I had a miscarriage at 10w (baby measuring 6w). For many months, I was haunted by things like going in for my first doctor's appointment and seeing my empty uterus on the screen. I thought about all those people, like the receptionist in the waiting room, who said "congrats" even though there was nothing to congratulate me for. I opted for medical management but didn't take the drugs until the pain was unbearable. Although that was the single worst 45m of my life, I don't think about it as much.
I am pregnant again, but I am not the same. I am not excited, I am not making plans. We waited to tell our parents until 13 weeks. Even though I'm showing, I've told the people who absolutely need to know because I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to have a baby shower because I don't want to have to look all the stuff if the baby ends up dying.
I participate in /r/Miscarriage, /r/ttcafterloss, and /r/pregnancyafterloss. People there are sad about losses that happened months, years, sometimes even 10 years ago. They - we! - are triggered by pregnant women, our original due dates (next week for me), the idea of getting pregnant again.
It's a surprise to me that we're able to call this a discovery. I feel like a Native American talking to Christopher Columbus.
A bunch of my friends have had miscarriages, and this seems so common. I can't imagine the trauma and I get not wanting to celebrate. And you know what? I think it's ok to not celebrate.
We had a very stressful pregnancy (we were teenagers with no money and unhappy soon-to-be-grandparents). There was no joy in it, we tried not to tell anyone, and only two people said "congrats" when they found out. I'm sad about that to this day ... especially for my wife, who I think missed out on something a lot of women delight in.
Our other three kids came through foster care, they showed up with little notice and we adopted them several years later. There was no pregnancy experience.
So we've never celebrated a pregnancy, but we sure as heck celebrate our kids.
Historically, many cultures didn't even name a baby for the first week or so for this reason. There were typically justifications in tradition or some such, but the fact was that many infants simply didn't live that long and this reduced the emotional attachment. People carry out so much before birth these days that your solution may the best mitigation of a tragic circumstance (along with reducing rates of miscarriage, that is).
I’m sorry to hear this and it must make you sad every time you think about it.
I think it is very difficult to go through life, experiencing all of life’s milestones in the way we might wish.
Another example is in those fortunate to celebrate a work retirement party. Others may fall ill, take leave and quietly retire without returning to work and have no retirement party.
Life seems unpredictable, unfair. Knowing that makes celebrations of life, when we can have them, much more special.
I am 30 w after 2 miscarriages and have felt exactly the same. The trauma I experienced when taking my kid to the ER for something totally unrelated was completely surprising. I write to help me process my feelings about the loss and the (hopeful) rainbow after the loss. It’s really surreal to be happy and excited after such a devastating set of losses.
We lost our first early in the pregnancy. I was really surprised how the doctor tried to keep a distance by calling it a fetus when my wife said "is my baby fine". Lets not get ahead of ourselves, doctor said. I thought it was cold, but also sensed bad news was on the way.
And after pregnancy, it was also very impersonal, nurses called my wife "mom" every single time, as if she had no personality. That also was probably helping newly minted moms cope with the confusion that comes after birth by reinforcing their status.
Weird experience, but definitely worth every minute of it.
It felt good to me (and I think to her, too) when nurses called my partner "mom" after pregnancy. It was like when a sergeant performs some heroic deed in a book and the general suddenly calls them colonel: a hard-earned title (it took a lot of pain to finally earn it, and some fears of miscarriage before that...) to wear with pride.
They are very personal and emotional moments so I can totally see how it can rub different people different ways, though.
Oh yeah. I can see how that would be irritating to say the least. Please use second person and address me directly, don’t talk around me. I literally don’t remember anyone actually asking me anything until I was in the ER with 104 temp wondering if attempting to have a child might actually kill me instead. And even then it was like, “why you crying?”
My partner and I were lucky enough that her pregnancy turned out fine in the end, but we had several scares during pregnancy (bleeding, visit to the ER, ultrasound that needed to be repeated because something needed was not seen...) so I can at least imagine what you have been through, at least to the extent a man who hasn't been through an actual miscarriage can. We also waited to tell our parents, and only told other people and celebrated very late in the pregnancy, due to fears of miscarriage.
Best of luck and best wishes to you. I hope it works this time. If it does, I'm sure everything will feel worth it.
I hear you, and am sorry you've had to experience this. My partner has had several losses and so far no successes, but she is now at about 7-8 weeks into her latest pregnancy. So far it seems the most promising we've had yet, but we go for a scan tomorrow, so we'll know more then.
For emotional coping/healing we've been most helped by unconventional practices like energy kinesiology, NET [1] and acupuncture.
It's outside of mainstream psychology/science, but it's worked well for us, to find understanding and maintain optimism.
I'm confident further use of these kinds of practices will keep us from suffering long-term PTSD-type effects, but I've no doubt we'll always be affected by the experience, particularly my partner.
I am pregnant again, but I am not the same. I am not excited, I am not making plans. We waited to tell our parents until 13 weeks.
I can relate to this. Our first pregnancy ended at week 10 or so. During the next three, my thought process can be summed up as "hurry up and get out of that uterus, I can't help you if something happens while you're in there".
Very stressful months, especially nearing the due date.
My ex had a miscarriage when we were together. We were young and I don’t think we handled it properly mentally. Kind of just pretended it didn’t happen and moved on.
She’s pregnant again and it seems to be going better, but I noticed she was very hesitant to tell anyone about it until she had to. Also seems to be very cautious about the whole thing. Not making preparations until she has to.
We are friends and still pretty close. Any tips on how to support her through this?
