
For many women, miscarriage isn’t just a matter of, “Oops, never mind, no baby after all!” While some may feel that way, and that’s fine, others can be devastated.
I wasn’t just mourning the 8 week jellybean inside me. I was weeping for the baby I had been expecting, my Christmas baby, and as I wept, I clutched the little newborn sized Christmas pajamas that I had already bought.
And sometimes these women suffer side by side.
I had two friends who miscarried close to each other. Both told me, neither told the other. They each thought they were alone. Neither knew what the other was going through. Neither knew that they had something in common.
When I announced my loss at work, every woman over 35 had a miscarriage story to share.
Just think – of the ten women at my work, four have had miscarriages. And none of them talked about it… until I announced mine.
They shared their grief with me, and we hugged each other, and listened to each other’s stories.
And I wondered… why aren’t we supposed to do this?
Why do so many women keep miscarriage a secret, often not even telling friends or family members? Why do some women keep their pregnancies a dark secret, just out of fear that the pregnancy might end?
There’s an element of shame that hovers around miscarriage.
People think that talking about their miscarriage somehow addresses a failure, as if they had made a mistake.
It’s natural to blame yourself for your miscarriage. My first thought was, “What did I do wrong?”
The first thing my midwife said to me was, “You did nothing wrong.”
When I spoke to the nurse at the Early Pregnancy Assessment Centre, she told me that 97% of the time, miscarriages are caused by chromosomal abnormalities and have nothing to do with the mother’s actions.
When I went on to worry that something I was exposed to at work might have killed my baby – x-rays, or pesticides – she told me, “We see a LOT of women in here who are pregnant, but don’t want to be. You wouldn’t believe the crazy stuff they have tried to end the pregnancy at home. It never works. Trust me – there is nothing you could have done to bring this on yourself.”
My miscarriage was not my fault.
I didn’t fail, and the women who have told me about their miscarriages didn’t fail either. So why do we treat it like a failure?
But even the term “miscarriage” implies some fault on the woman, as if I had dropped the baby in a moment of thoughtlessness. In fact, some women have even been prosecuted for their miscarriages.
So we don’t tell people about it.
In a culture where you aren’t supposed to talk about your miscarriage – or even your first trimester pregnancy lest it end in miscarriage – families grieve for their lost babies in a vacuum of shame and secrecy.
There is no funeral. No compassionate leave. No Hallmark cards. But that doesn’t make it less real of a loss.
Even women who aren’t grieving their miscarriage – perhaps they didn’t even want the baby – feel the need to hide it due to the stigma around it.
And that’s never going to change unless people start talking.
Until we bring miscarriage into the light, it will remain a dark, hidden secret.
Until people start talking about it, people won’t know how to respond to it appropriately. Until we remove the stigma, the shame will continue.
Until we talk about it, people will continue to suffer in silence.
Because if you don’t tell anyone unless they have had a miscarriage too, how does anyone who has miscarried find each other?
It just takes one person to speak out, to announce their loss like it is any other loss, and the stories and support come pouring in.
So we need to speak up.
We need to tell people when we suffer a loss. We owe them that, and we owe ourselves that, because for all we know, they need someone to talk to, too. Don’t assume that they don’t know what you’re going through, because chances are, they do.
I’m asking all of you to be brave.
Talk about it on Facebook.
Tweet it, #talkaboutmiscarriage.
Tell people you don’t know very well.
Tell them if you’re grieving. Tell them if you aren’t.
There’s no reason to hide what has happened, or how you feel about it. Chances are neither the experience, nor your emotions, are unique to you.
Only by opening those doors can we find the support we need, and join together the women who have been suffering in silence for all this time.
Have you or has someone close to you had a miscarriage? How did cultural attitudes toward it affect the grieving process?
This is an original post for World Moms Blog by Carol. She can be found blogging at If By Yes and on Twitter @IfByYesTweets.
Photo credit to Jiri Hordan. This photo has been released into the public domain by its author, Jiri Hordan.
