You can grieve for someone you never met, never held, never named. And it will hurt like hell to hear other people describe what you have lost as ‘just a heavy period’, ‘a blob of cells’, ‘pregnancy tissue’ or ‘remains’. Whatever the biology, in your head and your heart it was already your child.
That you can know that what you’re experiencing is grief, and still feel you have to explain it away and apologise for it, especially around other bereaved people. You find yourself saying again and again: ‘I know it’s not the same’ or ‘it’s nothing compared to what you’ve been through’. It’s not the same. But it’s not nothing.
That loss is not finite. It doesn’t end when the pregnancy ends. You keep losing things, like the thrill of announcing your happy news and what should have been your due date. And the losses keep coming, sometimes years later, on unexpected days and in ways that knock the wind out of you: the first Christmas, the first day of school, holidays and Halloween costumes, not having children the same age as your friends’ children…Like any bereavement, life goes on and you will continue to wish they could have been there for it.
Loss can make you faddy. You’ll try anything to stop feeling so broken inside: yoga, sobriety, meditation, acupuncture, reflexology, long-distance running, self-help books, traditional Chinese medicine, crystals, essential oils, more yoga. The only things that really make a dent are therapy with a trained professional and time. (Oh OK, OK, the yoga doesn’t hurt).
It doesn’t help being told that this particular grief is common, if you do not see or hear stories about it in the world around you. As a society, we put pregnancy on a pedestal – a pedestal lit with neon spotlights. When you’re pregnant, everyone has a question or a kind word and you’re made to feel special. The relative silence that follows when you lose a baby feels like falling into a blackhole. And sharing our stories is the only way out, if you ask me.

About Jennie Agg
Jennie is a journalist, specialising in women’s health, and also writes the award-winning blog The Uterus Monologues, about life after recurrent miscarriage. She has three cats and a husband obsessed with ‘yellow sticker’ supermarket bargains.
You can follow Jennie on Instagram and on Twitter.
www.uterusmonologues.com

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