I'm clueless about these things, still, here's an idea:
Ask her, maybe she'll tell you. Talk with her and share your thoughts, the things you wrote just above. -- Maybe can work, when you're still pretty close friends
Again I don't really know and maybe this is a weird idea.
My wife and I went through this more than once. This is why I don't offer women congratulations on learning they're pregnant. I don't go to baby showers. And I don't ask "are you excited?" I know I didn't get "excited" until my first child was three months old.
If I might ask, what would be a better way to respond to pregnancy news, which is sensitive to the relatively high likelihood the other person may have experienced miscarriage?
Yeah that’s a tough question to answer. My answer to “how’s it going?” Or “are you excited?” has to be carefully curated and edited based on who I’m talking to. I’ve gotten better at just saying “we’ve had a couple losses so it’s hard to get excited yet.” But as far as how I wish people would have responded to me instead - I’m coming up blank. I think coming at your response with the understanding that it’s not a straight line for many people, and having compassion when you respond, is enough.
>we’ve had a couple losses so it’s hard to get excited yet
Am I misunderstanding or are you saying that is generally what you try to tell people when they tell you they are pregnant?
I truly hope not. That has to be one of the worst things to say to someone who confides in you that they are pregnant. Unless of course they have already shared a similar thought with you, of course.
You are misunderstanding. That is what I tell people when they ask me if I am excited about my own pregnancy. The first 20 weeks of the latest pregnancy were all hedging and trying to not get our hopes up.
I think congratulating is OK, if you are congratulating the pregnancy, not that they will have a child. Many people struggle with that step, so it's something to be happy about.
The same way you congratulate somebody for being accepted at an university, not knowing whether they will make it to the PhD or not.
My spouse and I went through several miscarriages and multiple related medical procedures, including multiple D&Cs and other things.
The things we went through make a lot of sense after the fact, but it's surprising to me how many people wouldn't or couldn't understand, even afterward, even those who should have known better. On the other hand, we ourselves didn't really fully appreciate the extent of what the effects could be until everything happened, so maybe it just reflects limitations of the human mind.
Still, it was remarkable to me how often people would dismiss issues, assuming that because they had some minimal textbook understanding of what was going on, that they understood all the actual complications of the problems involved (in the "reality is more detailed than you think" sense). Not to empathize with us, but to minimize how upset they felt we should be, or to suggest we didn't really understand the situation and they did.
The "you should be excited and assume everything will work out because you're pregnant" assumption was also remarkably indelible in peoples' minds. At some point, we started doing the opposite, assuming that things wouldn't work out (because they hadn't worked out multiple times before that and were actually told by experts it wouldn't work out sans serious medical interventions). People would nevertheless discuss situations we found ourselves in, or things we did, puzzled by it, without questioning their basic assumption that someone(s) who are pregnant assume it will work out, that the pregnancy is viable, that they know that it is viable, that they understand why or why not it is viable, the likelihood of future pregnancies being viable, and are happy about the answers to all these sorts of questions.
We eventually had a child after we had totally abandoned any thought that it could happen, out of the blue, so there's that. But the entire experience left us with a deep sense of how little some will or can put themselves in others' shoes. It seems like the only places I can be sure understand are those healing after pregnancy loss groups and forums, maybe along with select therapists who specialize in these issues.
There's also a lot to be said about the medical system surrounding repeated pregnancy loss, the overselling of procedures, risk management, and how little is really known about who gets pregnant or not and why.
My wife and I had one right before we conceived our son. Getting pregnant again right after softened the blow for her considerably, and now she's fine. Medically it wasn't a great idea apparently, we were just not being very careful.
I know you don't want to celebrate, but you should. My wife had two in a row while trying for our 2nd child. It was really rough going for us circa 2007-2009. One of them required a DNC, which was just a miserable experience due to the "abortion" connotations.
We made it through together. When you have children you have to accept that you may lose them and must be prepared to handle it. Still in all, several years got eaten up there with worry, doubts, and fears.
We had a 100% healthy "Double-Rainbow" son in 2010, he's just about 10 years old now.
Keep your head up, be kind to yourself, and be aware that LOTS more people than you imagine have gone through this.
Sorry for what you’ve been through and congratulations on the happy ending. Can I ask what “double-rainbow” means in this context? Googling got me literal double rainbows.
A rainbow baby is one after a miscarriage or stillbirth, “double rainbow” just means two losses. Very helpful to know if you are ever invited to baby showers as there can be some outward signs there that reflect some events that not everyone is privy to.
My wife and I struggle with infertility, I have family members with a history of miscarriage, and my wife leads a women’s infertility support group.
American culture does not know what to do about natal issues. (Arguably, no culture ever has) We need to recognize that reproductive health goes far beyond binary abortion debates, and can affect women permanently, to say nothing of the rest of the family. I can say, knowing people that suffer from PTSD for natal issues and long term war trauma, the degrees of suffering may be different, but the unhealthy coping mechanisms can do equal amount of damage.
If you or your family is dealing with miscarriage or infertility, there is help and support out there specifically for you. I would be happy to help point anyone toward the resources that I know of, and more than happy to talk to any husbands who want help knowing how to support their wives.
American culture does not know what to do about natal issues.
Because the vast majority of correct answers are politically incorrect. There are a lot of causes of infertility, but the two main ones in the developed world are delayed pregnancy and obesity (mediated most often by PCOS) - both of which are personal choices.
And it's simply not an option to tell a woman the medical reality that career-before-kids or eating too many calories is guaranteed to reduce your chances of having children. We have collectively decided that sparing others' feelings and indulging in others' have-it-all fantasies is the pinnacle of moral behavior.
