‘It’s more than the loss of a baby, it’s the loss of a dream’
Early pregnancy is fragile, says Marina Fogle, so it’s time to open up about the realities of miscarriage
It’s been 11 years since I had a miscarriage; 11 years since I received the news, lying on a sonographer’s couch, that the baby I thought had been growing quietly inside me had no heartbeat. This week, research published by Imperial College London and KU Leuven in Belgium, suggested that a significant number of women who’ve experienced early miscarriage suffer from PTSD, and that the health service needs to offer more support to these women who find it hard to navigate the emotional turmoil of losing a baby even before it was technically a baby.
Dr Jessica Farren, a specialist registrar and clinical fellow at Imperial, said: “For some women, it’s the first time they have experienced anything beyond their control.” Even if the loss occurred at a very early stage, “these can be profound events which stay with you,” she added; and being informed it’s “only a bag of cells” (as some of the women in the study reported they had been told), is far from helpful.
Luckily for me, I cried a lot, was supported by my family and friends, who, even though hadn’t been privy to my secret, rallied around as soon as I told them. My husband Ben was disappointed but more pragmatic than his hormone-ridden wife, and while the next few months were emotionally turbulent (and possibly exacerbated by the fact he was walking to the South Pole), I was not one of those unfortunate women who suffered post-traumatic stress.
I was shocked though; miscarriage was not something I ever expected to happen to me. As far as I knew, my mother had never had a miscarriage. I certainly never knew that up to one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. In the days that followed, I was tormented by catastrophisation, the fear that this miscarriage would mean that I’d never have children.
One of the most comforting people in those early days was the late Cassandra Jardine, the Telegraph journalist who interviewed me on the eve of Ben’s departure. “I have five children,” she told me, giving me a big hug, “but I’ve also had five miscarriages.” Here was living proof that I might still go on to have the large family I’d dreamt of.
Nowadays my job is teaching antenatal classes, supporting expectant mothers through their pregnancies and preparing them for the realities of parenthood. I receive emails on a weekly basis from women who’ve signed up early, to tell me that they’ve miscarried. I always make a point of emailing them personally, acknowledging their grief and offering support, whatever stage in their pregnancy their miscarriage happened.
Eleven years on, I’ve experienced baby loss in its different guises; in 2014, my third child, Willem, was stillborn at 33 weeks. I’ve always spoken openly about the grief I experienced and how it affected our family. Holding our lifeless baby, naming him, arranging his cremation and funeral and explaining to his young siblings that the brother they were so excited about meeting would never come home, made the whole experience quite different to the miscarriage.
On The Parent Hood, the podcast I produce, baby loss is a topic we’ve tackled often. I have the privilege of having some of the UK’S most experienced grief counsellors speaking to me and what I’ve realised is that the grief and trauma experienced is entirely subjective. It’s about more than the loss of a baby; it’s about the loss of a dream – a couple who miscarry after many rounds of IVF might be more affected than the couple who became pregnant without really trying – and what makes grief harder to deal with is the impression that your feelings are disproportionate.
Dr Farren suggested that, just as women who have given birth to a healthy baby have a six-week consultation to check, among other things, their mental health, so those who have suffered a miscarriage should be offered the same. In an ideal world, this would be great. But I also see day to day how the health service already struggles financially to support pregnant women. Kindness, however, is not just key, but free – and this is one area where our health service could certainly improve. I have vivid memories of arriving, bleeding, at an early pregnancy unit, trembling with the idea that I was losing a baby. (Though Willem went on to be stillborn, the bleed was completely unrelated to his death, and relatively common in healthy pregnancies.)
Without looking at me, the lady at the desk asked for my NHS number, which I didn’t have. I’d rushed straight from work and didn’t know where it was. “Well, that’s not very helpful,” she barked at me “I don’t know if we’ll be able to see you.” Considering where she worked, a place where
It’s inevitable that loss will affect my children or their own friends in the future
every patient unfortunate enough to walk through the door is there because there is a strong chance they are losing their baby, I was amazed that compassion and kindness were not an essential part of the job description.
The other problem is that although miscarriage is an unhappy fact of life, right now, society as a whole is not very good at talking about it. One of the most insidious parts of the fabled “stiff upper lip” is the idea that you can’t share your sadness with friends because it’s too intimate. This starts with the positive pregnancy test, when we’re told that on no account should you share your happy news before that all-important 12-week scan – just in case you miscarry.
On the contrary, this is when you need your friends’ compassion, understanding and support more than ever before. I always encourage those who ask my advice to tell those who they’d rely on should they have a miscarriage. I know from experience that grief is a lot harder to deal with on your own.
With the insight I’ve gained from being a part of the baby loss conversation, both personally and professionally, I believe the most profound thing we can do as a society is to educate people about the fragility of early pregnancy and the likelihood of miscarriage, from the beginning.
My eldest child, Ludo, is now 10. Next year he’ll have sex education in school and I would like for his whole class to be told about sex, contraception and consent, but also about pregnancy and miscarriage and stillbirth. For years, he and his sister, Iona, eight, have known the whole story; they know what a uterus and a placenta are, they know the difference between miscarriage and stillbirth.
Thinking about my peers, I struggle to name anyone who hasn’t experienced some kind of baby loss, so it’s inevitable that it will affect my children or their own friends in the future.
I hope that talking openly about it now will result in this generation of girls and boys (because pregnancy is not simply a woman’s issue) having the language, the compassion, the knowledge and the confidence to be able to talk about it. And make baby loss less a lonely taboo.