7 Life-Changing Truths About Miscarriages
The ones I wish I had known before going through one
I was about 8 weeks pregnant. I was in heaven.
My partner was thrilled, past the initial huge shock. Mom couldn’t talk about anything else. My best friend is (super) pregnant, we made plans for our babies. My closest friend was spoiling me on girl trips.
A dream.
My partner and I spent our days making plans on where to move to for birth (we’re currently in Indonesia). How to raise a child as two travellers — which we both easily agreed: travelling. How life would change completely for us.
One day he brought home a tiny baby shirt from one of our favourite surf stores in Bali. It said, “There is no planet B”.
Sexy, in my books. We start making love, and there it is, my biggest fear: blood.
Shaking took over my body, tears ran down. It could mean nothing, but I knew in my heart.
I lost my baby.
“You are starting a miscarriage process”, says the unfazed doctor in broken English. While having an ultrasound stick still in me.
Now I knew in my heart, but also in my brain.
I went blank. No thoughts came about, no reactions. I nodded my head. Paid for my consultation in that little but loving clinic in the Island of Gods. And walked out the door with my ultrasound scan showing an empty gestational sac.
Only then, I broke down.
One in every six women goes through at least one miscarriage in their lives.
I found out that of those, 50% go through the same kind of miscarriage I recently did.
And 80% of all miscarriages happen in the first trimester, like mine.
This is an immense amount of women — and possibly men — cutting their pregnancy thrill way too short.
Doctors and most of the information you find online consider up to two miscarriages normal.
If that didn’t sound absurd enough to you, I’ll challenge your concept of causality. Normal is summer after spring, night after day, and baby after pregnancy.
Losing a baby (sorry to say) feels anything BUT normal.
Still, with all these women having miscarriages, I had no guidance. At all. And talking about it seemed as absurd as going through it.
I felt alone. I had my partner next to me, looking up, asking around, trying to find guidance. Guess? He too felt alone.
I could not find any relatable experience online. Not one piece of information that seemed at all close to the experience I was having.
I realised I had never had this proper truthful conversation with the THOUSANDS of women I’ve met in my life.
Believe me, I’m the kind of woman that would hear of it if it was being talked about. I take part and host women circles, the huge majority of my clients, both in coaching and culinary, are women.
If I haven’t had this talk with any other women, I’m betting I’m not the only one. I bet a lot of women feel alone too.
Miscarriage is the biggest taboo I’ve ever come across.
And it took me going through a long, drastic, painful miscarriage to know that.
I’m writing this so no other woman ever feels as alone. Or as lost while going through this not-at-all-normal, yet common, experience.
I’m writing this hoping ALL women and men read it. Six out of six people can be there to support a woman and a man who lost a baby still in the womb.
Let’s get to those truths I wish I had heard before I had my miscarriage.
1. It Does Not Take Two Weeks
At least not necessarily.
Even though that’s what you read online, and what I heard from my doctor. It took way longer for me.
A lot of the women who bleed or have spotting, like me, are showing a sign of the start of a miscarriage. And a lot of us have to wait for the miscarriage to actually happen.
I trusted I would wait two weeks, bleed for a week and it would all be magically over. Believe me, once I knew it was over, I hoped it was all over sooner than later.
My hands lived over my womb and my mind lived in my baby, whom I nicknamed “birdie”.
But then, my womb was carrying an empty gestational sac. My body felt pregnant, but I no longer expected a baby.
Pardon my french, but this wait is a mind fuck.
Those two promised long weeks I spent in bed. I cried, and cried, and cried.
Occasionally, I went out to watch the sunrise and make copious amounts of coffee. I did three daily rituals. But that was about it.
Oh, I also drank parsley shots. It’s supposed to help you bleed faster.
Well, it didn’t.
It took me almost five weeks to even start bleeding.
On the third week, life started crawling back up. My partner invited me to my favourite place, we took 10 days, surfing, eating, resting.
I changed the parsley shots for concentrated cinnamon teas.
No go.
Almost five weeks.
Only then I started bleeding.
2. Accept All Support and Help You Can Get
Even if you are an independent, strong, stubborn, fierce, self-made woman.