On the mens' side, we also contend with sperm counts halving in 40 years and virtually nobody caring beyond half-hearted "hey look at this scary stat lol" level commentary. Motility and morphology have also seen dramatic declines. For whatever reason, we simply don't care.
Miscarriages are pretty common too. Anywhere from 10-25% of "recognized" pregnancies end in miscarriage. Among our close friends and family with kids (N=16), we're the only ones that has 2 or more kids and had no miscarriages.
If you have married friends or friends with kids, its probably best not to joke about when they're going to pop one out. Fertility can be long, expensive, and not very fun.
While jokes are not good, it's important to talk about it. A good friend of mine had to go through multiple miscarriages, and almost lost her life in the process. She hurt a lot from the feeling of being imperfect and somehow at fault. She was actually surprised how common an occurrence a miscarriage is, and if we manage to make it more normal to talk about it, and more normal to expect that it can happen, I think we would make an important step in reducing the pain.
“She was actually surprised how common an occurrence a miscarriage is”
Answer: very†. But it often isn’t talked about.
And, I strongly agree, not talking about it is very Bad indeed.
Ironically, I think developed nations’ success in all but eliminating premature deaths from once-ubiquitous infectious diseases has left recent generations without the highly-practised coping skills, social support systems, and painfully resigned stoicism that helped get our great-great-grandparents through the horrible inevitable process of burying half their kids before the poor little bleeders could even make it to adulthood.
We’re all now such strangers to death we’re shit-scared by even the thought of talking about it, never mind directly facing up to it ourselves.
--
† Even assuming the hosting part works perfectly, the whole DNA splicing and replication process is always an absolute crapshoot‡.
‡ And, to be fair, if it weren’t for all those accidental copy errors none of us would be here now to argue the issue, for life on Earth would never have advanced beyond the single cell. So yay for an imperfect process, but—bloody hell—is it one harsh SOB.
I find quite a lot of people do not agree that it's important to talk about it, for whatever reason. My guess is that overcoming the social stigma around showing your emotions/sharing problems is mostly to blame. Perhaps most people in my social group actually have had such problems and don't even feel comfortable in the meta-conversation.
I often say things like "people should talk about this kind of stuff more because it would help them through it". I obviously mean it in a general sense (very much not trying to get specific people to talk about specific problems). Responses vary from an insincere "yeah..." to the rather odd "you can't tell people what to do".
It's not only the people who are directly affected who have to talk it through. I think we all need to talk about these things, to make it more normal. Talk about it before it happens. We all have a tendency to elevate any misfortune, small and large, to be the biggest thing ever, and how can you ever live through it.
(Edit: I'm not wanting to say that a miscarriage is a small misfortune. No, it's not. But there are many many worse things which can go wrong.)
It's interesting how this is one of those things where you have a very different perspective on it as an adult than as a child/teen. As a child, 100% of your friends had parents who were fertile, and nearly 100% had parents who wanted kids. As an adult, you realize that there's this vast world out there of people who either don't want or can't have kids, and you may even be part of that world.
Survivorship bias is such an amazingly powerful force on our mental models of how the world works.
Personally after going through it, I found myself wondering why the hell it's not more widely discussed how common it is. (Also, how much less common it is after 10 weeks)
Without that knowledge, when it happens there's the immediate fear that there's something wrong with you, that you'll never be able to have kids, that it's hopeless. When in reality it happens a lot, including to countless couples who go on to have big happy families.
They say if we were able to track 'unrecognized' pregnancies, the total rate of miscarry across all pregnancies is likely much higher than 25%
> If you have married friends or friends with[out?] kids, its probably best not to joke about when they're going to pop one out.
Cannot stress this enough. If a couple is childfree by choice they'll probably tell you. If they don't talk about whether they want kids or not, you shouldn't raise the topic.
Depending on which source you use, you can find numbers quite a bit higher than that - especially if you include unknown/unconfirmed early-stage pregnancies. This source seems to hit the lower end of the range:
but is mostly quoting numbers conditional upon having detected a heartbeat. That first check is pretty terrifying. My anecdata matches yours: lots of miscarriages in immediate social groups.
We had a rough pregnancy and reading those stats was heartbreaking to me. Everything ended up ok, but we feared for the worst many times and it took us a long time to get pregnant. It is one reason why I don't want to try again as I don't want to go through that again and have it not turn out alright. We found out my mother in law had several before she had several healthy children.
I had to go through this with my wife 2 years ago. I’ll never be the same. It changed me. I was an exuberant person. When we first came to know about the pregnancy we were so happy but it totally changed my outlook on life after the loss. I did not know how to cope, I developed a deep interest in philosophy and spirituality, spent next 1 year reading and thinking which helped but it changed me as a person. We now have a 10 month old but we did not tell even the close friends ( we live in a different country) until the day of delivery. My blood pressure was 150/90 through the last trimester. I love my son and I know it is supposed to be fun and exciting but but I live in fear.
I notified senior leadership that engineering was misreporting it's uptime statistics. In effect breaching contracts with pretty much every major customer, including state governments.
For my first miscarriage - no heartbeat, no detectable embryo - the idea of a “failed pregnancy” somehow made the loss more manageable, like something that never got off the ground. My next miscarriage, which occurred after seeing a heartbeat, was devastating for both me and my husband. A year later I found myself in the emergency room with my daughter, two days after I’d found out I was pregnant a third time, and almost had a panic attack right then and there. It was completely unexpected and really shone a light on how traumatic the loss and the D&E afterward had been.
