Miscarriage: Does pregnancy loss need to be talked about more?

September 2, 2009--My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage somewhere around the 12th week. I learned the news when I went in for an ultrasound.

Because of some health risks -- and the fact that my Mom had twins (stillborn at seven months) -- I was in line for a lot of ultrasounds. The first showed one baby, and everything fine. Four weeks later, I went for another, telling my husband (who had a busy day at work that day) that he didn't need to come with me.

I knew something was wrong just by the look on the technician's face. She wouldn't tell me anything, then hurried to get the doctor, who looked briefly at the ultrasound screen and said, "Is there somebody here with you?"

It's weird how even now, more than 11 years later, I can still remember how my voice cracked when I called my husband, how the terrible news came out in a sob, how most of me felt devastated and a little part of me (ridiculous as it was) felt silly for crying in front of the doctor, the technician, strangers after all.

I felt grief for that baby whose heart had stopped beating and a miserable fear that this would be my lot -- I would not be a Mom.

But happily, that was not true. I was pregnant again four months later, and my son was born the requisite nine months after that. My daughter joined our family by adoption some seven years later, so there was no more pregnancy pain for me.

And I mostly stopped thinking about that miscarriage, though every once in awhile it hits me. Like in the doctor's office, when I have to fill out forms that ask how many pregnancies, and I remember it was two. Two. Or when I find an old ultrasound photo, which I assumed was my son's until I saw the date stamped on the top. No, not my son. The other one.

I've thought about it quite a bit in the last few weeks, however, because I keep reading other women's thoughts on topic -- and many felt the sorrow of a miscarriage wasn't something they could talk about or share.

I read that first here at the Whoa, Momma! blog, where writer Amy Hollyfield wrote that after her miscarriage she didn't speak to anyone about it.

"For me, being alone in my suffering was the hardest part, because I didn't realize how common an experience it is. Knowing that now, I want to share the unspoken truth with all women."

Several comments on that post echoed the sense that while miscarriage is common -- some 15 percent of pregnancies end that way -- it is rarely talked about it.

And then this post at the Motherlode blog, about secondary infertility, touched on the topic, too, as did some of the comments. In fact the first one read in part, "Isn’t the problem that it happens all the time, but nobody talks about it?"

As best as I remember, I felt supported in the days and weeks after my miscarriage by family and friends, though some people clearly didn't seem to know what to say...Read more

Source: Orlando Sentinel