The Importance of a Miscarriage Announcement

What if posting a miscarriage was as common as posting a pregnancy announcement? Would we view fertility—and the complex process that’s involved with actually having a baby—any differently? Last summer, at 9 weeks pregnant, when my bean was as big as a raspberry, I miscarried. Today marks the day they were due to come into this world.

Part of me thought I would share this part of my story when I had good news—a viable pregnancy—alongside it. But in some ways, I feel it’s more hopeful without a happy ending. Miscarriage is physically painful and an emotional wrecking ball, and it doesn’t help that we are constantly bombarded with women posting images of their pregnant bumps with no context as to what it took to get there. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you’re the only one struggling, especially if your closest friends are yet to embark on the journey to motherhood. But then you start talking to other women and you realize that a huge chunk of them (some you know well, others not so well) have been through the same thing. You discover your aunt had three miscarriages before your cousin. You realize your close friend miscarried and it took 2 years before she conceived her daughter. You learn a colleague is struggling to conceive their second child. Story after story (or fertility struggle after fertility struggle) you begin marveling at the fact that any of us are able to successfully carry a pregnancy to term at all. 

Intellectually, we know the statistics—1 in 5 women will experience a miscarriage in the first trimester—but to know the anecdotal stories, the first and second-hand experiences of women you love and admire, quickly puts things into perspective. When you understand the breadth of this phenomenon outside the data, it makes it easier to heal. Early pregnancy loss, during and after the grief, starts to feel normal—part of the conception process, even—rather than this *thing* that happened to you. So, for all the future and past pregnant people who have or might experience a loss, you are not alone. As a friend said to me the day I started bleeding, “it happens to the best of us.”

And I am privileged to work for a company that gave me the time and space I needed to heal. Most women aren’t so lucky. New Zealand passed a law that gives all women three days of paid leave for pregnancy loss (I wish it was longer—two weeks would be ideal, but at least it’s a start). The government covers this cost so employers, already struggling during the pandemic, don’t have to. We need to start talking about pregnancy loss in this country, because dealing with this shit alone, in silence, should no longer be normal. I encourage you to talk to your company about their pregnancy loss policy—do they have one? If no, then ask to create one. It’s not as radical as it sounds.

~Olivia Fleming