Tell your true friends. Let yourself grieve. That’s the best advice I have for those of us who have lost a pregnancy.

Miscarriage is in the news, now that Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, mentioned their experience in a Facebook post announcing their pregnancy. It’s an opportunity to talk about how we should talk more about miscarriage. So I’ll share my story, and maybe you’ll share yours, and maybe the one in four who lose a pregnancy will take a small measure of comfort in knowing they’re not alone.

What I remember now, four and a half years later, is how that first miscarriage affected my excitement during my second pregnancy. I didn’t want to get my hopes up again. What happened then, though, was a testament to the healing power of friendship. I wrote about my experience at the time to an overseas friend. Here’s the letter, part matter-of-fact, part philosophical, part numb, part dumb:

March 28, 2011

Luke and I had been wanting to get pregnant, but our just-ditch-the-birth-control approach wasn’t working, so by this point we had been actually trying. I think one day I realized I wasn’t getting any younger. Finally, in mid-January, I got pregnant. I grew hungrier and sleepier and slightly more curvy. Otherwise, things seemed the same — no morning sickness, and I kept cycling and going to bootcamp. At six weeks, we got an ultrasound and could see the heartbeat as a blip on the screen. The midwives said the heartbeat was slow and development was two weeks behind. I thought, OK, the baby is small. It seemed fitting, actually: our favorite boy name was Vaughn, which means small. The midwives wanted me to get a better ultrasound in a couple of weeks to make sure, so they said, of the conception and due dates (even though I felt quite sure of these).

We went on to pick names, decide on a natural birth if possible, sign up for birth classes, borrow maternity clothes, talk about raising a child in a condo, and generally get excited about having a baby. 🙂 But at the eight-week ultrasound, on March 14, there just wasn’t a heartbeat anymore. Luke and I went home and cried. I intended to tell everyone that day, the handful who knew, but it became too emotionally exhausting.

Signs of pregnancy had already faded by that point. (I’d gotten uncomfortably full while eating, for one thing.) I decided to wait it out instead of inducing the miscarriage with drugs or suctioning, which seemed unnecessarily impatient. They said it could take two or three weeks. Friday night was pretty rough — up until 3 a.m. with cramps, chills, pain and tissue passing out that they don’t exactly warn you about. On either side of that it’s been more like a normal period. It’s hard to tell how long it will last.

The midwives’ main message was about how common miscarriage is and how I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s still hard not to think things like: Did I exercise too much? Was it those hippie prenatal vitamins with the probiotics? My cellphone in my pocket? Anxiety over knowing that this could happen? But, of course, that’s unknowable. Something was simply wrong with the development, and fortunately the body has a way of handling that. It’s all so complicated, it seems like a miracle any baby is born. We’ll just have to try again.

We’re sad and disappointed, but we’re managing. Of course I jumped at a week of freelance work, my main coping mechanism. My pristine eating habits took a nosedive into a bucket of sugar. Last night I transferred my baby fund out of savings and into investments. I suppose that was rash, but I came up with several justifications. And life goes on. Saturday I got a massage. That night we had a great time with friends at a play about the decline of media and then drinks (real drinks!). Today I went for a 25-mile bike ride.

March 31, 2011
You’re right, I usually have too stiff an upper lip. I did call Kris right away because I was supposed to go to her house for lunch after the ultrasound. I started bawling, and she immediately called Melissa, and all of a sudden they were downstairs. They brought us sandwiches, homemade soup, chocolate, and daffodils. I found out what good friends are for. How to be a better friend myself.

I am over the worst of it. Just a lingering period now, nine days so far. It was painful, but not as frightening as it could have been, only because my body once rejected an IUD with a similar result. Still, I would have liked more information! I found a web page by a woman who was frustrated with the lack of information out there and posted photos of her experience. That was helpful.

We can try again as soon as we want. I think I’m in the mood to wait a month, but we will try again. Thank you for your thoughts and hugs!

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My thoughts now?

Miscarriage is a real loss. You’re grieving the loss of the baby and the life you spent so much time conjuring up in so much detail. One reason it’s so real is that parts of our brain don’t distinguish between reality and what we imagine as reality. That’s why you can imagine the taste of a lemon and feel your mouth water. That’s why many professional athletes, as part of their preparation, swear by visualizing themselves succeeding. And then there’s the actual physical process of miscarrying, which can be somewhat traumatic. Especially when you don’t know what to expect. All of these elements layer upon each other. Even though I haven’t thought about this in years, revisiting it still makes me tear up.

Experiences with losing a pregnancy vary widely. If you’re going through this, it’s helpful to read other accounts. Here’s a story briefly comparing four women’s experiences, including one who didn’t feel very affected at all. And an important personal essay about how miscarriage affects men. If you’re about to miscarry and your doctors don’t walk you through what to expect, you might want to look up photos of miscarried fetuses online, such as these and these.

Hippie prenatal vitamins don’t cause miscarriage. We blame ourselves in the absence of real information about miscarriage. As Kendra Hurley points out in a New York Times essay, “Even the word ‘miscarriage’ itself implies the woman has done something wrong, has carried her child incorrectly. Perhaps this is why nearly everyone I know who has gone through it has
some theory blaming themselves.” There’s little research on miscarriage. What doctors know is that it’s most often caused by too few or too many chromosomes. As one put it: Pregnancy is essentially a takeover by the baby of many systems in the woman’s body, and our bodies are picky about which fetus we will allow to take us over!

Tell your true friends. Let yourself grieve. Don’t keep a stiff upper lip and go through it alone. While you can easily find support in online communities, they won’t bring you chocolate. The likelihood is that you already know quite a few friends or family members who have lost a pregnancy. (See the statistics on how common miscarriage is.) Open up a bit, and you will find them.

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Written by

Tracy Cutchlow

Tracy is the author of the international bestseller Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science, a public speaker, and a creator of places to speak and be heard. Sign up for her newsletter here.