Check out the new article on the NY Times Website: Grieving a Miscarriage
The key here is more people are talking about miscarriage… more people are willing to share, let you know you are not alone, and help with the healing… that is our mission at OurHopePlace.com We want to demystify miscarriage and help with the healing. Because you will move forward, but you won’t forget.
Pregnancy
(Illustration by Barry Falls)In the comments here last week, several of you asked about miscarriage: Why won’t people stop saying “you can try again soon”? What is the “right” amount of grief? Are there more miscarriages now or does it just seem that way? What to tell the children about the baby who will not be?
I put these questions and others to Donnica Moore, an Ob/Gyn who is founder of the Sapphire Women’s Group and editor of the newly released book, “Women’s Health for Life.” (I am also using this post to put these questions to readers, so please add your thoughts and advice below.)
No data exists to tell us whether miscarriages are becoming more common, Moore says. “Even though there are more women having children at older ages, which increases the risk of miscarriage,” she explains, “there are also more women using contraception.” Meaning pregnancies that might otherwise have ended in miscarriage don’t occur in the first place.
What is certainly true, she believes, is that today more women know they are having a miscarriage. Just a few decades ago, many miscarriages were attributed to being late or counting wrong; now home tests can confirm a pregnancy within hours of a missed period.
In addition, tools such as ovulation predictors and more extensive reproductive interventions mean many know the exact moment of conception. “Women are more diligently trying to conceive, so they are really watching and testing,” Moore says. And if you are more likely to know you are pregnant, you are more likely to know you have lost a pregnancy.
All the factors that increase knowledge also magnify grief, Moore says. An infertility battle makes a loss of pregnancy feel like a failure. Hearing a heartbeat six weeks into a pregnancy, or seeing a 3-D sonogram image of a fetus at rice-sized stage, can sharpen the pain should that heartbeat stop. We can tell the gender with certainty before a real belly-bump appears. Rather than trying to hide pregnancy (as Moore’s mother did so she could keep her teaching job), women are now announcing early on “not only that they are pregnant but that they are trying,” Moore says.
Like so many social shifts, our traditions and expectations are playing catch up.
“Couples can feel there’s no socially accepted way to grieve,” Moore says. “If you lose a family member, people know how to do that, they know how to support you and grieve with you. But this is new territory for a lot of us. It’s a tragedy for people who have gone through it that might not be on the radar of people who have not.”
