AIBU to wonder if earlier generations really viewed early miscarriages differently?

[KitKat1985]

Just interested in garnering opinions on this really. I have debated whether to post this at all as I'm aware the subject matter is a sensitive one for a lot of people, so I've tried to really clear in the title that it's a thread about early miscarriages so those who don't want to read the whole post don't have to. But it's a conversation that really got me wondering recently so wanted to hear some views on it. I had a conversation recently with some women who were from a previous generation (think late 50's onwards). They basically said that back when they were having babies you weren't even really considered to be pregnant until you had missed two periods (so I guess would be about 8 weeks). They said they may have had occasions whereby they were late etc, but if they bled before the '2 missed period' mark they said they just put it down as 'one of those things', and were a bit dismissive about people in this generation who would report being really upset because they were having a miscarriage when it was very early on in their pregnancy. They also said that these days because of early sensitivity tests etc, people often consider themselves to be pregnant sometimes before their period is even late, which in their opinion was wrong and just led to a lot more heartbreak if things then didn't progress well. I'm wondering if they're telling the whole truth or not about how previous generations viewed early miscarriages. I can't completely believe that in a previous generation women didn't also feel a bit devastated if they started bleeding after they were late, and therefore must have probably also worked out that they were having an early pregnancy loss. I can to some extent sympathise with their theory though that testing really early can lead to more heartache. Do you think early miscarriages really were viewed differently a generation ago? Or do you think it was just more a taboo subject and if women were very upset about early losses they were just under societal pressure not to say it?

crunchymint Ah, perhaps it's because I had DC in my 30s- I'm 59 now and had DC in the 1990's.
I appreciate it's really not relevant to the thread but I do get irked by the assumption that women in their 50s are the same as those 20 or 30 years older.

Yes I am talking about from early 80's. And yes things were very different for women 20 years older.
I don't know if in the 80's you could only buy tests from the chemists? When I remember tests becoming affordable, was when suddenly the discount stores started selling them. The price suddenly plummeted. I remember the local Women's Centre in the 80s used to do free pregnancy testing. That stopped when the price of them dropped a lot. Just googled and in America in the 70's the cost was $10.

Haven’t RTFT but just an anecdote to add to your answers: when I fell pregnant with my second, I knew I was because I’d counted days and we’d tried and I had tested early etc etc. I rang the GP for a midwife referral and at first they told me I wasn’t pregnant (this was over the phone) and then he went on to be pretty brutal and said that even if I was I’d probably lose it anyway as early miscarriages are common

I self referred to the midwife and 9 months later DD was born

I remember a Woman's Hour phone in on miscarriage. They had ladies in their sixties and seventies, phoning in and breaking down over a miscarriage(s) they had never had the chance to even acknowledge properly much less mourn.

When I miscarried twice I remember a doctor saying to me, 'miscarriages are sometimes seen as the poor relation of infertility as we still don't really know what causes them.'

But I know I had one very early miscarriage as my period was very clotty and heavy. Meanwhile my doctor and my husband were saying things like: 'Are you sure?' 'No are you really sure?' I did know my own fucking body so yes I was sure. So I bet our mothers and grandmothers were patronised even more and perhaps learned to swallow their grief.

A friend of mine made a most enormous fuss because she was overdue her period by two weeks and then had one. She took time off work etc etc. She was then called in by HR. The GP said he was really not convinced she had been pregnant at all so she got into massive trouble.
As she is a complete drama queen... I was sorry - but having had both late and early miscarriages, the difference is the lateness of the miscarriage which is both painful and traumatising.
When this friend was over all the hooha she caused I talked about my miscarriages and she said 'OMG! I didn't KNOW you had miscarriages! You never mentioned it!' etc etc.
I do think it was a difference of age, I do feel things are hyped by the media. A late miscarriage is a sad and horrible thing as is infant mortality. Not so sure about a missed period.

My point being that some doctors are very matter of fact about these things now, to the point of being rude and saying potentially very upsetting things to pregnant women.

PS A very late period which is heavy and clotty can be also nasty to experience, but in a different disappointing way.

I’m with TamzinGrey early in the thread...a lot of us knew, early on, and it was shattering whether or not we told anyone. I lost five before the three month mark, It was dreadful. Still is not good.

And the culture was to ask if you were going to have children or whether you were a career girl. To the “ not everyone can” reply, people responded that oh yes they could.

We were aware of how easy it was to lose a baby, so no riding or tough physical exercise if you’d already lost one, for example.

And you didn’t tell people other than your nearest and dearest until after you were reasonably sure.

crunchymint

dox very early pregnancies could not be detected. And when I was young (I am mid 50s) pregnancy tests were very expensive. I am working class and everyone I knew went to Drs to get pregnancies confirmed

Eh ? I'm 58 pushing 59. I was pregnant in late 1989. I tested using a kit from Boots which gave a positive result only a few days after my period was due. Can't remember what it cost but it was not expensive.

From memory I think it warned that if done very soon after the missed date it might give a false negative but not a false positive.

