How to Survive a Miscarriage: A guide for women, their partners, friends and families

By Karin Holmes

Although 10-25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, there is surprisingly little recognition of the devastating grief that often follows in its wake. Sadly, poor communication by medical staff and insensitive comments from well-meaning friends and family are common, while real emotional support is rare.After experiencing a devastating miscarriage

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Light Publishing House
• Release date: Oct 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780648147671

Book preview

Introduction

Having a child – a wish millions of couples have. It is a powerful wish that brings great joy, love, happiness and challenges into people’s lives.

In today’s modern times most of us know lots about pregnancy, how to eat right, how to exercise to stay healthy during those nine months, where to go to buy baby clothes and furniture or what books to read to prepare for this life changing event. It is an event that is widely celebrated and connected with lots of positive feelings. However, it is also general knowledge that a lot of women lose their baby in the first three months of their pregnancy or even long after that.

But it stops there. The attitude towards miscarriage is very flippant. Doctors, family and friends know about it and those who have never experienced such a traumatic event brush it off when they talk to you. Yes, it is very common to have a miscarriage - but it is a big deal to survive one. The emotional trauma that comes with it is huge, the grieving of the event painful and the effects on the woman and her partner are shattering. The fact that most people think it is common doesn’t make this tragedy any less terrible. Who has ever stopped and thought about the emotional ups and downs a woman and her partner go through after a miscarriage, about their deep sadness and confusion?

Society’s ignorance and lack of interest make this suffering a quiet one. And a lonely one.  That in itself is a struggle and needs ways of dealing with it.

I did it by writing about it and as I was reliving my ordeal a few things became apparent. One thing hit me very hard: The only people who took our pain seriously were people who either went through the same thing or something similar. Most of the time people’s responses were dismissive and disrespectful. It started with the good old fashioned ‘It is very common, it happens to a lot of women’ comment to a lovely ‘It wasn’t the first, it won’t be the last’. I was not only hurt by these mindless comments, I was outraged. No one has the right to belittle or minimise a woman’s pain that she feels after suffering a miscarriage. It felt as if my pain wasn’t legitimate for society and as if I wasn’t supposed to struggle after this event.

I am not prepared to accept that. Miscarriage is a traumatic experience that comes with a lot of pain, soul searching and tears. It was hard and still is. I decided to write this guide because the pain so many women go through is legitimate and I hope I can help some of you to go through this tough journey ahead.

This guide is aimed at women who have suffered a miscarriage until week 20 and are struck by pain, grief and deep sadness. I hope you can take some advice and encouragement out of this book. It aims to offer help in this extremely upsetting situation and to help you get through your pain. The chapters can be read in order or you can pick one to start with. In this time of turmoil, do whatever is right for you.

A fair chunk of the book is dedicated to those around a grieving woman – her partner, family and friends. They all play a crucial role in her recovery but not all of them might be aware of it.

If you know someone who just suffered a miscarriage and you don’t know how to react but would like to help then this book is also for you. It provides you with helpful guidance on what to do and what to avoid, as the last thing we need is another woman hurt by mindless comments and disinterest.

Grieving 101

The stages of your grieving process

So, here we are. The one thing you have probably never considered, happened: you lost your baby. One day, it was all good and the next you find that your tiny, precious, perfect baby is no more.

It feels like your whole world has come to a complete stop in a matter of seconds and darkness descended and put its heavy cloak around you, weighing you down so badly that you struggle to breathe. You are lost for words and in shock, with emptiness inside that is so vast, it could swallow up the entire planet. Feelings of joy and excitement are replaced with numbness and confusion and most likely, you had no or very little warning signs that this tragic event was about to happen to you. Yet, here we are and everything is upside down; you are in turmoil and nothing makes sense. Also, where do all these extremely strong emotions come from? They are taking over, they threaten to drown you, and you feel like you are sinking fast.