In case it helps any others in a similar situation:
My partner and I suffered from a miscarriage and then a seeming inability to fall pregnant again. All of the tests we did came back fine - everyone just said "keep trying" but eventually we started to see "unexplained infertility" appearing in the medical notes which was crushing and terrifying.
To cut a long, emotionally painful, and expensive story short, we almost accidentally found out my partner has some quirk in their immune system: NK cells (CD16+, CD56+). This does not appear to be something that is routinely checked for.
A quick consultation at a specialist consultant, a small number of some very benign tablets along with 1 home injection (very cheap - perhaps £80/month) and two months later - after literally years - we were naturally pregnant.
37 weeks so far and everything is completely ordinary and normal - a huge relief compared to where we were several years ago.
If you are in a similar situation, please know that there may be a way out. It is a very dark road, but there can be light at the end of the tunnel. Talk about the NK cells with your doctor and see what they say - the NHS in the UK pooh-poohed it (despite being prepared to give us IVF at significant expense), but it worked for us when going privately, and the consultant's waiting room was full of pregnant women so we're not just a fluke I guess. I just hope that oen day this enters the mainstream so that people can try it before IVF and other invasive treatments.
If anyone wants to know the clinic we used in London, please email any user at e43.xyz (catchall will pick it up) or reply here
As someone who has two kids and hasn't experienced miscarriage, this thread is a reminder of what a privilege that is. Even though miscarriage is surprisingly prevalent (at least surprising in a culture where it's not spoken of), I suspect the trauma isn't even carried. Thanks to everyone for sharing difficult stories. Hopefully the rest of us can do our parts to not stigmatize or be insensitive.
My wife had one miscarriage, we're pretty robust but it was quite brutal, friends have certainly had many more.
We had to wait a bit before trying again but not too long later had twins and in an odd sort of way it seemed like that gave some balance to the situation.
I know a guy who served two tours in Vietnam with no after effects. A couple years ago he was in an accident and his whole life now revolves around avoiding traffic because of the ptsd he now suffers from.
Absolutely. Even though there's the perception that only military people get PTSD, you are right, it does not discriminate. Moreover, the definition of trauma is personal. That is, if it's traumatic to the individual, then it can cause a post-traumatic stress reaction, no matter whether it would be a traumatic event to anyone else.
However, you always have to be careful with statistical measures like this, it's certain to have been a traumatic experience for some fraction of women experiencing it, no matter how small. For people in that position hearing 'oh, it's no big deal' must be pretty hard.
Plus, its not a taboo at all; its been intensely studied, and there's no evidence that having an abortion increases post-traumatic stress compared to being pregnant and not having one, while miscarriage does increase it.
Now, there are people who very much want that not to be true for political reasons, but wanting something to be true for political reasons doesn't make it true.
I believe this, simply because the vast majority of abortions are elective. Explicitly deciding to do something invokes all sorts of defense mechanisms that don't come into play with something like a miscarriage. It doesn't mean that an abortion is any less of a tragedy than a miscarriage (and I say that as a pro choice individual), just that the ability to steel ourselves against the inevitable has some benefits.
That's a good point. I forgot how highly politicized this topic is, which means there is a high likelihood for a flamewar, which means people would rather avoid touching it, which creates a conversation vacuum easily mistaken for a taboo.
Well, there's also a lot of other parallels to draw, right? For instance, rape can cause PTSD but consensual sex usually does not so prima facie I wouldn't jump to the spontaneous abortion carrying the same results as one induced at the request of the carrier.
Miscarriage probability is higher than people who never see the statistics guessed, even for the people with the best age and other conditions(>10%).
Also it is said early occult miscarriage rate is 40%. It's early because less than 1 week, it's occult because we don't realize it, no sign of pregnancy, so we can't observe it most of the time.
The book I'm currently reading(The Vital Question) said that miscarriage rate is high because zygote dies in case of inefficient mitonuclear match, filtering the bad fits.
I’ve a buddy whose wife just had her second miscarriage and it has rocked them. I try to be supportive but I have no idea what it is like. I feel terrible for them
Check in on them and see how they’re doing, or just offer an ear if they want to talk. If they’re anything like My husband and me they don’t have many people to talk to about it - and many won’t bring it up because they feel awkward or uncomfortable. Knowing someone is there, aware, and thinking about them can make the difference.
Things like this lead me to wonder: how is the experience of trauma affected by cultural practice, myth, ideas, etc. Certainly similar experiences can lead to different outcomes from ignorance to indifference to trauma in different individuals. Why is that and how could traumatic outcomes be changed? Should they be?
It is a touchy subject because it is easy to interpret as invalidating deep personal feelings, but that isn't the goal at all.
Would, say, young people drafted for war from a modern Spartan society experience the same trauma in war as young people drafted from Berkeley? I am sure that individuals from both sides would have experiences across the spectrum, but would the distribution differ?
I do think that modern Western society goes to extremes to prevent children from experiencing or even knowing about the harsh realities of the world and it's not hard to conclude that when the sheltered youth are dumped into reality (considerably more) serious mental illness follows as the world they were prepared for and the world they live in are very different.
>how is the experience of trauma affected by cultural practice, myth, ideas, etc
You're certainly onto something. In other cultures, schizophrenia has historically been viewed through a mythological lense as a possession by or visitation from benevolent spirits. In stark contrast to Western manifestation of the disorder, voices and hallucinations take on a much more benign form[1].
