Maybe you’d known for three weeks. Maybe you’d already worked out the due date and noticed it landed near your mom’s birthday. Then the ultrasound tech got very quiet, or the bleeding started at work, and two days later you were back at your desk answering email like nothing happened.
About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, according to the Mayo Clinic. It’s one of the most common losses there is and one of the least talked about. Plenty of people hadn’t told anyone they were pregnant, so there’s nobody to tell when it ends. Nobody brings a casserole. There’s no bereavement leave. Sometimes there isn’t even a word for what you lost.
I work with a lot of people after pregnancy loss, and there are a few things I want to say plainly.
It Counts as a Loss
How far along you were doesn’t decide how much it hurts. Attachment can start the moment you see a second line, and with it comes a whole imagined future. When the pregnancy ends, that future goes with it, and people grieve it.
Partners grieve too, often more quietly, and often with no one asking how they’re doing. People who’ve been through a chemical pregnancy, an ectopic pregnancy, a failed IVF transfer, or a termination for medical reasons sometimes feel their grief doesn’t qualify. It does.
It Probably Wasn’t Anything You Did
Almost everyone I see after a miscarriage has a list. The run. The glass of wine before they knew. The argument. Lifting the toddler. Most miscarriages happen because the pregnancy wasn’t developing normally, very often because of a chromosome problem, and not because of anything the pregnant person did. Your doctor can tell you more about your situation. That list in your head is almost never the answer, even though it feels like one at 2 a.m.
Sometimes It Looks Like Trauma
A study in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology followed more than 700 women after early pregnancy loss. One month later, 29 percent met criteria for post-traumatic stress. Nine months later, 18 percent still did.
So if you’re replaying the ER, avoiding the street the clinic is on, or getting hit with panic when a coworker announces a pregnancy, that’s your nervous system reacting to something frightening. It happens to a lot of people.
What Helps
Some people want to talk about it constantly. Others want to say it once, to one person, and be done. Either is fine. A few things I’ve seen make a difference:
- Saying it out loud to at least one person who won’t try to fix it.
- Marking it somehow, even privately. A tree, a piece of jewelry, a day off each year. October 15 is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, and some people find comfort in lighting a candle that evening, knowing others are too.
- Permission to skip the baby shower.
- Planning something gentle for the week of the due date, because it often sneaks up on people.
Therapy can help when the grief isn’t moving, when anxiety is taking over a new pregnancy, or when you and your partner are grieving so differently that it’s starting to pull you apart. I do a lot of this work myself, and so do Kelsey Bennett and Kelli Ruhl. It’s part of our perinatal therapy and our grief and loss work, and when the trauma is the stuck part, EMDR can help a lot. Postpartum Support International also runs free online support groups for pregnancy and infant loss.
There’s no deadline on this kind of grief. Whenever you’re ready, you can reach out for a free consultation.
