Coping with a Miscarriage

Posted by Jenny Evans Aug 11, 2009

Almost without fail, my most popular article every week is "How To Tell If You're Having a Miscarriage." This is such a sad, sad topic. Although as a writer I love to see that I've got an Internet audience, when I see the number of viewers each week I can't help but imagine the women who are potentially experiencing the worst crisis of their lives as they search the Internet for a definitive answer to what might be going on with their bodies.

Before I lost a pregnancy due to a blighted ovum in June of 2008, I was fairly clueless about miscarriage. I didn't know that as many as 25% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, and was surprised by the outpouring of support from friends who'd had pregnancy losses that I didn't even know about. (See "Miscarriage Facts and Statistics" for more information.)

Whatever the type of miscarriage, recovery from a pregnancy loss is never easy. In many ways it's more difficult to talk about than other types of loss, because you or others might feel that it's not that same thing as a "real" death. It's such a painful, private grief.

Physical and emotional recovery isn't a strictly linear path; there are good days and bad. But overall with plenty of support and understanding, wounds eventually heal.

Getting a doctor's help and following sound medical advice is the best course for women after miscarriage. Above all, remember that a single miscarriage doesn't make it much more likely to have a second, and even multiple miscarriages don't completely rule out the possibility of future successful pregnancies.