People by and large can be rather content in a wide range of environments, even if by comparison to other environments they seem quite harsh oppressive. Normalcy is very much a social construct - even ideas about something as universal as pain can vary widely, to the effect that some cultures are more likely than others to seek out physical and mental trials which others may consider traumatic.
Indeed, to some degree we have a loosly related term for a phenomenon where those who suffer abuse have no desire to leave their abusers: Stockholm Syndrome. Except imagine instead of being raised by a tormentor with whom you come to sympathize, you develop in a society where certain "abuses" are wholly normalized - if everyone around you shares the experience openly, particularly if justified with myth or alleged purpose, it becomes much less likely to cause trauma. Consider the abhorrent practice of, say, genital mutilation, or general oppressiveness common in certain parts of the middle East or Africa - while I do not condone such practices, I suspect that the majority of those who experience them do not suffer from anything like PTSD, as they are common and effectively normalized. I'd be very interested to see a study on the subject.
Also, ancient Spartans were hardly immune to PTSD. They were just much less likely to be treated for the symptoms in any real way (or, frankly, to survive the events that cause them). There's really no good evidence that PTSD is a modern thing at all.
What's really, and ironically, happening here is that "Sparta" is a movie utopia us pathetic moderners have invented to mask our anxieties behind an ideal about Real Men who spent their lives kicking Persians into giant pits instead of dealing with credit overdrafts (and, occasionally, PTSD).
In the scope of miscarriages I think culture definitely makes it more traumatic. Miscarriages are not uncommon but some how many cultures tend to stigmatize it and then blame the woman, as if it was something in her control. The constant reminder, blaming or just having that social pressure looming over of not having a successful child birth has to be some sort of trauma magnitude multiplier.
Why would anyone wonder that? Just because the majority perspective is of a life a relative plenty, open-ness, and stability of the rule of law, they might perceive people in general to be sheltered or soft, but that’s certainly not true for many. There are plenty of stories about famine, starvation, neglect, and abuse in many parts of the world (and at home!) to dissuade anyone of this entire notion.
Question for any of us who romanticize more austere, brutish times is; why? There are many ways to test ourselves, doing so helps with perspective I believe.
2. We shelter people / avoid discussing the realities of thing X
3. People that experience thing X are severely, negatively emotionally impacted
Wondering if talking about thing X more openly in our society would help avoid/temper/mitigate that impact seems... like a reasonable line of thought to me.
>how is the experience of trauma affected by cultural practice
Trauma is immensely affected by cultural practice.
120yr ago many infants died from childbirth complications and of those that didn't a large fraction dropped dead by age 5. It wasn't unheard of for parents to give subsequent kids the names of older deceased siblings. This was all considered normal and for the most part nobody got too bent out of shape over it.
>for the most part nobody got too bent out of shape over it
Some definitely did, stories can easily be found which confirms that those experiences where some times traumatic. The question is about how it was different for an individual or a population in much different circumstances.
Please, forgive me if I come across as harsh or insulting. I cannot imagine what you went through and I wish you never had to.
Some time ago I talked to my neighbor (76 y/o woman), while my wife was pregnant, she happily told me that she had 6 kids and 2 miscarriages. Like it was a very normal thing. I asked and she said it was just part of it, the fetuses were probably not healthy to begin with. She seemed of the opinion that it was just part of life and it didn't seem to affect her. I didn't ask further but I do notice myself that once you start taking about miscarriages or, in our case, difficulties getting pregnant, many people went through the same experiences. And certain experiences seem commonplace. On me that has a consoling effect.
Do you think it would have helped if you would have known about the possibility in advance? Or had friends go through the same and society in general being much more open about these things? My mother in law told me about her miscarriage only when our son was 2. I think it would have (hypothetically) helped us be more open and accepting if we would have known in advance.
Thank you for being so open about this on the jungle that is the internet. It takes a lot of courage to come back and read replies.
I think older people accept bad things as "normal" because they were more common. Having something bad that happens to 1 in 5 people is awful, but having something that affects 1 in 50 people feels worse. As tech and medicine improves this problem will probably become more prevalent.
That number won't change. The main cause of miscarriage is that the embryo/foetus has a massive problem and can't ever develop. There is nothing medical science can do. In fact many more miscarriages are known about today - 50 years ago most women wouldn't even have known they were pregnant they would have thought they had a late heavy period.
Having had 6 kids (that presumably by that stage were fully grown and flourishing) it is easy - I expect - to brush miscarriages off as no-biggie. After all, you got the family you (probably) wanted so the miscarriages don't represent so much of a set back to you.
If you are trying for your first child and nothing is working though, it can be absolutely crushing emotionally. You end up not just being envious of pregnant friends/colleagues/people on the street, but even being envious of fucking plants that manage to reproduce successfully when you can't. It is a very existential thing, and it is utterly consuming.
I've also found that a lot of the older generations like to say "oh when I was your age we just got on with it!" (Or similar) regardless of situation, context, or emotions.
I imagine it's different, if for example one first gets a child that survives, then another, and then, the 3rd time, there's a miscarriage. Then, that's easier to get over, because you can be happy for and focus on the children you have already?
Compared to if one has tried just once, and that was a miscarriage.
I am that first scenario. I had 2 healthy kids followed by 2 miscarriages. I can’t speak to easier or harder, but I do know that even the 2 losses I had in quick succession (one in March and one in August of the same year) affected me in profoundly different ways. I think they’re all different and terrible in their own way.
