Miscarriage and Loss : Breaking the Stigma

I believe breaking the stigma behind pregnancy loss is so important. You are not alone.

Breaking the stigma and sharing

This subject is so hard and impacts everybody. You will hear about miscarriage being 1 in 4. This is not 1 in 4 women or 1 in 4 pregnancies. This is 1 in 4 clinical pregnancies will result in a miscarriage. For every four positive pregnancy tests, one of these pregnancies will result in a miscarriage. The actual incidence of a miscarriage is much higher. When we do studies and look at pregnancies that are lost before you get to the time of detecting with a pregnancy test, the numbers show about 50 percent. If you are trying to get pregnant you may have a miscarriage or if your friends or family are trying to get pregnant they may have one, too. If you are looking around at your circle and nobody is talking about it, that doesn’t mean it is not happening. They are not talking about them. This is one of the top complaints from my patients. They say there is no place to mourn or suffer or nowhere to seek understanding and acceptance. We let miscarriage be so isolating because we don’t talk about it or share with our support systems. We end up suffering alone. Women who have a miscarriage often feel the need to prove their strength. They are told “at least it wasn’t a real baby yet” or ''you weren’t that far along yet.” All things that maybe are well intended, but they leave the person who is suffering feeling less than. I think it is important that we talk about pregnancy loss and miscarriage. There is no reason we need to keep this a silent struggle anymore. When we don’t talk about it, we are unable to understand it.

Permission to Feel

Many different things can cause a miscarriage. It can be a genetic event, age, an immune disorder, anatomic defect, clotting disorder, endocrine disease and so many more. You need to know when to ask for help and how we as physicians can do something about it. You need to know how to improve your chances of a successful pregnancy. I think it is important that we start this off by saying that you have permission to feel. You have permission to cry, scream, run or whatever you need to do. You have to feel the emotion because when we don’t feel it, we let it brew inside of us and we get internal anxiety contributing to trauma in the future. We don’t want getting pregnant or being pregnant to be a traumatic experience. We have to accept that pregnancy loss is common, but it is not easy. You are allowed to feel. This is a real loss. I know that this loss hurts. You are ready to hold that baby in your arms and grow that family. I know this is hard. I have been there. You have heard my story if you follow me on Instagram.

You need to share this with the people around you. You need to share this with your friends and family. When we are able to share our successes and our struggles we empower each other and make each other stronger.

We know that we are not alone and others have gone through it and come out on the other side.

Next I will discuss why miscarriages can occur.