The First Rule of Having a Miscarriage: You Don’t Talk About Miscarriage
Why are we ready to speak up about everything except what hurts the most?
I believe in girl power. We band together when one of us needs help. A girl doesn’t have to be your best friend to give you a pad or a tampon if you need it. We talk about everything from childbirth to waxing.
But there’s an exception.
A year ago, I was 7 weeks pregnant with my second child and over the moon.
We built an entire future around that baby. And then it was gone.
One morning, something seemed off. By the time we arrived at the hospital, I changed countless pads, bled through three pairs of pants and started to feel an eerily familiar pain. Only this time, it wasn’t supposed to be there.
The waiting room was full of women. Every single one of them looked away as I dripped blood and tears on the floor, barely able to stand. The verdict was in — there was nothing to save. All I wanted to do was go home and crawl under my sheets. But they wanted to keep me overnight. I cried the entire time.
Women were coming in and out — nurses, doctors, cleaners — and yet, none of them could bear to look at me. No one said a word.
That morning, my heart broke a thousand times, once for every step I took empty-handed as I left the hospital.
Miscarriage is one of those things you hear about, but you never think it’ll happen to you. And then it does. And you’re left stranded. I needed to talk about it. But all I got was a version of:
“It’s probably for the best.”
Even my doctor said it.
In a way, I did feel better. For a week before my miscarriage, I had a nightmarish morning sickness that stretched throughout the entire day. I couldn’t eat or drink anything without throwing up. Work was hell. I could barely stay awake and upright.
Now that I was no longer pregnant, I could move around again, play with my daughter, take walks, work and eat.
But I was not okay.
I questioned everything I did in the weeks before it happened. My daughter was still nursing, maybe that was the problem. I can’t remember if I took ibuprofen once for my headache but if I did, maybe that’s to blame.
Why did this happen to me?
“It’s probably for the best” and “Don’t worry, you’ll have another one” are not answers.
No, it’s not for the best. Sure, I’ll have more children — but none of them will replace this one.
Depression crept in.
Sherlock Holmes would call it a “high-functioning depression”. So much so that I couldn’t even tell that I was depressed. It took a toll. I lost two of my best clients, confidence, and ability to write or feel passion for it. I couldn’t heal.
Anxiety followed, then anger. I would yell at my daughter for irrelevant things, crying over the tiniest obstacles.
I felt even more guilt, for all of it. But I didn’t know why I was like that.
Women fail each other when they don’t talk about it.
It happened to my mom, it happened to both of my grandmothers, two of my friends, my mother-in-law, my doctor, that lady across the street — most women.
None of them needed to hear vague and insensitive comments. They needed to talk about it. The pain, the guilt, the shame, the sadness.
The way nothing will ever be the same. The fear. The future lost.
And at the same time, society thinks that you should just move on.
No grave — no grieving.
As if that’s possible.
Dear women across the globe, don’t be afraid to talk about it.
Don’t be ashamed. Help each other by being there for each other.
Don’t say: “It’s for the best.”
Tell your story. And then listen. Don’t judge, or offer solutions. Just listen.
This sad club we belong to doesn’t have to be silent.
Sharing our experiences helps us realize that we are not alone. It happens to 1 in 4 women, and that’s just a rough estimate because miscarriages happen before pregnancy is detected.
When you know that you are not alone, you feel less guilt, less shame.
You find friends in the most unlikely places. You can see yourself in the eyes of an 80-year-old grandma who had a miscarriage three times. She holds your hand and you cry together. And after, you feel that the world is a bit better, and you are a bit closer to being whole again.