I can tell you that miscarriage messes up women that already have a kid pretty badly, we have few couples around who went though it. Of course I can't compare it to same woman without any baby at all, but this perception of "focus on positive, look you already have one healthy baby" is outsider's perspective. Kid of best effort to soothe the unsoothable.
Our fifth and sixth babies miscarried. Our seventh had his second birthday the other week, and it's still really hard for me to finish typing this comment and post it.
I do think if society was more open and there were more personal stories out there it would make parents who’ve experienced this kind of loss at the very least feel less alone. That’s why I am out there talking about it whenever I can. It is possible to get to the point where you can be as matter-of-fact as your neighbor but consider she’s had half a century to process the loss too.
That's why I try to be as out as I can stand about my tubal pregnancy - awareness of what it likely was prevented me from having to be rushed to the hospital but instead being able to choose where I wanted to go and prepare to be there for a few days, and being in a country (Germany) where there was no question that the pregnancy needed to be ended and the only question was which method I preferred after being given information about all my options made it a lot easier to deal with long term.
I think women (and men) need to know that miscarriages are very common and completely normal. My wife had, at least, one before each of our children (possibly another very early one). The vast majority of the time, when they occur, it is as you say: they weren't viable in the first place. For that reason, in my mind, you aren't pregnant before about 11 weeks, and I think it is perfectly fine not to tell anyone earlier. In fact, I think it is advisable not to tell anyone earlier than that.
I am sure it affects everyone to some extent, women and men, and some more than others. I would never tell anyone that what they are feeling is wrong. Just know that you are not alone, not by a long shot.
Well, there is knowing and knowing. When people hear more about things they assume them to be more likely. Which is why the news is so bad nowadays, we think WW3 + global ecological collapse is more likely than a miscarriage.
Because tempering people is frowned upon, see in this very thread people complaining that doctors talk about a fetus when for them it's already a baby. People know better, right ?
Not sure how you meant that, but on a timescale of a lifetime or a couple of multiples there of, IMHO global ecological collapse (right after WW3) feels pretty likely too me. :-/
I see stark difference of say current generation and 2 generations ago. We are much more emotionally sensitive (for better or worse), I can see that even generation of our parents is much less used to express their emotions, and are kind of 'hardened' emotionally. But then again they endured WW2, direct fighting of germans vs russians and 40+ years of harsh communism. Life wasn't worth as much as it is now.
This change brought tons of empathy in our culture that led to equality for women, LBGT, minorities and so on, but it also makes us weaker when facing proper pain, be it physical or psychical.
My grandma lost a boy, first baby, after few weeks when it got diarrhea and doctors couldn't save it even with antibiotics of that day. She 'moved on' and had 2 healthy babies afterwards, my father included. Around Halloween we have the tradition of visiting graves of our close ones, and I can see that bond is still strong when we visit his grave. She is a happy cheerful person, no dark shadow of this ever visible.
As a young father a month-old baby, the very idea that something like that would happen to him makes me shiver, I don't think I could handle it. Today I saw an article on BBC about British NHS mistreatments, and there was a picture of a cute newborn boy that died after 6 days due to viral infection that got to his heart. I feel no shame as a man to admit I cried quite a bit after seeing that cute face that didn't get a chance for proper life.
FWIW not everyone is traumatised. We had a couple of misses (one very early, one around 11 weeks iirc) before our first, and another between first and second. It was sad at the time, but that was all
One thing I didn't see in the article was how a woman might be affected differently if she already had multiple children. My wife miscarried at about 12 weeks, but we already had a bunch of kids so she was basically like, "Oh well" and was fine the next day. But I imagine if it had been our first, or maybe second, that she would have been affected much differently.
I think it depends on the lateness as well though. Sometimes the baby dies in the womb and this is discovered before birth, yet the mother still has to go through a full labour, all the while knowing it's for nothing. Pretty horrible.
I’m really glad we decided to have kids when we did and didn’t wait longer. I was completely unaware of miscarriage rates when we started. Even for healthy age groups it’s more than 10%.
It’s much higher than I would have thought, and rises quickly after 32, just when many people are hitting their professional stride, which is extremely unfortunate.
It's far higher than that, but most miscarriages occur so early that in the past, or today if not actively checking if you are pregnant, a woman wouldn't have known it happened. This is obviously difficult to study, but current thought is that miscarriages occur in 30-50% of fertilizations, and with more and more tracking, people are more and more likely to know about it.
This was our experience, having a positive pregnancy test and then my wife getting what we would have thought was just a late, heavy period shortly afterward.
Early testing is nice, but with subsequent attempts to get pregnant we chose to wait quite a bit longer after a missed period before doing a pregnancy test, because we didn't want to go through the roller coaster again.
You raise a good point. Many are not aware how common miscarriages are. I don't know if it would make it any easier to know they happen often to many couples but it might make it easier to prepare.
I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of women who have tried to get pregnant have had at least 1 miscarriage in their lifetime. Fertile or not, it appears to be part of the child-bearing process given sufficient attempts to reproduce.
I had one, and it was scary, but it was early enough that I hadn't really perceived myself as pregnant - I had managed to Google myself into that being the best possibility for what was wrong with me (ovarian cancer was also a match for the symptoms!)
I'm grateful that I was able to get to my regular gyno quickly and have her show me what was going on, go to the hospital of my choosing after getting ready to be there for a few days, and then have doctors who respected my agency while making it clear that this was something that needed to be ended right away (Germany).
I know somebody who had an ectopic. She had to more or less abort it, which made her feel unbelievable bad. For years afterwards. I’m sorry to hear it happened to people close to you twice
I hope no one suggested that there was any sort of decision, other than by which method she preferred for it to be ended. Anyone who even implies that waiting it out is a more moral option is either stupid or cruel.
