Posted on 12/02/2020 11:53:19 AM PST by Kaslin
There is still a stigma in our culture about pregnancy loss, miscarriage, and stillbirth. Here are three reasons not to keep it a secret.
Meghan, the duchess of Sussex, revealed last week in a New York Times opinion article that she suffered a miscarriage last summer. Recently, supermodel Chrissy Teigen was also open about her grief over her pregnancy loss.
While there is still a tendency in our culture to conceal pregnancy losses, I applaud the willingness of these well-known women to share their stories, and hope that their examples will help mothers and families in the same situation to be able to grieve and to heal.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I waited until I was 12 weeks along to tell almost everyone (my husband knew, of course, and we told my parents). This is fairly standard, since around one-in-five pregnancies is lost to miscarriage, most in the first trimester.
So, the logic goes, if you don’t tell anybody that you’re pregnant, then you don’t have to go around announcing the miscarriage to everyone if the baby is lost. Pregnancy books are replete with horror stories about the woman who immediately told everyone she was pregnant, then suffered a miscarriage, and for months had people asking after the baby.
In May 2013, we lost our second baby at about eight weeks. Just like the first time, we had told no one about it. Even my close family didn’t know I was pregnant until we told them that the baby was lost. After that experience, my thoughts about announcing early pregnancy have really changed.
What are the benefits to keeping early pregnancies and miscarriages secret? I can think of a few.
1. Some people prefer to grieve in private. Having announced a pregnancy, a subsequent loss must also be announced. Grieving parents often don’t want to talk about it, and having to remember everyone who knows and who must now be informed is too much to deal with.
2. Some people don’t want to cause other people grief. Common or not, pregnancy loss is a sad thing. Some parents don’t want to spread the grief of losing the baby to everyone they know, especially to other pregnant women.
3. Pregnant women can be almost superstitiously opposed to hearing about miscarriages and other pregnancy loss. Pregnancy forums have many stories from pregnant women who were emotionally traumatized by hearing stories of other women’s pregnancy losses. Some almost express the belief that merely hearing about a baby’s death could harm the pregnant woman’s baby, and some people are very emotional about it.
If I may, I would like to submit some reasons why early pregnancies and pregnancy loss should not be a taboo subject.
1. Private grief is grief without support. Many women who have lost babies say they felt very isolated in their grief, as if they were the only one this had happened to and that no one else could relate to what they were feeling.
Given that pregnancy loss is so common, it is nearly statistically guaranteed that everyone knows multiple people who have lost babies. But as long as those babies and losses are kept secret (outside of the miscarriage community), public awareness and acceptance of the statistics will never occur.
2. A baby’s loss that is never grieved is a baby’s life that was never celebrated. Yes, it is hard to know what to say when someone you know has lost a baby. If you are a relative, you may mourn yourself for the little grandchild, niece, or cousin you never got to know.
After my miscarriage, I was sad that during my baby’s eight weeks of life, no one knew he was there or was happy that he existed. The fact that he lived was only associated with his death. Next time around, I will be shouting my baby’s existence from the rooftops; even if he or she dies, he or she won’t have died unnoticed.
3. I understand that while you’re pregnant, the last thing you want to hear about is babies dying. You are completely invested in your baby’s well-being, and even thinking about miscarriage can seem dangerous.
But it’s not. Merely hearing stories cannot harm a baby in utero. Ignoring pregnancy loss statistics and shunning women who have miscarried doesn’t help the pregnant woman at all, and it can cause significant harm to the woman who has miscarried.
A pregnancy cannot be jinxed by sitting near a woman who has recently lost a baby in the doctor’s waiting room. Helping a friend grieve a lost baby will not hurt the one inside of you. And, given the numbers, someday you may be grateful for sympathy in your own grief.
Those who are historically minded will recall that up until a few decades ago, breast cancer was a taboo subject. Women who had breast cancer certainly did not talk about it, and even treatment and surgery were kept secret.
That is, until a few well-known women decided to go public with their experiences with breast cancer. Now, while a breast cancer diagnosis is still a scary thing, no woman needs to feel like she has to go through it alone. She understands that she is one of many, and that there is support if she needs it.
The percentage of women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer is about 12 percent. The percentage of women who will undergo a pregnancy loss is about 30 percent.
It is not easy to be open about a miscarriage. In addition to having lost a beloved child, women and families often experience guilt, depression, and hopelessness. Uninformed people may ask them if they did something wrong to cause the miscarriage, accuse them of being inappropriate, or say other hurtful things.
I am grateful for every woman, especially those in positions of prominence, who make the choice to share their personal stories. Their willingness to be vulnerable about one of the most tragic things a woman can undergo is a great service to those who are suffering in isolation.
Because most miscarriages are due to factors beyond our control, awareness can’t reduce miscarriage. But it can provide support and acceptance for women and families who have lost babies, letting them know that they are not alone, and reducing the stigma attached to pregnancy loss.
