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After four miscarriages my sister in law invented something called ‘miscarriage bingo’ – a list of things people say after you’ve had one.
Big hitters include “at least you got pregnant!”, “it’s important not to feel stress”, and “have you thought about… [giving up dairy / sound bathing / this fancy clinic]?”
But talk to a woman who has had one herself and she’s unlikely to offer up advice or a post-match analysis. “I’m sorry” one woman said to me, “They’re a total f*****g hellshow.”
After my third miscarriage I fell down an Internet rabbit hole reading stories which felt similar to my own. So in the interests of paying it forward, here is mine. I had two early miscarriages (both around 6 weeks) in the summer of 2018. For the second I was a few weeks apart from my sister, which felt like a beautiful moment of serendipity until all of a sudden it wasn’t.
When I fell pregnant for the third time this year my husband Will and I looked at each other and took a deep breath. But at a seven-week scan we watched as a little seahorse-shaped blur materialised on screen. The sonographer flicked a switch and the beautiful, quick cush-cush-cush-cush sound of its heartbeat filled the room. In the following weeks I started to feel queasy and tired, dragging my way through the day and falling asleep on the sofa at 8pm. The morning before our scan I threw up on the pavement outside my office. “Strong symptoms are a good sign!” said friends.
But when our 12-week appointment came the screen loomed above us like an empty night sky, the embryo floating silently in the corner. The sonographer’s face went flat. A few days later I was booked for an operation to remove ‘the pregnancy’ (the medical language turns on a dime: it’s ‘your baby’ when there’s a heartbeat, ‘the pregnancy’ or ‘the product’ when there is not). Ahead of the 8am procedure I woke at 5am to take an abortion pill, but when we arrived on the ward a major emergency meant there were no anaesthetists available and the operation was delayed. By midday the pill had begun to take blindingly painful, cramping effect. It wasn’t the meeting I had hoped for.
A month later I was at a wedding talking to a pregnant guest who was at almost exactly the same stage I would have been. She was describing how morning sickness in the first trimester meant she only ate yellow food. “Oh me too!” I nearly said, then realised the confusion and awkwardness this omission would have triggered in this circle of happy, champagne-drinking guests. Her husband was so excited he whipped out a picture of the scan on his phone. The little black and white silhouette, so much bigger and more alive than our seahorse, made my eyes behind my sunglasses swim.
Around the same time I received a letter from the hospital telling me there had been no genetic abnormalities in the embryo. I had a series of odd, guilty dreams where I apologised to the seahorse for letting it down. A friend of my sister’s warned me that not dealing her own miscarriages had made her feelings “squeeze out the sides.” The sadness from the three had built up inside me like soot. I got in touch with a counsellor.
The husbands and boyfriends – just as invested in the situation – are often lost casualties of miscarriage. A friend of Will didn’t tell anyone about his wife’s miscarriage as he felt it was not ‘his’ news. My husband also finds it strange when other men ask if we have kids and react to his answer with a congratulatory tone, assuming he’s managed to talk me out of it.
The Instagram algorithm can have a dark sense of humour sometimes – when I was sitting in the recovery room after surgery I opened up the app to one of those ‘baby X coming Feb 2020!’ posts, the month we would have been due. I don’t see why a person’s happy news shouldn’t spill over onto their Instagram feeds (bumps are beautiful and miraculous, and I love looking at other people’s chubby babies) but when, for example, a high profile wellness influencer shared with her million-plus followers that she and her husband had got pregnant “within a week” of trying I wondered at her true motivation for sharing such a detail – was it a subtle hint that the lifestyle she sells in her seed balls and free-from-everything salads pays off? She’d be a lot richer if that was true.
They say having a baby at the same time as someone can be a great bonding experience, but I think the same can be said for the reverse: there’s a deep solidarity between couples going through their own parallel fertility issues – it’s like a reverse NCT, except the biggest celebration comes when somebody leaves.
My friends have all been wonderful, even if at 33 life can sometimes feel like a surround-sound of successful baby making. I don’t like to prescribe behaviour (God knows I’ve got things so wrong in other scenarios) but from talking to other women there are a few small things which can help. When a woman tells you she’s had a miscarriage, don’t ask her what went wrong or whether she’s trying again — just give her a hug and say you’re sorry. If you’re planning to announce a pregnancy to a group of friends and you know one of those friends is going through a tricky time — IVF, miscarriage or otherwise — give her a heads-up via text ahead of time. And by all means share the beautiful bump pictures on Instagram, but it’s worth remembering that if pregnancy is a #blessing, it’s also a lottery.
If you’re reading this and going through something similar then please be kind to yourself. If it helps, unfollow the pregnancy spammer, turn down the baby shower invitation and book a holiday somewhere with awkward steps that no-one could possibly get a buggy down. It might be a hellshow – but you’re not alone.
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please contact the Miscarriage Association / 01924 200799 or Tommy’s
City Pregnancy is a service located in the centre of London that provides a safe, professional, confidential and non-judgmental space for women, men and couples to discuss their difficulties with pregnancy, pregnancy loss and related issues.
