#miscarriage

#miscarriage

“Miscarriage” carries a history of failure, misconduct, and mismanagement. Even before it was recorded in the early 1600s as meaning the “spontaneous expulsion of a fetus from the womb before it is viable,” it meant “[a]n instance of misconduct or misbehaviour; a lapse of conduct; a misdemeanour or misdeed”; a “failure; [and] a blunder”; in time it also denoted the “failure of a letter...to reach its destination” ( OED). In the reproductive context, these circulating definitions risk implying that the body has blundered, faultily mis-carrying what it was meant to deliver.

A study by Tommy's National Centre for Miscarriage Research found a 4% reduction in the risk of future miscarriage for women on the graded model of care compared with the usual care, translating to a reduction of 10,075 miscarriages a year across the UK.

Try hard enough, we are often told, and eventually you'll get what you want. But sometimes the hardest - and bravest - thing to do, is to stop trying. After years of hoping to start a family, including the painful rollercoaster of fertility treatment and a devastating miscarriage on Christmas day, Caroline Stafford, found the only way to find some kind of peace again was to accept it was not going to happen and to build a different future.

I am in constant contact with my college friends; we all talk almost daily. One of them disclosed that she just went through a miscarriage. I am at a loss. I want to be there for her while going through my own process to have kids. I can't begin to imagine her feelings of loss and the physical pain. I lay down and cried after she told me, grieving for her and her baby and her husband.

Ed and Sheena were about to have sex for the first time after their third miscarriage six weeks before. Sheena had recently felt Ed being distant towards her. This made her wonder if Ed's disappointment about their most recent loss was turning into anger. Did Ed silently blame her for their losses? After all, her body had failed to carry through the pregnancies. She hoped that the two of them getting intimate with one another that night would bring them closer together.

My social media algorithms knew I was pregnant before family, friends or my GP. Within 24-hours, they were transforming my feeds. On Instagram and TikTok, I would scroll through videos of women recording themselves as they took pregnancy tests, just as I had done. I liked, saved, and shared the content, feeding the machine, showing it that this is how it could hold my attention, compelling it to send me more.

"I remember going in to see my gynecologist with the reports and I was like, 'can you just explain to me? So, there was no baby?'"

This is about identifying preventable miscarriages. Many women are told they've just had bad luck, but our findings show that the womb itself may be setting the stage for pregnancy loss.

A California woman, Monique McChristian, was denied a refund by Carnival after miscarrying days before her cruise, leading to numerous painful conversations about her loss.

I'm so tired of people commenting on my weight. I have PCOS and struggle with infertility. I got pregnant, and it didn't work out and I’ve been carrying that pain in silence.