Carol (Canada)
Carol from If By Yes has lived in four different Canadian provinces as well as the Caribbean. Now she lives in Vancouver, working a full time job at a vet clinic, training dogs on the side, and raising her son and daughter to be good citizens of the world. Carol is known for wearing inside-out underwear, microwaving yoghurt, killing house plants, over-thinking the mundane, and pointing out grammatical errors in "Twilight". When not trying to wrestle her son down for a nap, Carol loves to read and write. Carol can also be found on her blog, If By Yes, and on Twitter @IfByYesTweets
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I absolutely and totally and completely and utterly agree.
I had a miscarriage at 10 weeks;a mass of cells that hadn’t formed properly. I too had a load of support.
But I too had been open about being pregnant in the early stages and have long wondered the same as you…why the social taboo around talking about early pregnancy – it’s a damned tough few months for many of us with morning sickness, excessive tiredness and hormonal swings – why not get support…even for that, let alone mourning the child that will never be.
I was one of those ‘unthoughtful’ expecting mothers that told everyone from the first week I knew I was pregant. I just couldn’t keep it to myself. And I got the same reaction: why wouldn’t wait until I was ‘sure’?
I told them I was already ‘sure’ I was pregnant, wasn’t I? I wouldn’t be able to keep it to myself. I was so happy! And if I would miscarry, I would hàve to tell someone. I can not grieve alone.
Most people understood. But some didn’t. They thought it was selfish. Apparently you don’t burden others with your grief. So the people that didn’t agree, didn’t talk to me about my pregnany until after the first trimester…
Fortunately, I didn’t miscarry. Friends did. And because I had been so straightforward about being open, they knew they could at least tell me. But not everyone.
It’s the same like when people ask the casual “How are you?”. With some people, you’re expected to answer “Fine”. They don’t really want to know how you are doing…
Ugh, the “selfish” remark makes me so mad. Why is it selfish to share your joy? Why should it be selfish to share your grief? Craziness! After all, if your baby died after birth no one would expect you to keep that to your self..
I am so sorry for your loss Carol. Many years ago, my friend miscarried her baby. She had told everyone that she was pregnant, and then sent an email out to everyone (this was before Facebook) telling of miscarriage, and saying that she didn’t want to talk about it. I suppose that beople handle grief differently, so if you wouldn’t want to risk having to tell everyone that your baby died, then you wouldn’t announce it ahead of time. More recently I had a friend who announced her pregnancy to Facebook in the very early stages, when she lost her baby she announced that to Facebook as well. I never asked her if that helped her get through it, but knowing her, I suspect it did.
I think your friend made the right decision. After all, just because you tell people about your miscarriage you don’t have to force yourself to talk about a grief you don’t want to talk about. We can say “I lost the baby. I’m grieving. I don’t want to talk about it,” and that can be that. But at least people KNOW so they don’t walk up to you a week later and say “SO, when are you going to have a baby??” the way they do to my friends who haven’t shared what happened.
Thank you for your courage in sharing this experience with the world. You are absolutely right, we really should be open and share these things that are NOT our fault (even though sometimes society makes us think they are).
It’s the same reason why I tell everyone I was raped when I was 17 years old … because it’s not MY shame (even though, at the time, even my own mother blamed me!). I did nothing wrong! I was a “good” girl, a virgin, dressed in a tracksuit … it happened anyway.
Things like a miscarriage are outside our control, but how we choose to react to what happened, how we choose to move forward and use our own pain to help others with theirs, THAT is ENTIRELY in our control!
Yes, I think it’s very much the same sort of thing – you need to share it to give people permission to share their own stories, which they have kept quiet…
Thanks for sharing this article, Carol!
I too had several very early miscarriages, but the most traumatic was a missed miscarriage diagnosed at the 12 wk scan.
