My story with miscarriage for Baby Loss Awareness week
This week is Baby Loss Awareness week and I want to share my experiences and thoughts for a couple of reasons:
For anyone going through this right now, or who isn’t ready to talk about their experiences, maybe this will help you feel less alone
To share how you can support someone who is going through miscarriage or baby loss
By talking openly & honestly about the subject, it reduces the shame and stigma that is still attached to it
It can be so hard to know how to support someone who is going through a miscarriage.
But it's important to know how to because it happens in so many pregnancies (1 in 4).
It could be happening to your friend, your sister, a colleague, any of us.
It happened to me - three times.
My Story
It took my husband and I a year to get pregnant when we first started trying.
Then at the 12-week scan the baby didn’t have a heartbeat.
A missed miscarriage.
It was a devastating and complicated one and took a long time to recover from physically and emotionally.
Another year passed and finally I was pregnant again.
But it was the same story, there was no heartbeat. A missed miscarriage.
And then again, for a third time.
Although this time the miscarriage started on the plane back from a work meeting in Zurich.
Throughout this time, work was a crutch I leaned on heavily as a means to avoid the big feelings
It didn’t work of course, the sadness was always there, just underneath the surface
Eventually after three and a half years I got pregnant and stayed pregnant this time.
Which was wonderful and terrifying.
Mostly terrifying.
Pregnancy after multiple miscarriages is a whole different beast, full of anxiety and fear.
I was too scared to let myself hope that the baby might survive
I had to keep myself in emotional limbo just to get through each day
In the last trimester I felt like I didn’t breathe.
I was terrified that I had gotten this far and would then lose the baby in labour, it was a dark place to be.
It was only with therapy that I could navigate through it
Then with relief and joy and disbelief, my daughter Emmy was born.
Then just over a year later, her sister Neve arrived. I felt, and still feel, so lucky.
They’re happy and healthy and funny and feisty and all those wonderful things.
What helped me…
Therapy! All the therapy! I wish I’d started this much earlier. It helped me to feel less alone. And like I wasn’t a burden, which after multiple miscarriages I was starting to feel like a stuck record to my friends and family. It also helped me process my feelings, so I didn’t feel like it was spilling out into everything else
Support System. Probably one of the hardest things about the whole experience was how alone I felt. My support system didn’t end up being where I thought it would be. Miscarriage is a funny area, where grief can be easy to dismiss and minimise and it took me a while to work out who were the people who had the capacity to support me through it.
Learning how to support myself. Looking after myself, connecting with myself and my body (with yoga, meditation and journaling), and learning how to treat myself with compassion and kindness were also important. I also started practising gratitude. Every day before bed I wrote down 5 things I was grateful for from that day. It helped me to see there was still good in my life, even when it felt really hard. It’s a practise I still do today.
How you can support someone who is going through miscarriage, baby loss or infertility…
Whilst everyone is different in what they experience and how they want to deal with it, I thought it could be helpful to share the words and support that I found most helpful.
Conversations in this area often still feel taboo, whether it’s about starting a family, pregnancy, miscarriage or baby loss.
So often people stay silent or say things that, although said with good intention, didn’t feel supportive or kind.
In my experience, just being there, offering a friendly ear is all that’s needed.
Don’t feel like you need to fix it or give advice.
Here are some of the things I found supportive:
I’m so sorry for your loss
I don’t know what to say but I’m here
I’m so sorry this happened to you
I’m here to listen
How are you since your loss?
The Miscarriage Association has a great, informative page with more on this: https://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/your-feelings/supporting-someone-through-pregnancy-loss/
And on the flip side, there’s a few things which, although well-intentioned, can be inadvertently hurtful so you might want to avoid anything like the following:
At least you know you can get pregnant
Everything happens for a reason
At least it was early on
It’s so common, it happens to lots of women
At least you can try again
It wasn’t meant to be
At least you already have a child*
Further resources:
There are some brilliant resources available if you or anyone you know is going through miscarriage or baby loss
https://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/
And if you’d like to talk about this topic with me directly, please email me at: jen@jenniferspurr.co.uk