To the mothers and families: You are not alone.
To the babies: You are not forgotten.
My mom told me I was not an only child by choice but did not go into details and I never asked. She died in 1996 so I will never know.
sometimes the long form birth certificate tells how many pregancies to how many live births a woman has had Para means pregnancy gravida means live birth
I It is the truth and a beautiful way to look at things.
Depending on what one believes (and I Never assume all people believe the same), you may know one day.
But it is sad to think about what could have been.
That grandfather needs to lose his grandpa license. My granddaughter had a spontaneous premature delivery at 21 weeks and was told there was no hope to save my great grandson. We were able to hold him and tell him how much we loved him before he died in her arms. Two years later and pregnant again and watched so close the new one tried the same thing but this time they were ready. Three months in the hospital she delivered a preemie but old enough to make it. My newest great grandson will be a year old this month and I always give my grandaughter a baby gift on my first great grandsons birthday and I always include him in my list of great grandkids which happily is up to six now.
That is deranged thinking and that grandfather was beyond a jerk to say such a thing. In fact, I’d say only a sociopath would pose a question like that to people who had and lost a handicapped baby.
i did not tell anybody i was pregnant until I got thru the 1st trimester.
If I do not know you well, and I mean well, I do not need to know if you are pregnant or miscarried.
“... I thought it was so rare....”
Maybe that is why so many women keep it quiet... they think that it is rare. Also think that many people don’t see a miscarriage equal in terms of say a SIDS death so they don’t receive the same sort of emotional support. For example, I worked with a woman that miscarried around the third month and when she came back to work, another co-worker said, “You can have another one and this one was probably retarded or deformed.. it’s nature’s way of getting rid of mistakes”. Yeah, dp, SHE actually said that out loud. Yes... sometimes miscarriages are a result of genetic issues BUT YOU DON’T SAY IT! Some women feel that people judge them as “less a woman” or that they must have done something wrong (sinful, drank a beer, had rough sex etc). I am glad that people are at least talking about it and not telling someone to get over it etc..
When the baby dies before the miscarriage starts the medical term for this is “Missed Abortion.” It is better for the woman’s body to allow the hormone levels to drop and the body try to expel the dead child.
It happened to me twice and do I HATE that term. It makes it sound like the mother chose to lose her baby!!
While that is probably the most blatant example, there seems to be in my Catholic friends an underlying “what did I do to deserve God’s rath”.
While that is probably the most blatant example, there seems to be in my Catholic friends an underlying “what did I do to deserve God’s rath”.
I lost one at 15 weeks. Everything was going good and then it wasn’t.
That’s true in more than just Catholics. But to self-righteously lay that shyt on someone who has just experienced such a loss is vile.
There's no stigma about it that I ever knew of but I can sure see why you wouldn't want to rehash it with everyone you meet or listen to all the ignorant comments from total strangers about it.
It's nobody's business but those to whom you wish to tell it.
Grieve.
I am very sad to say that our daughter is now recently in this club...the club she didn’t want to be in. But God always has a plan and does what is best. Just this morning my daughter was telling me about a conversation last night with her brother-in-law and his wife (who have a history of a miscarriage and also losing their first baby to SIDS). “God does what is best tho we may not see it at the time...including what is best for the baby”. They now have two beautiful teenage girls and are a beautiful family. My daughter and her husband have two boys and are coming to terms with God’s plan.
Thank you for sharing...I appreciate you and the others who have shared their sorrow.
This sounds idiotic
If there’s no stigma to killing babies purposely
there certainly isn’t for stillborn/miscarriages
My mom had 3 kids before she was 27
spaced out over 12 years. She waited 6 more
and lost a boy c. ‘58, a contributing factor was dr.
prescribed diet pills during pregnancy, which
wouldn’t happen today
Parents wanted another kid so bad, they
had me another boy probably before mom was fully ready...
I lasted 7 months before I was extracted
with me trying to bust out head first aggressively after 6...mom got
really sick and was dying, given the Last Rites...i was
4lb 11 oz with a 4 lb head ...we all made it,
I ended up in a then experimental incubator for weeks... she was
upset that the attitude then was save the baby before mom
Mom got pregnant again in early 60 and fainted when she heard
the news. Came to and eventually had another baby boy
completely to term delivered normally
Yes they were sad about the loss of “Christopher”
but no one put on a Scarlet Letter on anyone
or even tried to sue the dr. it was just accepted as
a not insurmountable life event
So do I - and every woman I know who had to give one back to Jesus before they were born.
It is by sharing our sorrow that we bear each other’s burdens. it is terrible to feel alone in your grief. I have 4 children here with me now 2 by adoption and 2 by birth and am grandmother of 2 so far. Gods plan is marvelous and amazing if not always understandable.
She plagarised the account from a book. It is a
book called “Chasing Light: Finding Hope through the Loss of Miscarriage” written by Stefanie Tong. Of course, she changed it a bit.
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