The Miscarriage Manual

As each one miscarriage became two, became three and now four, I sense that our grief is taken more seriously each time. People begin to realise that “At least you can pregnant” is pretty meaningless (and may I add always has been) when it becomes apparent you can’t hold onto a pregnancy. 

I have to say that I have many amazing friends who have understood the heartbreak I’ve been experiencing from the beginning of this horrible journey. But at the same time I felt that not everyone took my grief seriously after that first miscarriage. Comments I heard included “Dismiss it from your mind”, “So and so had ten miscarriages”, “Just try again”, “It’s incredibly common”, “It’s not a real baby before 12 weeks”, and the already mentioned and incredibly unhelpful “At least you can get pregnant”.

Whilst I appreciate that those who first dismissed our pain have now come on this journey with us, grief is grief and every miscarriage is a heartbreak for parents who long for a child. It doesn’t matter how early a miscarriage is in a pregnancy, whether it’s at 12 weeks or two days after taking a test; as soon as you see those two lines you start imaging the life with your child. Every time I lose a pregnancy, I lose a birthday, a first day at school, Christmas days and Easter egg hunts, and most heartbreaking for me cuddles with my child. So many times I’ve imagined who my child might be, their hobbies and interests, their temperament, their gender and it’s crushing that I will never get to know them.  

I’ll always remember the agony of my first miscarriage crying out “I’m losing our baby” as I writhed in pain on the stair landing. It was the first time I realised it was possible for your heart to break over someone so small, someone you’d never met before.

Miscarriage is considered a freak experience, most women who have one will only experience one and recurrent miscarriage is rare. Even so, they imagined a life with that baby and if you know someone who’s suffered a miscarriage make sure you respect and honour their grief.