I'd venture that the overly systematised, euphemism-happy coldness of the medical establishment is part of the problem. PTSD actually means being upset for a very long time. A clump of cells actually means a baby (but we can't say that because...). Organised support services are probably inferior to support from a strong network of loving family, friends and community (but latter doesn't exist because of social disintegration). A holistic approach would support the family as one, rather than treating the mother as a separate specimen to be processed.
ive tried several times and cannot seem to comment. I think that speaks more to the impact of miscarriage than my words could. I’ve had 5. They’ve all been different. You are a mother the moment you are pregnant regardless of how long. There is an unspeakable, unbreakable connection between a mother and her children. That connections dies slowly over time, not the moment of loss. For me, every miscarriage is something I still process and heal from. They are all my children though they’ve never had names nor did I ever meet them. I felt them and hosted them and would have given anything for them as I do my other children.
My wife has lost her last three pregnancies (the first two around 20 weeks, the third around 16 weeks). She is a very strong woman, and I wouldn't have thought to use the phrase PTSD, but looking back, it fits.
Women obviously bear the majority of the stress (carrying the baby, unavoidable thoughts of 'what did I do to cause this?', etc.), but as the spouse in this situation it was always nice - though relatively rare - when friends/coworkers/etc. would check in on me and ask how I'm doing. I don't have PTSD, but I'm definitely not the same as I was before my wife's first loss.
A husband friend of mine has told me he often feels sad when he sees our baby boy because the baby is the same age his son would have been had they not miscarried.
A good rule of thumb is to treat people with compassion and support, because you don’t know what they are going through.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. As the partner of someone who had a miscarriage I was happy to see someone thought of me as well. I definitely also have PTSD from it. I remember my partner being in pain and bleeding and experiencing the sadness of loss on top of all of it. I was scared and lonely and I feel and felt helpless.
I find that people on Hacker News tend to downvote any kind of short comments. When I came across this thread, it was empty and I didn't like seeing an empty thread, so I wanted to say something to break the ice. (At this point, the post has 18 points, so clearly cooler heads prevailed.)
My wife tells stories about seeing her father suddenly start sobbing when she came across items that her parents bought for their first pregnancy.
Later, when we had a miscarriage, (fortunately very early,) my boss told me about his. Even though we were on the phone, I could tell he was holding back tears.
Thankfully we haven't had serious fertility problems. What helped in our case was, throughout my life, hearing about my parents' miscarriage, sister's miscarriage, cousin's miscarriage. I knew it was normal.
They're probably being downvoted because, despite being reasonable sentiment assuming they're commenting in good faith, it's exactly the kind of "plausible deniability" that MRAs/redpillers/alt-righters use to derail discussion of issues they don't agree with without outright stating their real opinions.
“ Don't forget that miscarriages effect [sic] the spouse too.”
Of course close family [that know about it] will also feel grief; that’s only natural. I think the point being made is that it is far worse for the individual doing the actual miscarrying. On top of the grief there can also be powerful feelings of guilt, anger, personal responsibility; plus they’ve a bloody great biochemical hurricane going down too.
(e.g. Compare and contrast the effects of postpartum depression following a successful pregnancy.)
I don't understand why you're minimizing a partners' feelings in this way. Yes it's absolutely worse for a woman who miscarries. But partners can and do suffer trauma (and, weirdly, post partum), and frequently just bury it -- it's a recipe for ptsd. All suffering is relative, there's no point at which a partner thinks "thank god I'm not the person who miscarried or I'd really feel trauma". It's painful all around.
The person bringing up "but what about the other partner" in a thread about research into the effects on the woman giving birth was minimizing, the person you're commenting on is just calling them out on that. It's true that the partner suffers too but pointing it out in this context is not helpful.
Eh, I think it’s probably better to take that comment at face value. What if the person who posted it is suffering through the effects of a miscarriage right now? This isn’t the same as “all lives matter”
Oh, please. Miscarrying is worse for the person miscarrying. I’m male, single, childless, dumb as a stump, and even I can work that one out. It’s not just emotional; it’s biochemical too.
Look, no-one says grieving spouses don’t require support too (of course they do!), but it’s entirely reasonable to suggest that women who miscarry suffer more severe trauma requiring significantly higher and more specialized professional support. Terms like “PTSD” and “medication“ do not get bandied around for fun, you know. Particularly by a medical profession that has a less-than-perfect history of taking “female problems” seriously.
So try starting from the assumption that however bad it may make you feel, the other person feels a whole shit-ton worse, and show some flipping grace as you work your way from there.
I think it's fair to say that the death of anyone's baby, in circumstances where they can blame themselves (I didn't do enough to make the baby healthy, I didn't support my wife, I could have done x for her) might have significant mental detriment on a non gestating spouse just as it might the one who gestates. Instead, you've made this about how smart you can seem rather than listening to the other person.
The comment you replied to merely said don’t forget the spouse.
The comparison (to my understanding) is wholly in your comment.
I’m not sure why you are comparing. I’m genuinely not sure. Prior to your comment there didn’t seem to be any discussion about for whom it was more traumatic.
Maybe I’m missing something? Some implied context or content?
Why? Do you think that women in my close family have never miscarried? Or that experience is the only contribution that matters? I may have flunked med, but at least I picked up enough to appreciate what a chaotic crapshoot animal biology really is. I also worked lambing seasons growing up, which is enough to disabuse anyone of all romantic notions regarding reproduction. Life is bloody and messy and awful, but it’s Life.
