I couldn’t heal from baby loss until I had space to talk about it – I want the same for other women too

A common pattern emerges when I try to have conversations with most friends or colleagues about baby loss – we just don’t like to talk about it. While we have progressed so much as a society in terms of our openness about mental health or cancer diagnosis, the loss of a child or pregnancy still makes people feel uncomfortable.

How and when we want to share our losses, if at all, should, of course, always be a personal choice. However, the culture of secrecy and silence surrounding baby loss, in part, contributes to the UK having one of the worst stillbirth rates in the developed world. Sadly, the majority of women who have experienced multiple miscarriages (of which I’m one) never find out the reason why. If only we talked about it more, not only could we accelerate our understanding of those preventable cases of stillbirth (estimated to be around 50 per cent) but also alleviate some of the unnecessary pain and isolation that baby loss brings into people’s lives.

Midwives don’t want to scare women with too much information about the commonality of stillbirth (around 1 in 225 in the UK) and women are often dispatched from A&E after a miscarriage with the unhelpful and hurtful advice to “try again in a few months”, and rarely any specialist help to deal with the grief and trauma that can often be the result of this all too common tragedy (which affects a staggering 1 in 4 pregnancies).

But there is no comfort in the commonality of the statistics amid the isolation that miscarriage can bring. This sense of loneliness is also amplified by the bizarre perpetuation of the “12-week rule”, an archaic practice where women are still advised not to share the news of their pregnancy before they’ve passed the “safe” three-month mark. It’s an approach that often leaves women with little or no support network if they miscarry, as well as suggesting that there’s a hierarchy of grief determined by how far along the balls of cells in your uterus have developed.

I didn’t know just how painfully common miscarriage was until other women reached out to me privately in the aftermath of my own multiple losses over the past few years. It’s the shameful secret of “failure” that no one wants to own too loudly. It’s an admission that your body isn’t perfect after all, that it couldn’t sustain the life you so badly wanted. People offer the platitudes that they think will help but the aftermath can often spill out into future pregnancies and live births where your sense of anxiety and the development of PTSD can affect women for years after.

Baby Loss Awareness Week (which takes place from 9-15 October every year) is an opportunity to acknowledge and remember those that have died. This year, the Miscarriage Association is campaigning to make it easier for anyone who needs specialist psychological support following pregnancy loss to access it free, on the NHS – a much needed and currently sorely lacking service that I wish had been available.

My first miscarriage was a “missed miscarriage” at 12 weeks. It’s what they call it when there is no blood: the body hasn’t recognised that the pregnancy isn’t viable and most women spend three months being blissfully unaware that there’s anything wrong until the first scheduled scan where no heartbeat can be found. As “nature hadn’t taken its course” I was offered an immediate ERPC – surgery to remove the “retained products of conception” – a straightforward surgery but unhelpfully and coldly termed. The aftermath leaves your body sore and your hormones crashing as you struggle to come to terms with what you’ve lost. My second miscarriage was more of the bloody variety. My third; a protracted and miserable haemorrhaging over six weeks, which ended in a dangerous infection and urgent surgery.

I carried on working throughout the first two. Being self-employed, financially I had no choice. I’d dutifully followed the “12-week rule” so almost no one knew of the pregnancies and I became quite the expert at layering sanitary protection to soak up the blood and the mental armour to hide it from the people I worked with, rightly concerned I would lose work I could ill-afford to if I was honest about what was happening to my body. And then, when I chose to disclose my loss the third time, I was met with uncomfortable silences and awkward looks that made my own grief all the worse.

What has soothed and helped with the process of healing is hearing other women’s stories – both online and in person. A few weeks ago, I sat down with fellow campaigner Sophie Daniels to record a conversation about our own personal journeys for The Art of Losing Podcast. In the frank sharing of our own stories of recurrent miscarriage and stillbirth, we hope to normalise the topic and neutralise some of the fear and awkwardness surrounding it. Because to know that you are not the only one who has wrestled with this loss is such a comfort in an otherwise difficult journey. I hope it helps you too.

Catherine Anne Davies is a writer, producer, and musician (aka The Anchoress). She is also the creator and host of The Art of Losing Podcast. www.theanchoress.co.uk

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can contact stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands on 0808 164 3332 or email helpline@sands.org.uk. The helpline is open from 9.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday, and until 9.30pm on Tuesday and Thursday evenings

You can also find bereavement support at The Lullaby Trust by calling 0808 802 6868 or emailing support@lullabytrust.org.uk