Miscarriage Grief

If you’ve experienced a miscarriage and are wondering if the miscarriage grief you’re feeling now is expected or acceptable, most definitely it is.  Women experience all kinds of emotions after finding out that they’ve had a miscarriage or they’re going to miscarry.  These emotions, ranging from numbness to utter depression, are very understandable because a miscarriage isn’t only a failed pregnancy but the loss of a mother of her child.  The experience can be compared to the loss of a special person in one’s life, except in this case the mother never was able to get to know her son or daughter. In some ways, this makes it even harder for the woman to accept and let go.

Miscarriage grief and sadness can differ from woman to woman depending on how far along she was in her pregnancy, her overall feelings towards her pregnancy, and how she and her husband handled the pregnancy as a whole.  But in general, it’s usually denial, anger, grief, and even feelings of wanting to isolate one’s self from the rest of society that a woman feels because of her terrible loss.  Let’s take a look at these emotions one by one:

·      Denial and isolation is the first kind of emotion a woman would feel after realizing that she has lost her child.  She would keep thinking over and over again that there’s still a chance that the baby could be saved and that the doctor actually made a mistake.  This would also entail hours of research and browsing through the internet about miscarriages and the symptoms of miscarriage.  Likewise, a woman who just had a miscarriage would want to keep herself away from the company of her family and friends out of grief and sadness.

·      Eventually, anger would start to seep in once the woman realizes that the signs and symptoms point to a miscarriage.  She would want to blame someone else for the pain and the loss, and usually the fingers point to the doctors.  Sometimes, these women would blame themselves, their partners, the medical support, family, friends, that the whole experience becomes too overwhelming.

·      Sooner or later, the woman would feel depressed, sad, and in total grief over the loss.  Thoughts such as being able to have a baby again or the idea of trying to have a baby would usually cross her mind.  She would also develop a certain fear over the possibility of having another miscarriage if she’s found out that she’s able to conceive again a month or two after.  Ads, TV shows, and images of babies and pregnant women would disturb her, which will also make her stray away from families and friends who have children or who are pregnant. 

But despite experiencing miscarriage grief, every woman who has gone through this painful experience is capable of acceptance.  This includes acceptance over this loss, acceptance over the fact that it is nobody’s fault that the child was unable to live, and acceptance of other people’s love and care for you.  Acceptance comes in different ways as well.  For some women, they are able to accept and let go of their miscarriage after giving birth to another child.  Others would accept it even before planning and deciding on having another baby. 

In the end, what is most important is that both the husband and wife should stick together through troubling and grieving times, especially in situations such as the loss of their child.  Whether it is their first or their fifth child, a husband should always be there to support and care for his wife while the wife should be strong and should never doubt her abilities and her fate of becoming a mother due to a miscarriage.