So now do you want to know why I initially posted? Because as soon as a discussion about women was brought up, a bunch of men came in and made it about themselves. I may not have kids but at least I have empathy and a working theory of mind, along with occasional manners. Congrats.
The fact that it is not a competition doesn't stop the variation in intensity from being both real and relevant in a discussion about the relation between the event and "long-term post-traumatic stress".
> I think the point being made is that it is far worse for the individual doing the actual miscarrying.
Like all things this depends on the individuals involved, and while it's probably usually worse for the female (the hormonal effects you mention are very real), this is absolutely not a universal truth, especially in the longer term.
While that comment makes sense, I felt much less upset than my wife, and just had to be there for her. I had convinced myself that a “blighted ovum” was not a “real baby”, but had a harder time convincing my wife of that. She had everything that was like pregnancy, including awful contractions to try and eliminate that empty egg, which I could never possibly understand.
Well... Everyone is different, right? My wife took a hard hit, and it took her most of a year to recover, and then we tried again for 3 years, with no chance, and it was excruciating to see her down every fucking month.
Then, when we got pregnant again, and it sticked, she felt better, and it passed for her for good.
Meanwhile I was holding my breath for years. I'm still trying to recover from this loss, 7 years on. We have 2 beautiful, perfect, healthy twin girls. They're baby 2 and 3. We're so lucky with them... And they're quite the handful !...
But I still think almost daily of the little one we lost. It's still very, very painful to me. Therapy and EMDR help, but man...
No, it wasn't rhetorical. I think the answer may just be 'yes'. Wonder if we'll look at historical figures with different eyes if most are likely to be PTSD victims. And we could see what the effects were on societies living like that.
My grandparents were born way back in time, the turn of the last century when something like 10% of kids didn't make it past the age of 1.
I don't believe that they were 'more comfortable' with death.
More rugged from having to deal with it, but I think the trauma is still there. Plus the fact that people didn't necessarily talk about it, I suggest this was a huge cause of emotional turmoil everywhere.
Working on an artificial womb because my wife went through the same. Pregnancy is barbaric the sooner we stop forcing half the world to do it the better for everyone.
I know my wife would not opt for an artificial womb. We are expecting next month and had some difficulties conceiving.
We talked about potentially doing a surrogate, an option that she shot down unless it was the very last resort. She wanted to carry our child, and experience everything that pregnancy has to offer. Not every day is easy, but she truly enjoys this phase of her and our daughter’s life.
"1 in 13 children in sub-Saharan Africa died before reaching her or his fifth birthday" (2018)
You can say that's Whataboutism, but for most of history losing a child was what happened to most people.
So calling the sadness and awful experience from a miscarriage 'long-term post-traumatic stress' might be technically true one in six times if physiologists say so (not sure they have, the BBC has), to me that just further stigmatizes what is a sad but common occurrence no one talks about and implies we all live with trauma which can't be healthy to keep shoving down our throats.
Giving it to women and their partners who have a miscarriage or the loss of a child is also heartbreaking.
I'm not saying don't talk about, I'm just saying calling it trauma and PTSD will irrevocably harm some people and possibly hurt more than it will help.
I don't think the media should lie even if it harms people. But equally I don't think the story here is a story that justifies the harm it might cause, they still can tell the truth responsibly if the BBC just took care and didn't chase clicks.
This is a deeply silly analysis. PTSD is a fairly specific and in many ways physical set of reactions to trauma; if you've had no personal exposure to it, you'd be unlikely to describe it convincingly to a professional, let alone somehow incubate it in your own mind simply by a suggested association.
It's been suggested that PSTD can be "contagious", but the connection between "PTSD" and a specific trauma (ie: the belief that some specific trauma "is supposed to" cause PTSD) isn't the vector.
If something causes PTSD, it causes PTSD. Pretending otherwise doesn't prevent it.
‘In 1900, 30 percent of all deaths in the United States occurred in children less than 5 years of age compared to just 1.4 percent in 1999 [...] Infant mortality dropped from approximately 100 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1915 (the first year for which data to calculate an infant mortality rate were available) to 29.2 deaths per 1,000 births in 1950 and 7.1 per 1,000 in 1999”
I think it's fascinating how disconnected we are from death in modern times.
The average life span in the 1700s was 35 years old.
1 out of 100 MOTHERS died during childbirth centuries ago.
You could get an infection and be dead in a week because there were no antibiotics.
Spanish flu killed 10 percent of the worlds population, the black plagues death rate was far far higher than that.
Cholera, red fever, polio, there were so many and such variety of different ways to die.
Death was a constant specter and I imagine life was considered a little cheaper? I don't know.
I don't know if people had constant endless PTSD back then or if PTSD is our natural state, or if PTSD is contextual, and nowdays we live in extremely pro mental health times.
Either way its testament to how amazing modern medicine has become and how valuable everyones lives are nowdays.
I am pregnant again, but I am not the same. I am not excited, I am not making plans. We waited to tell our parents until 13 weeks. Even though I'm showing, I've told the people who absolutely need to know because I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to have a baby shower because I don't want to have to look all the stuff if the baby ends up dying.
I participate in /r/Miscarriage, /r/ttcafterloss, and /r/pregnancyafterloss. People there are sad about losses that happened months, years, sometimes even 10 years ago. They - we! - are triggered by pregnant women, our original due dates (next week for me), the idea of getting pregnant again.
It's a surprise to me that we're able to call this a discovery. I feel like a Native American talking to Christopher Columbus.