I found a post yesterday that I felt needed sharing, via DesignMom’s blog. It’s here: The Things You Wish Someone Had Told You About Miscarriage.
(For the more sensitive among you, there is a swear word in the post, which feels not out of place for me, considering the nature of the topic – but I thought I would warn you.)
I totally agree with the sentiments of the author. Why don’t women talk more about their miscarriages? When I thought my baby was gone at 10 weeks, I had the experience of women coming out of the woodwork to tell me that they had suffered a miscarriage. Some of these women I considered good friends, and I had no idea. That saddened me so much.
As the author points out, women often refrain from sharing their pregnancy news until after the first trimester, when the risk of miscarriage is much lower. But the problem with this advice is this: miscarriage is emotionally and sometimes, physically devastating. A good friend of mine nearly bled to death on her bathroom floor during hers. If nobody knows you were pregnant, how can you get the support you need?
One of my greatest worries (other than the fear that my baby was going to come out of me and drop into the toilet), was that I would collapse in a pool of blood and my oldest son (or worse, one of the younger kids if he was not home) would have to deal with that – that he would have to keep the other kids calm and away from me while dialing 911.
My grandmother has 3 living children. But if you ask her how many children she has, she always says 5. Two of her babies didn’t make it – but they were no less real.
Why don’t we talk more about miscarriage?
Does it have something to do with our culture? In a world in which contraceptives and easy availability of abortion have changed society’s collective view of the unborn, is miscarriage just not a big deal to us? Because it’s certainly a big deal to the woman who experiences it.
One of the things I’ve noticed about blogs among women who have large families is this: they often have a section on their site devoted to their miscarriage(s). A woman with 7, 9, 12 kids has often had at least a few losses. And these women often want to talk about those babies, to share their stories and encourage other women.
You are not alone.
Why don’t we talk more about miscarriage?
I wish I knew. I have three friends (that I know of) who don’t want to ever mention it. My mon had a miscarriage before me. I’m super excited about meeting him/her in paradise. Maybe it’s an old wives thing that started years ago. The whole wait-until-three-months thing drives me crazy. If you’re pregnant, you’re pregnant. Let rejoice in that fact. Let’s mourn the loss if that happens. Either way I totally agree about the whole thing. Support. That’s what it boils down to. Sorry just realized I got a little wordy.
Miscarriage is on my radar since I’m going through one currently. I waited to tell about my first child because I wanted it to be a special “event” for the grandparents and us and travel-wise that couldn’t happen until 3+ months. But a couple other things come to mind about why we don’t say anything. “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched” and pregnancy means “sex” has happened and maybe our Puritan values shy away from acknowledging that, so we wait to distance ourselves from it. This pregnancy, I didn’t wait to tell and I’m glad those close to me could be happy about the pregnancy for the short time that it existed and that they could support me at the end of it. I was ignorant about the cost of waiting to announce the pregnancy the first time around.
Aubrey I’m so sorry to hear that.
You may be on to something about the Puritan values.
Take care of yourself
I don’t understand not wanting to talk about it. It’s part of the grieving and healing process. My suspicion is that women blame themselves and feel their body “failed”. Hence the shame.
Very interesting ideas on miscarriage and why we don’t talk about them (1: Puritan values (2: we “failed” and I will add it’s sad and hard to discuss. But really we need to learn from each other as women and know we are all in this together. We need to build each other up and be there for each other. It seems if we ask our mothers they don’t remember or depending their age they did “babies and birthing” differently than now. My mom actually had a VBAC 46 years ago, that was basically unheard of then. I repeated that with my first two completed pregnancies, in1988 and 1990, it wasn’t all that common then. I had an extremely patient and understanding Dr. (by the way, I had a 3 day labor with the VBAC) so it was like a miracle!! Back to the topic at hand, I too, have 2 babies that went straight home to Heaven. they were both very different from each other and both times I thought I wish someone would of told me about what I went through. I had heard stories about miscarriages but none of them were like mine. I’m sure the internet has helped with this, but we have a long way to go. Even pregnancy stuff has come a long way but there’s things we still need to share. I’ve been told that my grandmother never spoke about sex or pregnancy or anything of the sort with my mother…we’ve come forward from that but it sounds like we have a long path ahead of us. Carrie you said that talking about it is part of the grieving and healing process I totally agree. Talking it out is how I deal with lots of the stress in my life. So add more comments ladies, lets support each other, learn from each other and be honest with one another. Thank-You Carrie for opening up this dialogue……….