Miscarriage and Grief

Posted by Joanna Karpasea-Jones Nov 11, 2006

When I had my first miscarriage in 1998, I was only 5 weeks pregnant and had just found out about the pregnancy a couple of days before. It had taken 6 months to concieve so we were thrilled. Then I started bleeding and a scan showed no heartbeat.

I desperately wanted a scan picture of my baby and asked the technician. She replied, rather abruptly, 'It's not a baby, there's no point.'

Well, that blob on the screen WAS my baby, not a group of cells, and although I pleaded with her, she would not give me a picture. 3 days later, another scan confirmed I had miscarriaged. My partner and I both dissolved into sobs. To us, our child had died, to the medics, it was simply a blob of tissue or 'products of conception'.

I was given blood tests to check that my HCG level was returning to zero, and a degrading internal examination. I just wanted to die. Not one person on the unit called it a baby, and I was told 'you can always try again.'

To us, we needed to cry, to grieve, to talk about the person our baby might have been, but because no one knew I had been pregnant, and no one could actually see the baby, it was as if it hadn't been a death. People would look awkward the minute I mentioned miscarriage, no one else wanted to share our grief.

After I complained to the hospital about the scan picture incident, they changed their hospital policy on dealing with sufferer's of miscarriage - so hopefully no other woman there will have to go through what I did. But I do wonder why there is such a lack of emotional support for women who have lost their babies.