Lucy Bannerman on her miscarriages etc in the Times magazine today

One of the things you do when disaster strikes is dash for the ladies, because you know you're safer there. I made s bolt for the loo for privacy and to empty the full bladder you have to have for an early scan. Next thing, a midwife is banging on the door, "Are you alright?!" No, they just told me my baby's heartbeat is gone; of course I'm not alright! Stupid question.

Likewise, part of IVF back in the day was collecting every drop of urine you passed across 24 hours. They gave you a big plastic tank (!) I took it to work and hid it under the coats in the corner of the ladies off the staffroom.

Imagine having to cope in those private spaces with men wandering in and out at will...

Fantastic article, thanks for sharing

Amazing article..

I can identify with the still shape on the screen after a year of trying, the tracking of a failing heartbeat over weeks, 2 D&C’s and one scary A&E harmorrhage. It is nothing like what the media leads you to believe...

But I am one of the lucky ones with 3 (well spaced out) children.

for everyone who’s experienced this, and those still struggling with infertility.

That's an excellent article and I'm glad I read it.

I've always been very open about having had a miscarriage, and have described it to my DC. My DM had one when I was a toddler, but never discussed it, and I was massively under-prepared for the epic amounts of gore.

It's like the menopause: no one really prepares you for it. You often end up flying blind.

To today’s 600 women in the U.K. & the uncountable number across the globe

Beautiful article. I’m someone who didn’t reveal my pregnancy until I had to each time but less superstition more horror of becoming public property & anxiety that it would influence the opportunities I had a work. I do wonder how we move the conversation forward whilst we still have the “be as Male/default as possible” issue in professional environments.

Honestly, of my 10ish friends close enough to talk about these things with, there’s only two who haven’t experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth. Those two experienced fertility issues (as did some of the others). As far as I can tell, it’s more common to miscarry than the official statistics- probably due to early miscarriages being under-reported.

That brought back a lot of memories. Years of endless trying. Losing so much time because I was living in grief. Losing friends because I couldn't bear watching them have baby after baby when I was watching the tests fade away instead.

And this uniquely female experience which when I talked about it with other women, turned out to be shared by so many of them, at least once.

99% of the time I feel like we've moved way past infertility and onwards - and we are genuinely happy - but I'm feeling exhausted and small today. I saw a really happy-looking family with these adorable children earlier playing in the autumn leaves, and there's that deep sadness all over again.

So many to anyone going through miscarriages right now.

Older family member was lucky to survive an ectopic pregnancy in an ovary back in the 60s. Rare but life-threatening.

I actually had to diagnose my own ectopic pregnancy to a disbelieving GP (mine was on holiday) who threw me out. It was his colleague who referred me the next day after we had paid privately for a scan and blood pregnancy test. Otherwise... 😳

That's a hard bit very good read. She writes so well.

It's a hard thing to balance, isn't it. I recogniswhat she said about not wanting to tell anyone about the pregnancy because of not wanting to jinx it, but also because you don't want to have to fail publicly. As if it is a personal failure when a body doesn't do something perfectly. Nobody would ever think other spontaneous health conditions was a personal failure, why this?

Is it because it shows you're trying to radically change your life, and it didn't work? (Having children is the biggest change a woman can make in her life IMO, men's lives change less-so). Is it because it's related to sex? Despite all the "sex positive" and empowerment nonsense of liberal feminism, this topic remains just as taboo as ever.

I don't know. But we need to change it because it's just awful that women go through this so unsupported.

Ps - thank god for Mumsnet, having somewhere women can talk about this.

for us , for our beautiful bodies and for all the babies we have carried , loved and lost .
( I want my Jesse back )

I would say it's the same issue we've faced since the number of women working outside the home in traditionally male jobs ballooned in the 70s/80s. Women had to try to be as much like men as they could. Mention of anything to do with having a female body was risky. Lots of outright sexism in recruitment and promotion decisions.

That's what needs to change. Humans come in two varieties, female and male. We need both or the species dies out. It's not acceptable to relegate one to the role of support human, written off as the inferior sex because we're smaller and physicall weaker and our bodies do icky female things and we're bound to be emotional and illogical at certain times of the month. We should be accepted as we are.

That is so well written. The best thing about my miscarriage is that I know now to shut up and not ask prying questions relating to people's reproductive plans.

On a tangent - but did anyone read the BBC article on the difference between the words women and men use in writing? (they seemed to actually mean women...)

I can't remember the specific stats - but men used the word blood an astonishing times more than women.

Presumably mostly heroic blood in battles scenes etc.

And yet women - who bleed every month - nope - that's just a bit too icky to talk about...

(to be clear - I'm not saying that women are being "weak" in not talking about it - just that society doesn't want to hear about it)

It's a very interesting point she raises. She says we should be more open about our experiences so that other women go into pregnancy with a less rose-tinted view of what it may be like, and so that everyone is aware of how common and distressing it is to have a miscarriage or fertility problems. She thinks people would be more sympathetic and less likely to come out with tactless questions like 'So when are you starting a family?'

She's right, of course, in principle, but as some of the comments have said, women are not treated as equals in the workplace. Some women experience being sidelined as soon as there's even a hint that they might be TTC. Our female biology is treated as a problem and an inconvenience to employers. I'm sure that's one reason why we keep stum about early pregnancy so much.

That is beautifully written, fantastic journalism. Thanks for the share.

Nearly lost my daughter after unknown about ectopic pregnancy...after morning after pill . Luckily she was with me because of feeling so ill, and even more luckily emergency duty GP recognised it and said his teacher had always told him not to dismiss the possibility of this in women. Not so lucky in the hospital due to delays in operating , so only after the tube ruptured. But thank you to the GP for acting quickly.

Wow. That's an amazing article. She is a brilliant writer. But not just that. Such a delicate subject treated with both rage and sensitivity is something to behold.

I'm actually gobsmacked, and ashamed that I didn't already know, that there are more than 250,000 miscarriages a year in the UK.

That's an unbelievable number of women who are affected. Huge.

And makes such tremendous sense of this sentiment towards the end:

...the more we portray the everyday experiences and the ups and downs of being a woman, the more we normalise it, and then absolutely we will shift the culture.

Thanks @NewlyGranny
I have 2 DC now which has helped but all the innocence of pregnancy went out the window.
Miscarriage is so dark and sad.

It’s a fantastic article. A friend has just done exactly what Lucy describes - sitting through a zoom meeting while she miscarrried on to an old towel. She was very stoic about it, and I think I’m the only person she told (though of course her DH knew). It’s so much more common than most men and women who haven’t tried to conceive realise.

JingleCatJingle 💐