A Taboo Topic?

I am inspired to write this after witnessing a very brave friend of mine suffer a miscarriage. I’ll call her Carla. Carla really impressed me. I knew she was a nice woman and a good mother to her one year-old son. I serve in the Young Women’s presidency with her in our ward. She is a hard worker. But I never knew how open and brave she was until she confided that she was having a miscarriage.. First off, she wasn’t ashamed. She wasn’t afraid to confide in her friends what was going on with her and her body. Not to say that she didn’t have nights where she was scared and cried and mourned the loss of the child, but she was open and honest (with those she could trust) and I came away from those difficult weeks she had feeling impressed with her for sharing what she was going through. She had a support system around her that she created by being honest with her friends and family. She was brave at a very vulnerable time. That inspired me.

I write this because my first pregnancy was a miscarriage and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alone than at that time. Granted, my DH and I had just moved across the country and I didn’t have a lot of close friends to lean on. The gyno reassured me that 1 in 3 pregnancies end in miscarriage. I thought about that and said to myself, “then why do I feel like there is NO ONE for me to talk to”. This was my first pregnancy and I was terrified (“what if something is wrong with me” “I’m a woman…my body should be able to do this”), and I don’t know why, but I was embarrassed and scared and didn’t want to let anyone know. I felt like a failure. I lived near my mother-in-law at the time and she had had 3 miscarriages, but then went on to have 7 children. This was little comfort at the time because I was afraid I would never even have ONE child. I desperately wanted to know that other women my age were dealing with this…that I was not alone. I realized that I had so many friends that were mothers, or were my own age, and I thought about that 1 in 3 statistic and wondered… “Did any of my friends suffer a miscarriage and feel alone as well?” Times have changed in our country and yet I still felt like this was a topic that felt secretive… like I wasn’t supposed to talk about it. “Don’t tell people you are pregnant until you’re 12 weeks along just in case you have a miscarriage?” Why? Because you would have to acknowledge that it happened. I look at Carla and the support system she created around her, and think back to how alone I felt and wish that I had had a friend like her at the time, or that I would've been as brave to open myself up as she has been.

Anyway, time passed and I endured my miscarriage. I did make a conscious decision to tell my sisters and close girlfriends about my miscarriage. Mostly because if they had a miscarriage I wanted them to know they could pick up the phone and know that someone out there knew how they felt, and that they weren’t alone. I think it’s important that women stick together like this. Now I’m in no way trying to tell women to be open about something so personal if they feel like it’s a private matter. I just hope women don’t feel ashamed or embarrassed, or like a failure, because of miscarriage. I hope they don’t feel alone if what they are looking for is someone to connect to. And I hope that in this day and age miscarriage isn’t a “taboo topic”.