What to Say (Or Not Say) When Someone Miscarries

Let me start this by saying nothing has gone wrong with this pregnancy, the baby and I are healthy and fine.

I've thought about writing this post for a long time, but have always felt like everyone is so different in how they grieve that my one opinion would be helpful.  But  a few months ago a friend, who has never had trouble getting pregnant, asked for some advice on what to say to someone she knew who'd lost a baby.  She said she knew she didn't understand and didn't want to pretend to, but that left her at a loss as to what to say.

I hope I do not hurt anyone's feelings with this post.  I know many of the people who said these things to me/us after we miscarried were trying to be helpful and love us a lot.  But I also think it's important to explain how I saw things.  And I am fully acknowledging that this is how I dealt with my grief and it may be totally different for someone else.

I'll start with the things that were not useful to hear.

1.  Something must have been wrong with the baby
              While this is entirely accurate medically, I did not want to hear about how the perfect baby I had imagined must have been genetically abnormal or deformed.  The image I have of him/her is and always will be perfect.  It was insinuated to me that we were better off losing the baby than having him/her deformed, which just made me mad and hurt more.

2.  It wasn't God's will.
               As someone who believes in God and believes He has a plan for my life, I know that this is also true.  Even when I was at my darkest moment, I still believed God was with me and could feel His presence with me.  But I was also mad at God for letting it happen and questioned the fairness of it all quite a bit.  Saying that the death of a baby we had tried for for 2 years was God's will only made me more upset at God.

3.  When it's God's timing, you'll get pregnant.
                  This one is very similar to number 2.  Death is part of life and I believe God walks, or carries, us through it, but that doesn't make this a comforting statement.  Also, there is no one on Earth who can claim to know that I would get pregnant again.  There is always a possibility that I wouldn't.  So trying to reassure me that I could have another baby (as if that could replace the one I was grieving for) was just a reminder that I might never get pregnant again.  We would have and still might adopt, so I knew I would be a mom, but I had no guarantees that I would ever be pregnant again.

4. At least you weren't farther along.
                   This one still makes me clench my fist.  You cannot compare someone's grief to another.  And trying to mitigate the grief and sadness just invalidates the feelings that were going on inside of me.  Could it have been worse?  Yes.  Did that make me feel any better?  No.

5.  20% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.
                  A true statistic that I have heard many many times.  But just because a lot of other people have gone through the pain does not mean that I will feel better when you tell me that.  It also felt like a very dismissive statement most of the time.  Like losing our baby was "bound to happen."  Definitely not something that helped.

6.  You'll get pregnant again.
                  This one is similar to #3.  You don't know that I will ever get pregnant again, no one can know that.  Is there a good possibility?  Yes.  But you can't promise that or offer it as a reassurance when the person knows it might not be true.

7.  Nothing at all.
                   Miscarriage is a strange grief because it's different.  There's no body, no funeral, and life just goes on as usual.  I remember driving in the car, sobbing, and wishing I could be as oblivious as the people in the car next to me who were laughing and talking about something.  A lot of people didn't know what to say, so didn't say anything at all.  I understand why, but I felt very alone at times.  And I did have people who talked to me, so I wasn't alone.  Had I not had those people, I can't imagine what the silence would have done to me.
           
As you can see, many of these things I intellectually know to be true.  But they either made me mad, more sad, or just didn't help.  So what did help?  Here's what helped me:

1.  People acknowledging the grief
             A simple "I'm so sorry" and a hug was an acknowledgement that my grief was real, legitimate, and that the person was there for me.  Don't ask "how are you doing" with the slight head tilt and pursed lips, though.  "Crappy, that's how I'm doing" was the answer I wanted to say.  I didn't really want pity, but I did want people to acknowledge my sadness.

2.  Offers of help
              But this has to be specific.  Saying "let me know if there's anything I can do" was never going to get a request from me.  Saying "can I bring you dinner in the next couple of days" is helpful and doesn't require me reaching out to you.  I know I have a hard time asking for help, so the only people who did bring us food or other stuff were people who offered very specific things.  Or just came.  Flowers and a card left on the front porch the day after we found out let me know that our friends were thinking of us.  Dinner so I didn't have to worry about what we were going to eat (which I could have cared less about the first couple of days).  A gift to remind us of the baby.  All of these things helped me.
              On the flip side, some people may not want the same kind of thing.  I did want a reminder of this baby, but others may not.  But if you are going to offer help with something, be specific about it so the only required response is "yes."

3.  Offering an understanding shoulder
              I had a lot of people tell me or email me about their own experience with miscarriage.  The ones who did it with sympathy and who answered questions for me helped me get through the roughest days.  There were some whose stories felt almost like they were "one upping" me, which was not helpful.  But for the most part, people shared their stories and offered a shoulder to remind me that I was not alone.  Everyone's story is different, so know one can understand exactly how I felt, but there is a certain camaraderie in grief.

4.  Help tell other people
             We'd had a hard time keeping the pregnancy a secret, even though we were still in the first trimester.  We were so excited that we told a lot of people, even knowing that we were at a higher than normal risk for miscarriage.  The most difficult thing we had to do was type out the texts telling everyone that we had lost the baby.  I forwarded the same one to most people, but having to think of everyone that we had told was hard.  If there's any way you can help the person tell other people about the miscarriage, that will take a weight off their shoulders.  And having to answer the same questions over and over makes it hard to just be sad and start to grieve.  Most of my responses became automated, and I didn't even have that many people to tell.  I was lucky enough to tell a few and let them handle the rest.

5.  Acknowledge the due date
             Our due date was engrained in my mind and there was no way it was going to pass without me remembering it.  You can read about that week here.  I thought I could handle it, but I ended up having my emotions bubble over.  I thought no one else had remembered, which made me even more sad.  It turns out that because I hadn't said anything, those who were closest to me had hoped I hadn't remembered.  I think it would have been better to do something to acknowledge the day and deal with the grief head on instead of trying to bury it.

Those are all the things I can think of at the moment.  And remember, this is just what I felt.  The best thing you can do is ask the person.  Do they want to talk about it?  Do they want to stay busy?  Do they want to have a lot of people around?  Do they want to be alone or just one or two close friends/family?

As Mother's Day approaches, I feel for the many friends that I know are still dealing with infertility and loss.  It's one of the most difficult days of the year and unfortunately a lot of well-meaning people trying to acknowledge mothers don't realize how much it hurts to not be considered one of them.  For those of you in that situation, I am praying for you.

Hopefully this helps with some difficult conversations, or at least makes someone stop and think.