This is normally a week for me to stay off social media. I don’t normally do emotional posts or sharing, especially not about this.
For something that happens to so many people, it’s scary just how isolating and lonely miscarriage feels. It has taken me years to be able to even say the word without feeling like it’s slapping me, let alone be able to talk about it properly.
The miscarriage happened almost ten years ago, but it’s shaped everything that happened since. Miscarriage has erased the old me and my old life. On top of the loss itself, the aftermath and its impact has lost me friends, family members, confidence, trust in others or myself, and will ultimately have lost me my career. It has changed how I relate to everything and everyone around me.
For years, even coping with others’ pregnancies was so incredibly difficult, though I was also happy for them, as anything to do with babies messed me up. I already had an almost-teenage son, and I subsequently had another little boy two years ago. I spent my last pregnancy terrified, as I didn’t really believe that the baby would be ok. I tried to do everything differently, like making myself eat even when I felt sick, and I worried every day that something would go wrong again. This was not helped by Covid or by problematic blood tests at 12 weeks, a rubbish placenta, gestational diabetes and the baby’s growth issues.
Even when he was born, I worried he would get ill and die. I still worry about both my boys’ health all the time as a knock-on effect of the miscarriage. Covid has not helped with this. What felt like 756,865 years on, I was eventually diagnosed with PTSD, due to the miscarriage and what happened to me as a result. It is apparently very common, but under-diagnosed (perhaps because psychiatry is a very male profession).
There are no positives to miscarriage. There are no good times to remember, just the loss of a future and a person who would have been central to your life, but who you have never known. You tell yourself that others have it worse, and they do, but that doesn’t actually help. Most people don’t know it’s happened, so only see your sudden mood swings, new unreliability and fake “I am fine” mask and maybe steer clear. Or set your deadlines so that you can never meet them, so you feel more like a failure (this is what my boss did, when putting a time limit on how much therapy I could access, starting a work-related conflict that has severely hampered my ability to deal with my feelings about the miscarriage, and which is ultimately going to cost me my job).
Miscarriage shows you who your real friends are, but maybe that’s a knock too many to cope with, when you’re already dealing with the shock of how fragile your body is and how unprepared your mind is for a loss this huge. There have been some amazing NHS people, especially my GPs, but also some unhelpful ones (“So it happens to lots of women, you know, and they just have another baby or eventually stop being sad”. Thanks for that. Very helpful. I’ll just stop being sad now, shall I?). My elder son helped, though he didn’t know anything about it, just by being his usual self and reminding me about what mattered (and what didn’t and doesn’t).
Miscarriage has broken me in ways that will never be undone, but the compassion shown by some amazing people who have either been there themselves, or haven’t, but cared enough to support me anyway, can never be underestimated. They know who they are.
I have done years of not talking, years of being ashamed of the extremes of my response and years of trying to come to terms with it. I am not there yet, though it’s improving (EMDR is amazing), but I do know that the more it is talked about, the more understanding others gain about what it can feel like, and why you can’t put a time limit on grief, unfortunately. I also know that people speaking and writing about it is one tiny step to miscarriage being less lonely. So. I have.
They say “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. It does not. I am not. But I am still here, and so very grateful for my two wonderful, amazing boys.