Last week, I had a miscarriage.
It’s not a fun story, but the long and the short of it is that I had some bleeding, went in for a scan and found out that the pregnancy had stopped developing a few weeks previous.
My body didn’t seem to be passing the pregnancy on its own, so I had what’s known as a medically managed miscarriage, where you take pills to soften your cervix and let the pregnancy tissue pass.
It’s a horrible, brutal, miserable process. The most painful thing I’ve ever felt.
The only thing that made it even semi bearable is that I had the support of my family and friends.
Conventional wisdom says that you’re ‘not supposed’ to tell anyone that you’re pregnant until you reach the milestone of the second trimester.
At 12 weeks all UK based women are offered a scan where the pregnancy can be properly checked. If at 12 weeks you’ve got a healthy pregnancy with a strong heartbeat, you’re sort of in the clear. Plenty can still go wrong, but the statistics are in your favour.
Understandably many people wait until that 12 week mark to share their news.
I didn’t.
Before I got pregnant I loved drinking and was a regular smoker, so it was very clear when I stopped drinking and smoking that something was up. Many of my close friends guessed instantly. And to be totally honest, I was glad that they did. I wanted to tell them.
Being pregnant was one of the most exciting, scary, world changing things that had ever happened to me and I needed to talk about it.
So I told my family, and then my closest friends, and the news spread. I told my colleagues (if nothing else to explain why I was going to the loo 15 times a day). I didn’t put the news on social media, but by the time I found out that I’d lost the pregnancy I had told 20 or 30 people.
The unspoken rule about not sharing your pregnancy early on is that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, so telling people comes with a 25 per cent chance that you’ll have to un-tell them. Which is exactly what I had to do.
I won’t lie, Whatsapping my friends wasn’t a fun experience. There’s no emoji that goes with ‘I lost the pregnancy’.
‘You’ll want to keep the news to yourself until 12 weeks next time’ someone said to me when I explained what had happened, like that was a fact.
But however hard the messages were to send, the outpouring of love, kindness and support that I got back was astonishing. Because those people had celebrated with me, they were more able to mourn for me.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to keep your pregnancy private for as long as you like. It’s entirely your choice whether you tell people the second you get a positive pregnancy test, or hold out until you’re most of the way through. But I do object to the pressure to keep quiet.
‘You’ll want to keep the news to yourself until 12 weeks next time’ someone said to me when I explained what had happened, like that was a fact.
The truth is, if and when I become pregnant again, I don’t know what I’ll want.
Maybe we will hug the news to ourselves for as long as possible. Or perhaps we’ll do the exact same thing again. It’s impossible to say how I’ll feel if and when that time comes. But I resent the implication that this time around I somehow got it ‘wrong’.
I did not lose my pregnancy because I told people too early.
I didn’t somehow jinx it.
My miscarriage wasn’t a punishment for being too confident in the viability of the fetus.
These are all things I have to repeat to myself over and over again, because on some level I am looking for a way that this was my fault. And the narrative that we ‘should’ keep pregnancy a secret until 12 weeks adds to that feeling.
Miscarriage still carries a stigma. It is still surrounded by shadows and secrecy. Because so many women don’t share their pregnancy news until 12 weeks, many women will become pregnant and miscarry without anyone knowing.
Ultimately, I’m glad I told so many people that I was pregnant.
Partially because when people know that you are pregnant and then find out that you aren’t any more, they’ve been on the journey with you. They’re able to grieve with you.
But even more importantly, my family and friends are now aware that they know someone who has had a miscarriage
If one day one of my friends or family members loses a pregnancy (something I hope will never happen), they might feel able to talk to me.
They might be able to ring me up and sob down the phone, or send a message saying ‘this is the f**king worst’. They will know that they are not alone.
Source: Read Full Article