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Dealing with Miscarriage (she: Vanessa)

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Hi everyone! I am so excited to be a guest in one of my favorite blogs!
I’m Vanessa, a young doctor (or at least I want to believe I’m young) sharing my life with another doctor, my wonderful husband. I started a blog to scrapbook our life as a married couple and our journey together. You can find me at Bayohan and Vanessa’s Journey.
After 2 years of marriage we decided it was time to make our petite family grow and so our trying to conceive journey began with a much-wanted pregnancy last year. We were so happy about this new chapter in our life that we decided to tell the world about it, little did we know God had other plans for this sweet baby and our pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at 8 weeks.
Being a doctor you would have thought I knew there was a possibility, but I guess we never prepared ourselves for the worst. I knew about miscarriage in a medical way, but I had no idea how to deal with it emotionally and neither did my husband, friends or family members. It was a rough time in our life. I want to share with you what helped me deal with my loss and also some ideas on how to help someone going through the same situation.
Dealing with it
-Talk about it: unlike cancer a baby loss is a big taboo subject and sometimes is hard to talk about it, but do it, express how you feel about your lost, it doesn’t matter if your baby was lost at 2 weeks it was still yours and you loved it!

-Find help: there are great books and resources online, one of the things that truly helped me the most was joining a miscarriage group on BabyCenter, that group lead to another great private group I now belong to. There, I met the most wonderful online friends and it is my safety zone- a place where I can talk about how I feel, my fears about conceiving again and know that this girls have been through the same.

“About What Was Lost” (great book about miscarriage, healing and hope)

-Cry: I know it sound silly but a lot of people don’t do it enough, some people feel ashamed about it and you shouldn’t. Losing a pregnancy is losing all the hopes and dreams you had for this baby, it’s ok to be sad.
-Take a break: after my miscarriage all I wanted was to get pregnant again, but I do recommend taking a break, your body and soul will thank you for it.

-He also lost his baby: this is hard, sometimes we think we are the only ones feeling sad about the loss, your significant other is going thru the same, you may not see it but he is devastated, he is just dealing with it in his own way. It took my husband months to express to me how he really felt, give him sometime!

What to do if it’s someone else

Sometimes you want to help a person you love going through a miscarriage, but what can you do or say?

-Be quiet: yes it is hard not saying anything, but sometimes listening is the best help you can provide. If you are saying something, a simple I am sorry, what can I do to help goes a long way.

-Food: when a person goes thru a miscarriage the last thing they want to do is cook, bring a meal over.

“Stuffed Shells” (there are a lot of great recipes here that are easy to carry over to someone else’s house)

-Cards: are a great way to express sympathy and honor the short life that baby had.
-Gift: something that they can remember their baby with. There are some great miscarriage gifts on Etsy, just type miscarriage on their search engine.
Avoid
This is a really touchy subject, sometimes people say things thinking they are helping and they are actually hurtful. These are all things that were said to me or someone in my support group, avoid them:
-Are you going to try again?
-It was just a miscarriage.
-Well, at least you weren’t that far along
-You can have another one.
-You lost it early so it’s not that big of deal.
-Now you have angel looking after you.
-Its for the best
-You’re young, you’ll get over it.
-It was God’s will.
-Or sharing any story about your friend’s cousin who had 9 miscarriages and ended up having a healthy pregnancy.
Just be kind and gentle with your friend or relative. Every one has their own ways to grieve. Don’t expect them to “get over it.” Just be there for them, they will heal in their own time, but never forget!
-Vanessa

Comments

  1. Vanessa-
    Thank you for sharing your experience with us! It’s hard to say the “right” thing sometimes in situations like this- but this helped!

    Reply

  2. We lost a baby at 35 weeks along and another one at 1 week old. As a result I have met a lot of wonderful people that have been in some form of that situation. And counselled them or family members. What you say is exactly the truth. I might also add, don’t avoid the person because it is uncomfortable or you don’t know what to say.

    Reply

  3. this is a great post! as a woman who has gone through this several times, i completely agree with everything you suggest in this post! not an easy thing to write about, so thanks!

    Reply

  4. awesome – having suffered miscarriages I have to second (with a standing ovation) everything… I am forever grateful to my mother for reminding me that my husband would be grieving as well… and in the end, I’m a much more tender person to others having experienced my own losses.

    Reply

  5. Perfect suggestions! I agree, I don’t think you really need to say a whole lot. I like your suggestion of “I’m sorry (big hug)…here’s a bag of Oreos and a chick flick.” Usually saying much more than that is never a good thing…people are so sensitive during times like this. All they need from you is a simple “I care about you” gesture.

    Reply

  6. Vanessa, this is some really good and sage advice. It must have been hard to write about this. Thanks for sharing your story.

    Rambles with Reese

    Reply

  7. I just had one a couple weeks ago except for me I must be weird because I’m not grieving. For me it was kinda cool to know my body could actually get pregnant without fertility drugs, that I had to use with my now 5 yr old & 2 yr old. I had been bleeding for like over 20 days when I went to the dr’s & they thought it was just a heavy period but they didn’t do a pregnancy test either & got an IUD scheduled for later this month. Well I kept bleeding into 40 days & the day of my daughters 5th bday I had to go the ER because I thought I was dying turns out to be a miscarriage & after 40 days it decided to all come out. It was scary but kinda a relief because my husband had taken off our maternity insurance thinking I wouldn’t get pregnant anyways, wrong! I guess people deal with these things differently. Sorry for the TMI but I just wanted to point out a different perspective.

    Reply

  8. Thanks for sharing. I have had 3 miscarages one was a partial molar. They were all difficult because I planned a life for each of those babies as soon as I knew I was pregnant. I thought about them every second of everday. And then one day it is just taken away. That’s why it was so difficult for me.
    I loved your post.

    Reply

  10. My husband and I lost six babies at various stages of pregnancy. One thing that I have to add is that as women we expect our husbands to grieve over the loss if the baby, but the truth is that some husbands feel no connection to that baby AT ALL. They haven’t seen it or felt it move or feel those intense maternal feelings that we do as the mother. To them the baby is just an idea until there is more physical proof to them that it is there. This was the case with my husband, and I spent years being angry with him for not caring about the babies we had lost. It wasn’t until after our first live birth and I saw him get so emotional at the baby finally being here that I realized I was wrong to have been angry with him. He even said that he had not felt any emotional connection to her until she was born. He was and is her devoted slave now! He us a wonderful father. Just don’t expect your husband to grieve the same way you do or feel the connection to the baby that you do.

    Reply

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