Even if all you want is self-isolation.
My dear sister, accept help.
And if no one is offering, ask for it.
You need water, fruits, you need to see the sunlight, you need to eat, even to cry on a shoulder and receive a hug.
The first thirty days after going through a traumatic experience are determinant to overcome it with less PTSD, or no PTSD at all.
“Those first thirty days are critical. We need time and space to recover, to process what happened, to find ways to make sense of how we want the world to work and our experience of how life actually unfolds. In this time, we need relational supports. Our brains are hardwired to connect, and we get better in connection to other people.”
—Faith G. Harper, PhD, LPC-S, ACS, ACN
My first reaction was to isolate.
Thankfully, I had not much of a choice.
My dear friend gave me space. But also gave me food, water, parsley shots (I keep mentioning it because it is freaking remarkable). She would text me once a day and come in to hug me.
Only then, I would do important things, like shower, stand up, and reassure her that I would be ok.
Saying these words made me hear myself and almost worked as affirmation repetition.
It could be the push you need to believe sometimes you will again have a life.
Bring at least one person besides your partner and family closer. You’ll be more prone to believe and accept help from a friend than someone who’s deep in the same waters as you. Each support comes in different shapes.
Accepting support as it comes is also important.
Gratitude is the greatest healers of all times. It's burdensome to be grateful through grief, but receiving support guides you into a gratitude mindset.
My friend gave me parley shots. I hated them. But I loved her for them.
And my partner held my hand in silence most days, he hugged me when I cried and he said “it’s ok” way too many times. He ordered take away. He tried to make me laugh.
My mother also checked in on me daily and shared a lot more love than I could ever express. Even though we're oceans apart, she made herself present at all times.
It may be hard to accept help for most women.
But please believe me on this one:
Receive support and be grateful for it.
3. Women Must Bring Men Into These Conversations
That’s the third truth, and where the taboo firms its roots.
Most men are educated to not even cry. With few exceptions, most men have no idea what to do about a miscarriage. Nor about a woman breaking down in his arms.
Nor about those goddamn parsley shots.
Most men do not want to wait for blood, because they do not want to talk about — or hear about — blood.
Also, let’s face it, the physical process happens in the woman’s body. The hormones free-falling, the weird womb feelings, the boobs deflating, the skin loosing its pregnant’s shine. It all happens in the women’s body. And now a doctor is saying that we’re waiting to bleed and we can try again soon.
My partner almost left.
Like, really.
I sympathise for the amount of information to take in all at once for a male’s brain anatomy. Most likely he was freaking out waaaaaay more than he showed me.
Plus, going alone to the most isolated archipelago of Indonesia did not sound like a bad idea. It sounded like pretty much what I wanted to do.
He didn’t leave. He’s still here.
Yet, most of the days of this process I was grateful to have shared with him all I knew about periods. We had open conversations about the entirety of cycles.
Since our first month together I brought him into my world of menstrual cups and synchronicity with the moon cycles. As I opened myself to go into his world.
Here’s my deepest founding: women’s partners are prone to panic in a miscarriage situation. Couples break up. That is the very last thing you want to happen in that moment.
Bringing this subject out of the dark box in the taboo basement is as important to men as it is to women.
So women, let’s talk to men about it.
Please, men, talk about it with your friends too.
Tell one another. Tell your friends how it was for her, how it was for you. Tell them how to best support their partners.
This is the only way we’ll ever be a bit more comfortable to share stories and better prepare for a miscarriage. It could save lives, quite literally.
4. Ritualising To Decrease Your Changes of Post-Traumatic Stress
Last year I was in India when a good friend lost his father. My yoga teacher instructed him on the grieving rituals.
I can still hear his voice saying something on the lines of “cry and grief for nine days. Excuse yourself from daily obligations. Do what you want to honour the life of your father, and on the 10th day keep going”.
Precious. For nine days I allowed myself to mourn. And each of these days, the way I found to honour the life that left my womb was ritualising.
Incense, flowers to the ocean, meditation, Vedic mantras. Everything that reminds me of the bigger picture that has everything in perfect order.
Rituals I knew.