First of all: breathe. Take a deep breath, and then a few more. You have just lost your baby. It is normal to feel all these emotions and to struggle through the hours of the day. Most likely, a lot of questions pop up in your head: Did I do something wrong? Why me? Why did this happen?

The first few hours, days and weeks after your loss are a fragile and confusing time. Be gentle with yourself and let those tears flow. You might not realise it just yet, but all this emotional turmoil is the beginning of your grieving process and your new journey ahead. Yes, there is a grieving process after a miscarriage.

A lot of people with their no big deal attitude are probably not aware of that and those close to you might have the same impression. But, miscarriage is a form of death. The life that was growing inside of you is no more. You haven’t met the little being; you don’t have many memories, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with the loss and the difficult emotions that come with it. Grief overcomes you instantly and enters your life with an incredible force. Your journey has been altered abruptly and you are thrown down a path you know nothing about and you didn’t expect to go down either.

Yet, here you are and you will wonder what lies ahead of you and where this new path will lead you. It sure as hell is confusing and the future that looked so bright just yesterday is now a black, thick fog where you can see a way in, but not a way out. This might be your very first encounter with grief or maybe the two of you have met before, but not with such harshness and cruelty. Either way, grief is here to stay for a while to come, and your journey forward will only happen with it alongside it.

You might wonder what a grieving journey actually is, and what it entails. A straight answer is not possible as your journey through loss and grief is unique, so no one can tell you where your path will take you. However, there are a few similarities most grieving journeys share and it will be good for you to be familiar with them. That way, you can check in and see where you are at when times are extra confusing or hard. The reason might not always be obvious or clear, but sometimes a tough week can be better understood by remembering the stages of grief that all baby loss survivors go through. In this chapter, you will be introduced to the stages of grief and their characteristics. The description of grief can never be complete as it is so unique to everyone. You may experience all symptoms of the stages or you may miss most, but that is not the point.

The following explanations shall be a guide for you to turn to if you look for an explanation or reasoning for your current mood. They may be able to provide you with some clarity or a starting point to get an idea about what is going on. So, let’s look at these grief stages a bit more closely.

A lot of research has gone into grief and grieving, and professionals who have dealt with loss and death extensively have developed different models for grief. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist, who was a pioneer in near-death studies and dedicated her life to research in to death and the grief associated with it, has developed a model of five stages (commonly known as Kübler-Ross model). Admittedly, she worked with adults who were close to death so it is not the same situation you are in right now. However, the stages of grief that are described in her model do apply to your situation.

The Kübler-Ross model entails denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Other models include seven stages and I chose to follow that model, as it seems to be more detailed and often more fitting to grief experienced after the death of a baby. The seven stages are: Shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression, turn for the better, reconstructing and reassembling your life. Then, at last, there is acceptance. But let’s start at the beginning.

Denial and shock

Denial and shock often help us to get through the worst part of the grieving process. Something awful just hit us full blast and we don’t know how to deal with it. So, pretending it hasn’t happened is only natural. We all know just too well that facing the awful new reality will cause a lot of pain, heartache and bottomless sadness. Of course, we don’t feel like going through that, therefore we deny. It is no different after a miscarriage. One moment you were full of happiness, maybe struggling to believe that such a gift was bestowed upon you, and bam! The next moment it is gone, just like that and you are left with no answers, but a lot of questions. Your emotions probably can’t keep up which leads to feeling numb, disorientated and lost. This is shock taking over but it has a limited life span and won’t last forever. Reality will creep in – and that is when denial kicks in. You won’t believe what is going on, you feel the pain rising inside you, starting from your heart, filling your body up, seemingly taking over every cell of your body. You start to realise that things are about to get real and the pain associated with it will take you for a hefty ride.

At first, you will direct your energy to fighting all of that. You are not ready to face the facts and so shortly after your devastating loss, this is very understandable. We can’t go ahead with our lives straight away as if nothing happened and no one should expect you to either.

