I'm being annoyed/upset my friend is pretending she had a miscarriage?

[giveittotrousers]

Name changed for this as I've friends on here that know my usual mumsnet name.

It's baby loss awareness week as I'm sure a lot of you know. My Instagram and Facebook feeds have quite a lot of related posts. All fine and great, I've chosen not to post myself (even though I have before) as it all feels a little raw again.

But I have a friend who's been posting candles, swapping stories with other friends, loads of memes etc about her two miscarriages. As she's posted a LOT of detail about when they were I know them to have been abortions not miscarriages.

Don't get me wrong, I've had an abortion myself, and I'm some ways feel it was the right thing to do and I'm some it's the worst thing I've ever done, I'm obviously very strongly pro choice.

I also get that it may be her way of grieving and she feels that she can't widely tell people shes had abortions, it's a bloody hard thing to tell people sometimes. I barely mumbled it to dh once when we were dating and I was drunk and I never intend to mention it again. And probably only three other friends and my Mum know.

But, something about how she's gone in to the detail with people who have also suffered still births, miscarriages etc is getting to me. She could have just said she'd suffered a loss and not gone in to gory and untrue details.

I have no intention of saying anything to her obviously, i just felt like I needed a rant as it's not something I feel comfortable telling anyone in rl as it would betray her confidence.

She is a hugely insecure person and goes to huge and insane lengths to get attention still at the age of 40. Try as I might I can't shake the feeling this is another version of that. Then I feel like an awful bitch for even thinking that.

Sorry this is garbled, I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I'm now infertile and my losses are raw because of that and how it's all over the media at the moment. I know I shouldn't be projecting it on to her but it's getting to me!

(Step awaaaay from the Internet I know, I know!)

It sounds like your friend is having problems dealing with the abortions.. She may be too ashamed to talk honestly about it...she may need some support and attention.
It's not fair to judge her on this

YANBU
I lost my second child and it broke my dp and i's hearts.
No one choses to lose this baby.
But also no one choses to have to terminate a sick baby who would died a painful death.
And to terminate due to circumstances must be extremely hard also.
They are all lost children.
The only thing I really struggle with is she did it twice. She obviously never learned for the first loss.

Anyways you should absolutely distance yourself from her or like you said unfollow for 2 reasons.

1. Lying about this sort of thing is wrong.

2 But also her post reminds you of a everything going on in your life right now and that's not emotionally healthy for you.

I sort of agree with you. I think abortions can be very traumatic for women and would understand someone wanting to share their grief. However I don’t think it is the same as a miscarriage and she shouldn’t be implying she had miscarriages if she had abortions.

I’m sure it comes from a place of pain on her part, rather than because she’s being a dick.

I'd be fucking livid. She CHOSE to have those abortions, whereas anyone who's had a miscarriage had no control over it. I accept it's a loss but if I had a dickhead friend exploiting something so sensitive I'd call them out then tell them where to shove their 'grief'.

YANBU. I'm really surprised by the number of people here who think miscarriages and abortions are interchangeable. Pretending to have had a miscarriage to elicit sympathy from people who have actually had them is just unforgivable.

I don’t think it’s ok to lie but it’s not ok to disregard people’s feeling about abortions, no one does it for fun

Having had both I can tell you they are equally traumatic.

Really surprised by the responses here.

To say "I suffered a loss at x weeks" and talk about her emotions is entirely understandable. yes she may be mourning and she may want to share her emotions without attracting negative judgements.

To fabricate an unnecessarily detailed story of a fake miscarriage and share it with people who genuinely suffered miscarriages - why? Why the false details when you could avoid lying, or minimise it? That smacks of attention seeking. And to openly do it in front of people like op who knows she is lying and has also suffered miscarriages.

If she has form for attention seeking behaviour then I'd suspect this is the same again.

She is entitled to grieve, just because the choice was technically hers it doesn't mean she isn't allowed to feel sad.

Look at the comments on this thread, no wonder she isn't telling anyone she had an abortion and how else is she supposed to reach out and get support?

I have had three miscarriages . One of which required the d&c procedure as it was a mmc, this wasn't successful and I went through (the worst one) mc a few days later.
It opened my eyes a great deal an abortion isn't necessarily without its own trauma. I remember layi g in a prep ward. Numb. Shocked at the mmc. Across from me waiting for the same procedure was a woman needing termination. She was crying.
The reasons and circumstances of abortion are complicated and I'd strongly support any woman (or father I suppose) feeling loss. It's sad that she should be in this society where those going through one sort of loss are publicly supported but those clearly in pain have to make up stories to explain theirs.