Every person has different rituals. I recommend you hold on to your rituals on the first moments of loss, whichever they are.
Rituals will help you process your emotions with objectivity.
They help you perceive the present moment as a different time and space from that of biggest suffering (which is usually right when you receive the news of loss).
By knowing now is now and then was then you will help your brain heal. You start making new emotional impressions over the same factual memories.
You create a new thinking and feeling pathway.
Instead of clinging to the two most common post-trauma pathways: total avoidance, or repetition of the traumatic moment as if you were living it over and over again.
Having a daily ritual and holding on to it as a healthy emotional escape, and a tool to have a glimpse of a bigger picture.
It will help.
5. Whatever They Say, it is NOT Like Menstrual Cramps
This is THE biggest lie I heard.
So I will boldly tell you this truth. I wished any person walking the face of the earth would have had the loving compassion of telling me this beforehand.
After four long weeks, I almost lost hope that I would bleed.
Still, I insisted on going about my miscarriage as I go about everything else in life: as natural as possible.
Up until the day I bled.
You may have sketched an idea of who’s writing this by the previous mentions such as ‘women circles, India, yogic rituals, parsley shots’.
Let me help you with this contextualisation of yours truly, writer.
I am too woo-woo for non-woo-woos, and not at all woo-woo in the woo-woo community.
I am academically raised and educated, from a family of lawyers and economists. Sceptic as one can be, a lot closer from scientific articles on gut health than sacred geometry. I will, though, be seen around a fire dancing to the moon more often than not.
When I say “natural ways” I do mean I consulted a mid-wife, an array of OBGYNs, and all the doulas I have ever met to understand up until when natural would be safe for me.
Remember, this is a taboo. There’s no one making you feel safe about waiting to bleed.
There’s not much info out there about how much it hurts when you start to bleed.
But one day, leaving this surfer’s paradise in the middle of nowhere, I started to feel cramps.
We rented a hotel room. Ordered some food. Started watching Netflix, as I felt the cramps escalating.
Contractions.
Nothing like period cramps.
I remember having two sides of thinking.
Good and evil kind of thoughts, if you care for the duality. The evil side was thinking “this doctor must be F*#&!ng with me”. The good side is going full feminist “he does not have a uterus, someone must tell him what period cramps are like”.
Seriously, I’ve never given birth before that day. But if I were to think of birth contractions, these were them.
The contractions were spaced and mild at first, mid-afternoon.
Escalating to more and more constant and stronger by night, when I started bleeding.
By 10 pm I could barely speak a full sentence without growling in pain.
Around 2 am “natural” flew out the window.
I was dizzy, in excruciating pain for way too long. I was bleeding heaps, with clots and tissues and all that jazz, all too visual and heavy.
Plus, crying my eyeballs out. It’s very emotional. I was bleeding pieces of an empty gestational sac when I had initially hoped I’d be giving actual birth in a few months.
That’s when I made the biggest mistake of all, I urge you not to repeat it.
I took an ibuprofen. The lightest I could find.
The contractions stopped. I went to sleep.
6. Trust Your Body, Trust the Process, But Find and Trust a GREAT Doctor
And vice versa.
Trust your doctor, but trust your body.
“Doctor, how long will I bleed for?”
“About a week”
Yea, right.
The heavy bleeding continued for a week.
Then nine days.
Another ultrasound and the doctor advised me to do a medical procedure called dilation and curettage (D&C).
It is exactly what it sounds it is, under general amnesia.
The process is to dilate your cervix, scrape the uterine walls with a curette, and wait for you to wake up.
It’s simple, but scary nevertheless.
I went to the hospital the next day, less than 12 hours after my latest appointment. I got ready for the D&C.
It was me and my partner in a Bali hospital, feeling rushed into a small surgery that I didn’t comprehend why I was having, since I was still bleeding.
The doctor scanned my uterus (yes, again) and said “it’s completed. You can go”.
Whaaaaaat?!
I understood close to nothing. But “ok, bye”.
Out I went. Fast.
Almost celebrating the completed miscarriage, as if that made any sense.
It was not complete.
By day 10 of bleeding, thinking my uterus had let go of everything it needed to, I started a motorcycle trip to another island, Java.
