Pregnancy Loss

In many cultures, not excluding ours, women of childbearing age are still held against a quite rigid expectation to give birth and raise an offspring or two. These expectations are expressed to women even from a young age, what with all the messages in media, education, literature and family interactions that contain the “when you become a mother” premise. Not if – when. Men are also taught both by natural instinct and societal nurture to look for a mate who is fertile and able to bear their children. This perspective, messaged similarly to each sex, creates this imperative among women to...

For a lot of women who have gone through miscarriage, identifying the possible cause of losing their pregnancy becomes the first rational step after initial feelings of grief and denial. This is a natural coping mechanism to fulfil a need to understand what “went wrong” for the pregnancy. But this rationalisation can often also push someone into a rabbit hole of overthinking, self-blame, and anger about the miscarriage that happened. Yes, it can be incredibly important to be able to make sense of a pregnancy loss. This can help a woman and her family reduce risks and prepare for another...

In previous blog posts, we have discussed some of the better-known ways that a miscarriage can negatively affect a woman’s psychological health. But today, I want to share with you an aspect of mental and physical health that has been fundamental to how we relate to our bodies as women, since we developed consciousness of what it is to be a girl, and also an important aspect of recovery from miscarriage or baby loss trauma. Across all modern societies, an obstinate premium is still continuously placed on fertile female bodies. A woman’s age, weight and appearance are directly connected to...

In recent popular memory, one of the images that hit our social media feed was an anguished and grieving Chrissy Teigen in a hospital gown. The host, model, businesswoman and wife to Grammy-winning artist John Legend lost her last pregnancy and decided to share her feelings of loss and grief with millions of her and Legend’s followers. What followed was a flurry of divided reactions: a mix of kind messages of sympathy for the couple and their family, and quite a lot of comments expressing disapproval of the celebrities’ public display of loss and “despair”. While it is not lost on me that...

The estimated pregnancy loss rate in the United Kingdom is 250,000 each year. But the experience of it is rarely spoken about either on public platforms or in our personal conversations. Understandably, because of the pain it can provoke and inflict on people affected by it. But, more quietly, because of the profound guilt and shame that women who suffer through miscarriage carry within themselves. Losing a pregnancy that one had the intention of bringing to full term can cause a deep and lasting sense of shame. This shame can come from the overwhelming guilt of having caused the...