Please note though - when you catch yourself saying I am okay, or I feel fine, make a mental note to yourself that you have started the grieving process. Not that this is great news, but it is important. You have just taken the first step out of the horror that is dominating you at the moment – even if you start with denying your experience. It won’t get better straight away, but you are on the right path. It is hard to say what you are going to get out of this stage, as everyone is different. Some might spend a day in that phase; others months. There is no road sign that is going to pop up to indicate, ‘You are now entering stage two of your grieving process’. The borderlines between the stages are fluid anyway so who’s to say you will be done and dusted within a month or two? Just know that it is okay to take your time. It is your life, your body, and your health we are talking about, so don’t rush if you are not ready. If you are looking for signs that your process is moving along, then they are definitely around and will become apparent to you.

You will notice that your denial starts to fade. You start to think, Wow, this is really happening, and you might wish you weren’t in this situation right now. The numbness starts to ease; the raw emotions are coming back. Reality looks rather grim and it might feel as if your life has been shattered into a million pieces – what a gut wrenching feeling that is. The most important thing right now is not to hold back. You have started your new journey and are in the process of working through this immense pain.

This leads us to the second stage of grief – pain & guilt. You will have started off with denying everything but you will realise sooner or later that there are a lot of emotions inside of you and they are strong, scary and most of all raw. The pain hits you full on for the first time. To make matters worse, a new companion joins in – guilt. Often women feel guilty after a miscarriage and blame themselves for it. Your body has somewhat failed you because it wasn’t able to carry this child. These thoughts and the guilt associated with it are, unfortunately, very common and incredibly poisonous. The trick of course is to move past them because those thoughts can be highly destructive and we want to stay clear of that. This won’t be easy and we will to come back to the whole ‘my body failed me’ thing later as well.

Let’s focus on the guilt first. Women can feel that they have failed their baby most of all, their partners and themselves, and feel guilty for all of it. They look back over the weeks of pregnancy and find things they think they shouldn’t have done and feel guilty for it. You might have thoughts like the following: Should I have stopped working? Why was I so active? I should have slowed down! Why was I drinking coffee? The list goes on and on; it can and will drive you crazy if you don’t stop. Guilt is part of your journey and it is a hard part to master. In this stage of the grieving process the question ‘why’ will come up – a lot. Why me? You will say or think sentences that start with ‘I should have’, ‘Could I have done?’, ‘had I done this or that my pregnancy would go ahead’... but there are no answers to any of these questions. All it does is make you angry beyond belief. You blame yourself, you feel guilty for it and then you feel guilty some more. While we can’t help to wrack our brains, trying to find an answer to this madness, this is a dangerous situation to be in. Your thoughts are driving you crazy, literally. This is when you have to stop yourself and make a choice: Do you want to be trapped in this negative whirlwind of thoughts and emotions that make you feel worse, or do you want to step away from it?

This won’t be easy, as you have to consciously stop those powerful thoughts. They will keep popping up, as our mind likes to play tricks on us. Instead, tell yourself this: You did nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong with you.

Naturally, this will create a new wave of pain as you start to realise how helpless we are in a situation like this. True, we did nothing wrong, but why the hell did it happen? A question like this indicates that the next stage of your grieving process is coming your way.

Anger and bargaining. You might already be going through the motions and you feel incredibly sad, empty and exhausted. On top of this, your anger will start to show. Questions such as, ‘why me?’ or ‘why now?’ will become increasingly difficult to deal with as there are no answers to them. We feel like we are left outside in the rain, all alone and just so helpless. There is nothing we can do, even though we want to, and that is an awful feeling to have. It makes us down right angry.

Anger is a powerful emotion and while we might not like it, anger belongs to our journey and us at this stage. In today’s times where strong emotions seem so inappropriate in a heavily controlled world, it can be hard to express anger. Don’t get me wrong, this emotion can be destructive and lead to a lot of heartache but as mentioned, it is part of the journey right