Picture this: a glamping tent in an Indonesian natural reserve. Clear ocean, colourful reefs, the most stunning sights, and wildest landscapes.
I thought I was about to stop bleeding, the doctor had said so. So I decided to go for a surf.
How long can an active person stay still anyways?
Moving my body must have incited my uterus to let go.
I’ll be as detailed as possible now, I’m not writing a tale, I’m writing what I wish I had read a month ago.
I went to the bathroom and I had more blood than I had ever seen come out of me. Pieces of the placenta which felt and looked like a piece of wet cloth. And a big, scary, bag-looking-thing. I assumed it was my gestational sac.
I could understand close to nothing. It was supposed to have been completed days ago.
This was one of the most traumatic moments of the whole process. Again, I was grateful to have talked enough to my partner about everything feminine.
We found ABSOLUTELY no information about this kind of experience.
I did not have a fever, I was not filling up a menstrual pad in two hours. My situation didn’t apply to any of the conditions on which I read that said I should seek medical attention.
I waited. And waited.
For a moment there all I did was rest, take slow walks and wash reusable pads.
Another reason for talking to your partner, I was not embarrassed about hanging my washed pads around us. That allowed me not to dispose of one single plastic full of chemicals menstrual pad. I’m proud of that.
Well, when we moved on to the first city in Java, we visited a second doctor.
That was day 18 of bleeding.
The doctor told me I still had some tissue stuck in my womb.
Natural went off the window.
I was given medication for three days to try to contract my uterus and stop the bleeding, but they didn’t quite do the job.
I did a D&C in the sketchiest hospital, with the sweetest medical team though. On my 21st day of bleeding.
After the procedure, I bled for five more days, but very light bleeding and I experienced a weird kind of cramps.
A “someone just scraped my uterus lining with a sharp tool” kind of cramps.
Also not menstrual cramps.
Forget menstrual cramps.
It has now been about a week since I’ve finished all the not natural haemoglobin replacement meds, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, pain killers, uterus contraction pill, and a small very stinky pill to help me stop bleeding.
I still haven’t gotten my period, so still no sign of menstrual cramps.
7. Speak Up. You Are Not Damaged.
We have to end this taboo.
I realised the shame surrounding the subject, and that I avoided telling people about it.
Even though I felt no shame in saying I had put on 10kg, that I had no energy lately, that I woke up tired many of my days. I wasn’t ashamed of saying I stopped working for three months. I did not feel ashamed of saying I accepted financial help from my family at the age of 30.
But I stalled, gagged, broke my voice to say “I lost a baby recently”.
One day I asked my partner if we could talk about it with other people.
The secrecy was making me feel broken. It was making me hide.
And there should be no reason to hide anything. The more I hid it, the fewer chances of looking at myself as a perfectly healthy woman I had.
Read this carefully: I am not broken. You are not broken. A lot of women go through miscarriages and they are also not broken.
Final Thoughts
Take your time to heal.
As much as finding out you are pregnant turns on your mental engine full force on the actual new normals.
Losing a baby sets up a whole even newer mental scheme for your brain to go through. An unexplainable one. It all seems completely not natural.
I heard a few times “it’s normal in the first trimester, a lot of women go through the same thing”.
That did not make me any less of one of these women. And it made me want to reach out, and share as many tools as I could with all the other women who go through this. Or women who can one day go through it. Or men who feel this loss, and try to support their partners, friends, sisters, daughters.
Everyone benefits from bringing this subject to light with all its truths.
No one can dictate how long it will take to go through this process, and no one can tell you how to feel about it.
There is no explanation of the pain of losing a life inside your womb.
Life may not be the same afterwards.
A miscarriage may bring a lot to light. Including your strength.
If I would give any further advice they would be:
- be patient and loving with your body and mind,
- be truthful about your feelings,
- have at least one person who you can be completely open with,
- drink water, eat fruits and vegetables, don’t drink alcohol, stay healthy,
- move a bit, but rest a lot,
- celebrate your small achievements.
Yesterday was the first time I said “today was a good day” ever since it all started.
This article is my celebration of having a good day.