Like you, I really felt the need to open up and talk to people. I found that some friends were uncomfortable about in the same way they might have felt uncomfortable about being confronted with a family member passing ( a ‘real’ vs. a conceived one). ‘I don’t know what to say’, was a response I got a few times… and that was fine. I didn’t need anyone to say anything, I just needed them to listen.
I totally agree that this is a topic that needs to be talked about to bring about healing rather than feeling that our bodies have failed us.
Yes, I think any kind of miscarriage is traumatic, but the dead baby scan really sucked, because if I had had cramping, and then seen bleeding, and went in for confirmation, well… I might have been more mentally prepared. But I had morning sickness, and my belly was growing…
I always had the same thought, that I wouldn’t grieve privately, so why wouldn’t I reveal that I was pregnant? I did not miscarry though so I never had to test that theory.
I’ve written a lot about being a rape survivor and interestingly enough I have said a lot of the same things you say here: particularly that once I started talking, women started telling me back, “it happened to me too.”
Let’s all be brave and open.
Thanks for sharing your story.
That was my logic. Some of my friends who are naturally more private people were all like “I wouldn’t want to tell people that early in case I miscarried” but after all, we can’t hide all our joys lest it end in grief. Our children could die, should we not tell people we have children? Our mothers could die, should we not tell people we have mothers? Craziness. Grief is very individual, and we all have a right to grieve in our own way, but I don’t see why miscarriage should be one of the only griefs that most people never even know you have. Especially because if people don’t know, they will say insensitive things.
You are very brave to talk about rape, because I completely agree that it is another women’s issue that has been hushed up in secrecy for too long.
Carol, I had a miscarriage last month. It was a total surprise because I wasn’t planning on having any more children. My husband has a chromosome disorder, so the majority of our pregnancies end up in miscarriage. Having dealt with this situation so many times, I think I have developed a tough skin on being able to deal with it emotionally. However, it took a very long time to get there. I remember the heart ache!
Knowing other mothers who had spoken out about their loss gave me somewhere to turn when it first happened to me.
I fully support you in this post!
Jen 🙂
I am so sorry to hear about your losses. It must be so hard on your husband, too, knowing that his disorded is likely the cause. My husband’s grief has really been shunted aside and ignored by his coworkers, because people see it as a woman’s loss, but we BOTH lost a baby, and his grief was as great as mine, and he had even less support…
I remember standing around with six other moms at a playgroup and mentioning the miscarriage I had before becoming pregnant again, one by one each one told the story of their own miscarriage. I was amazed because out of the six , only one of us hadn’t experienced it, yet we had never before spoken about it to each other. I also wondered, why? It is such a deep sadness, and when I went through it I had no idea it was so common. I think perhaps it’s the fear that others can not understand the emotions you are going through. The reality is so many women understand. Great post!
Yes, that is very much like my experience. Close friends told me about miscarriages, and I was thinking “why didn’t you tell me before? What if I hadn’t told you about mine??” I don’t know why women only talk about it to other women who have had them, because then, unless one brave woman starts the conversation, they never get discussed at all, and every woman who suffers it feels alone.
People share their happiness at their newborns all over facebook, while each woman who has lost hers looks at the pictures and feels alone.
I hope this becomes a movement towards more openness about miscarriage as well, so people can be supported in their grief, not feel isolated, and perhaps accept and recover more quickly.
PS. Jen, the ironic thing here is how is it that I saw you twice in that last week and did not know you recently lost a baby?
Hi Darlene,
Thanks for reading and commenting. Miscarriage has happened to me so many times that I just moved on and felt totally ok doing so. I couldn’t have done that when it first started happening to me years ago, and I no longer have an empty baby void that I wish to fill. I think it has become more of a fact of life to me. Something that happens in nature. And it happens to me so early on that there is really little physical recovery. I definitely approach it differently due to my past experiences. It was a surprise because I feel my family is complete. If the pregnancy was real, I would have embraced it, but it is not something I was planning or will be planing for. I do, however, need to rethink our birth control methods. 😉 If I change my mind and decide to grow my family in the future, we would look toward adoption. Right now, I feel like I have all that I can handle, and we feel complete.
