By Dr Rebecca E Jones
I’ve had two miscarriages, and lost 3 babies. Why is it so hard to say those words out loud, or type them out for public reading? Because nobody talks about miscarriage.
I’m a GP, so in the quiet, confidential space that is my consulting room, I do hear these words. People speak them with confused upset, in hushed tones, and it’s one of the only times that I have to question whether I really can say “me too”. We know those two words have been a powerful tool for women seeking support in extremely difficult situations. But they also apply to the many other day-to-day scenarios where women can feel alone or ashamed. There are many times that I have shown my patients that I empathise, usually by sharing my experiences of similar situations, even with something as personal as deciding what contraception to opt for.
But not long after my last miscarriage, I found myself regretting telling a patient that something similar had happened to me ‘when I was pregnant’. As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt like I’d make a big mistake. What if she asked me how old my baby was, or how many children I had? You see, I had a miscarriage, not a baby. I’ve since been fortunate enough to have two successful (albeit difficult) pregnancies, but in the years prior to this, I had a lot of experience of being pregnant with no baby at the end. But why is it so hard to talk about that?
We’re told to keep our pregnancies secret until it’s ‘safe’ to tell everyone. This is usually when the first trimester is over, and the risk of miscarriage is much lower. But, why?
During my second pregnancy, I told my family and closest friends because I knew that if I suffered another miscarriage, I would need their support to get through it. And I did. And in my time of need, my relatives’ own experiences of miscarriage, and their sympathetic ears were invaluable. But because this pregnancy had reached 11 weeks, almost to the end of the 1st trimester, and because we’d seen a heartbeat on a scan, I had started to tell more people. I had also started to talk about it more confidently at work. So when the miscarriage happened, telling these people that I was no longer pregnant was hard. Apart from having to break unpleasant news, you also have deeply personal feelings shared with others that you might not usually talk to in this way.
My colleagues found out about my second pregnancy earlier than planned because I collapsed and was taken to hospital by ambulance. But I had a scan at 7 weeks which showed a heartbeat, so I didn’t feel too silly telling everyone that I was pregnant. To be honest, it was getting difficult to hide because I had terrible morning sickness and my breasts almost doubled in size! Every day I spoke with my colleagues about either how nauseated I was that day, or how the pregnancy was progressing.
At 11 weeks I took annual leave. I was getting ready to travel to the airport when I noticed some fresh red blood after going to the toilet. I didn’t feel too panicked, as I know that a bit of spotting can be normal, and I still had lots of pregnancy symptoms. But I went to the hospital with the hope of another early pregnancy scan for reassurance before I travelled. Unfortunately they couldn’t scan me that day, but an ultrasound was booked for 2 days later. The holiday was cancelled, and I waited. I still felt rather pregnant, so it was difficult to believe I was miscarrying. But the GP in me kept hold of this possibility.
The day of the scan arrived and I went with my partner, who I think was more worried than me. He held my hand as we were told those awful words; “I’m sorry, I don’t see a heartbeat.” To make matters even worse, they confirmed it was a twin pregnancy – something I had suspected from the beginning. I surprised myself by not shedding a tear when the sonographer was breaking the news. There was something about the indignity of breaking down with a scan probe still inside me that stopped me. But as I walked out of the room and the idea of two dead embryos jumped to the front of my mind, I did break down. I can still recall the raw anguish that hit me when I walked out of that clinic room.
Then we had decisions to make. I had miscarried but hadn’t passed the embryos. There was an option to continue waiting, or I could get things moving with medication. The third option was surgery which I chose, as there were concerns that passing twin embryos at home might involve heavy bleeding. The only problem was that they couldn’t do it for another two days. So I had to keep myself busy to prevent remembering that even though I felt pregnant, I wasn’t. The day of the procedure was strange and awful. Knowing that there were babies inside me, that I had recently held hopes and dreams for, and the potential of a very different life with my partner, but also knowing that when I woke up they’d be gone.
I’d never heard anyone else talk about miscarriage in enough detail to know it would feel like this. And I think, rather ashamedly, that I’d not always been as sympathetic as I could to women who’d had similar experiences. I didn’t ask them how they really felt, as they sat in front of me describing the physical after-effects of miscarriage. But now I’ve been through it, I realise that as a society we just don’t talk about miscarriage.
I remember feeling ashamed discussing my miscarriage, because I thought that I would attract pity. I was also just embarrassed that I’d lost another baby and I felt guilty that my body couldn’t look after these little lives that my partner and I were creating together. And with that, came ideas that others around me were expecting my partner to leave me for somebody who could carry his babies. I felt lonely; I thought I couldn’t tell friends who’d not experienced miscarriage just how awful it felt to have lost another baby. I felt like nobody understood. Don’t get me wrong, everybody was lovely. They were kind, sympathetic, sent flowers and said all the right things. There was no fault in the behaviour of those around me. It was my feelings of shame, embarrassment and loneliness that made it so difficult.
But these emotions stem from the fact that we don’t talk openly about miscarriage. Secrecy breeds shame and fear. But surely when around 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, it should be part of the facts of life, or discussed alongside contraception education. All of us should enter into attempts at pregnancy fully aware that there’s a reasonable chance it won’t work out every time, but that this is entirely normal, and happens to many people. We should be told that it’s ok to let people know you are in the early stages of pregnancy, and if we end up miscarrying, it’s ok to talk about that too. Maybe then a miscarriage won’t come with shame and embarrassment, but instead we can concentrate on dealing effectively with the sadness it brings.
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