Another one saying YANBU and I'm shocked that so many people are comparing abortions to miscarriages (abortions for medical reasons aside). I don't for a minute think having an abortion can be easy, and I have no doubt that for many it brings a huge amount of grief, but there was still a decision to end a life which, even for understandable and valid reasons, cannot be compared to someone losing a desperately wanted baby who they would have done anything to keep alive. It's not a race to the bottom when it comes to these types of grief, but I do think it's poor taste to compare abortions with miscarriage/stillbirth .

Why are abortions for medical reasons “ok” and abortions for other reasons aren’t

look how some people are treating her on here and you wonder why women cant talk about abortion freely and without judgement.

Is there a hierarchy of feeling sad?

What about someone who wasn't that bothered about being pregnant having a miscarriage vs someone who desperatly wanted to be pregnant having to have an abortion because she was just made homeless?

Who 'wins' then?

It's fucking ridiculous that women feel the need to justify themselves to everyone else about their own personal choices, even more ridiculous that someone has to lie about details of why they feel sad because they will be judged as unworthy if they tell the truth.

I think you are being unreasonable. I had an abortion but I did it because my husband said we wouldn’t be able to cope with another child but if he had supported me said ‘look we will have the baby we will deal with it’ i 100% would have kept that baby. I am over it.. and I do get in with my life but i do often think ‘that was A baby that would have been around 5/6 years old now!’ And I feel sad for a while over it so I can see why this lady sees them as losses because if her partner pushed her into the abortion and she didn’t want it then she’s lost her babies. Men can be very powerful when it comes to convincing woman to abort and can make you feel you have no choice because if they don’t support you you will be doing it alone which can be scary.. maybe she is suffering? Maybe she really regrets them and can’t move on? Maybe she needs support? After all she has lost...

YANBU.

And I also dont like to admit that I had an abortion because people judge you and make you feel ashamed. Only people who know about mine is my sister ( who I tell everything to) and my husband.

It's so shit that people are having terminations for financial reasons, or because they don't trust they will have enough support with the child (either as a single parent or if the child has additional needs). What can we do to support them? Aside from donating to charities that support them is there any campaigning we can do?
Losing a baby is sad, devastatingly so. Making a difficult choice to terminate is also sad, plus the guilt and the social stigma.

“Having an abortion because it's 'not the right time' or whatever is NOT the same as having a miscarriage. I can't believe people are conflating the two”.

^This a thousand times over. YANBU- I wouldn’t want to remain friends with an attention seeking fool like your friend

Oh for God's sake! Someone can feel just as devastated after an abortion as after a miscarriage. There are many different emotions.
It's awful to judge someone who may be in a bad mental state because of a decision they have made!
OPs friend may be the awful person some of you has decided she is....but then again, she may just be in need of help.

Whilst i imagine there are a lot of emotions associated with having an abortion and i am very pro-choice and would do it myself if the situation arose after a first trimester mmc, second trimester mmc and a stillbirth all completely out of my control i wouldn't consider it a loss as such.

And i wouldn't consider a tfmr abortion either.

i have lots of friends that have had abortions for lots of reasons, all valid to them and mostly emotional journeys but i would like to think that they wouldn't say what they went through is the same as what i did.

She still had a loss, and probably doesn't feel ok sharing that it was actually an abortion.

I had an abortion when I was a teenager. The staff continually referred to it as a 'medically induced miscarriage' as apparently thats what it was. I don't know if they were saying it to make me feel better or if its true though.

Wow, there's a serious empathy bypass here tonight. I've had a miscarriage and an abortion, at very similar stages of pregnancy. My feelings on the two are very, very similar. The physical process was similar as well.

There's a bit in How to be a Woman where Caitlin Moran talks about her miscarriage and her abortion. I can't remember it verbatim, but she says that in one case her body made the decision to end the pregnancy and in the other case it was her mind and they are both equally capable of making that decision. It stuck with me as it so accurately echoes my own feelings.

I am also not saying a miscarriage and an abortion are the same thing. I have had both and they were very different experiences, including that I had no choice at all in the second.

But its not miscarriage awareness, its baby loss. Both abortion and miscarriage are losing babies. Yes one if by 'choice'...but its still a loss

My point was supposed to be that she may be grieving herself but does not want to tell the world that it was an abortion she had, so used miscarriage instead so as not to be judged. Is this totally right? No. But I understand it kind of

She shouldn’t lie, embellish or use this as a sympathy grab but at the same time you don’t know her exact mindset in regards to the abortions or her exact circumstances - the loss of child may still genuinely be raw to her and this is her way of grieving. She may have had miscarriages in the past. She may have lied to you about the abortion circumstances in the past as it is quite a delicate subject

Just ignore her and leave her to it.

If you know her as an attention seeking person and you’re sick of it, distance yourself. I’m sure others have noticed and take what she says with a grain of salt.

It's Baby loss week. Not miscarriage week. I've had several miscarriages and a termination because of a hideous chromosomal disorder, meaning affected foetuses are incompatible with life. I've never told anyone about that because of judgmental fucks.