I think that the mental hurdle has a lot to do with it, too. Experiencing miscarriage, while spending your thoughts longing for a baby was a very different thing for me to deal with. That was really hard.
Jen 🙂
Carol – your post really resonates with me. I am very fortunate in that I have not miscarried. But with both my pregnancies, I told people early on I was pregnant…even at work. People were surprised that I would share this news still in the first trimester. But the thing is, if I miscarried, it would affect me greatly, and it would be evident something was wrong. I didn’t want to make up reasons. I wanted to experience whatever I was going to experience, good or bad.
I’m sorry for your loss, and I’m glad you wrote this post!
Carol, I’m sorry for your loss. When I got pregnant, I didn’t tell anybody, but that was my decision and didn’t want to tell. If I miscarried, I would prefer to share that with a few trusted people. Luckily, I never did. With all my three pregnancies, I got pregnant in the first month, never had a miscarriage and my babies were born healthy and well. And here I thoguht I was such an awesome mom with an awesome body that obviously knew what it was doing .Turned out, I was just so lucky that it makes me cry with joy.I have read stories like yours, stories of babies who died at birth, stories of women who underwent in vitro fertilization. Sometimes, our bodies work well, othertimes, it doesn’t. I have bad eyesight and wear glasses, so why is is such a problem if somebody needed help to get and help pregnant? We fought for the right to not be defined by our bodies, and here it is all over again: if you miscarried, you did something wrong. No. You didn’t. In fact, I am always amazed that we grow babies so many things have to go right that it may take one mistake for it to go wrong. So many pregnancies end in miscarriage with no apparent reason and there’s nothing we can do. We think we can control everything and we can’t. Stories like yours scare us because it shows exactly how little control we really have. If we realized it’s not our fault if we miscarried (and not our doing if we didn’t), we wouldn’t be so hard on one another.
Yes…
And no…
Yes, because as you say, a woman going through a miscarriage should know that it is 99% of the time not her fault, that it is in fact fairly common to miscarry and that they are not alone.
And no, because I remember the feeling of devastation I had with each miscarriage (two confirmed, one ‘might be a late period/might be miscarriage’). It was my body letting me down, it was me letting other people down.
Somehow it was a grief I just did not want to share. It was my grief, my secret grief. As much as it had been my secret joy when I just found out I was pregnant.
Carol (we share more than just a name!), I am so sorry for your loss. I had two miscarriages, the first I didn’t realize until after the fact that I’d been pregnant, the second was a celebrated – but secret – pregnancy. I’ll never forget the absolute devastation I felt as I sobbed and prayed and told my baby-that-would-never-be how sorry I was that my body had failed him. I was shocked when I began to open up to friends around me at how many other women had experienced the same thing. I went on to have surgery – in my case I did have a problem – followed by two healthy pregnancies and now two healthy children.
You are right that miscarriage is so much more common than we realize and the vast majority of the time we have no control over it. We need to be able to talk about it.
Dear Carol,
I came across your blog post today when I was updating my own blog and WordPress recommended your story. I have to say, I completely and utterly agree with everything you said! I recently had another miscarriage. This was my third miscarriage in two years and I delivered a baby boy prematurely at twenty-eight weeks due to preeclampsia the year before. He died after three and a half months in the NICU.
After my recent loss, I hit a all time low. Pretty much everybody I know, knew about my first pregnancy and loss but only the people in my immediate circle knew of the other losses. After each miscarriage I felt I couldn’t and shouldn’t talk about it. However, after the latest loss, I realized I needed to talk about it. And so after some great consideration, I began a recurrent pregnancy loss blog with the hope of creating a community of hope for other grieving angel parents. I plan on sharing hopeful and inspiring stories regularly on my blog. I hope it is OK that I shared a link to your blog post as I think you so perfectly described everything that I too am feeling and want to share.
Thank you so much for posting this! It is so true and very inspiring for others who have gone through the same thing!