My mum has said several times that she could easily have had a miscarriage and not known about it. She said sometimes your period is late and you think maybe, then it comes and you think well I'm not then. She's 70.
I found out I was pregnant with dd at 3 weeks 4 days and I'm currently 4 weeks 5 days pregnant. Both times I've absolutely loved my babies from the word go and would have been/ would be devastated at a loss. Does that mean I would rather not know until later? Not really. My 1st was planned so I was already taking folic acid etc but my 2nd wasn't quite so I'm glad I knew early for that reason.
Everything changes over generations, pregnancy is no different I suppose.
It would also be a massive benefit to know early if you decide not to proceed with the pregnancy.

I’ve had 1 MC 4 years ago and it honestly devastated me. I consider myself a strong person. I lost my father young, my mum has dementia, I’ve been through a divorce, yet I needed cbt to fully cope with the grief of a 12 wk MC. I felt totally isolated as no-one wanted to acknowledge what ha happened - I still find it’s a taboo and people still get awkward if I mention it. At the time I had an ERPC. My mother in law said that would be good as I would be ‘cleared out’ and could get start trying again. Definitely different attitudes.

Slightly off topic but when I found out I was pregnant my MIL asked if I had been to the GP to have it confirmed and seemed unbelieving of the fact that I was sure because of the test. She still thought that GPS did blood tests and she was born late 40s. So I think it shows for certain generations they wouldn't have had this confirmation of pregnancy before the early miscarriage happened.

I'm supposed to take progesterone if I ever manage to get pregnant naturally again, so testing early would be beneficial for me. I don't bother because I think the chances are small.

My first mc was devastating, even though I had only known for a few days. I didn't know then how common it was as it's not something people talk about. For my second mc a few months later I don't know I was pregnant until the mc, when I passed the sac. So it couldn't just be passed off as a heavy period. I actually felt OK about the 2nd one, thinking it was further evidence that I could get pregnant. But to the best of my knowledge, in the 9 years since then, I've never had another naturally conceived pregnancy.

For me now, having DD, I don't consider either of those previous pregnancies to have been my babies. They were just something that never was. But I understand that everyone's feelings are different and no one should be belittled for being upset at a mc, however early it was.

I’m of that generation, home testing didn’t exist and GP wouldn’t test before 2 missed periods. I would not have considered myself pregnant under 8-12 weeks. My first pregnancy EDD was moved. I’d counted a blood loss as a period when it actually wasn’t. Just an early bleed of no consequence.
I agree with Laiste

Lass I am talking about early and mid 80s. I can't remember exactly when it changed, but I do remember, I actually think it was 1978, and I went to the GP. You could not get early testing then and pregnancy tests were expensive over the counter. I assume it is while the test was still under patent, because the costs changed dramatically quite suddenly.

I remember my mum having a miscarriage, I was very young and she went to bed as soon as she came in from work, she then asked me to get her a basin and a bit later to take it away from her, it had clots of blood in it. I called the doctor who came and examined my mum and asked to see the contents of the basin. I think my mum went back to work the next day - or maybe the one after that. It was in the mid 60s and she had no choice as she wouldn't get any sick pay and we were poor. As a family we were very sad about it and we talked about the baby a lot. it was a boy. It would have been called Patrick - we said we'd had a baby brother that he had died in mum's womb and miscarried. This has stayed with me ever since all my life perhaps because I had to help my mum with it at such a young age.

. I tested using a kit from Boots which gave a positive result only a few days after my period was due. Can't remember what it cost but it was not expensive.

From memory I think it warned that if done very soon after the missed date it might give a false negative but not a false positive.
It may have said that on the test, but they still cannot guarantee no false positives (now estimated at 99% accurate), so that wasn't the case in the 1980's.

I am mid 50s and everyone I know used home tests. They were around £7-8 in 1991.

My 54 and you generally didn’t tell people you were pregnant until the 3 month mark.

In 1987 I had an ectopic pregnancy and one evening whilst still in hospital, I was a bit upset and was actually asked by the nurse, what on earth I was crying about as it wasn’t a real baby! My GP advised me not to tell people I’d been pregnant as they wouldn’t really understand that there had actually been ‘something’ there as at that stage it was just a cluster of cells

Makes me furious typing that 30 years later

The worst was when I had my DS 5 years later, one elderly relative refused to attend the christening as he was an IVF baby and they didn’t believe he was a child of Gods !

I think life was harder then. You had less money, less help. They were realists mostly. It streams from a time where a lot of children didn't survive infancy.

My grandmother and her sisters were the same.

One of her sisters buried her miscarried baby in the back garden of her house

The world and the people in it have changed!

"I think life was harder then. You had less money, less help. They were realists mostly. It streams from a time where a lot of children didn't survive infancy."

When is then?

BestisWest I am talking about late 70s/early 80s

It is interesting because my personal experience does actually support some of these theories even though I disagree with them on an emotional level.

Because I knew that we have higher chances of miscarriage I have not yet thought of any of mine and DH's three pregnancies as being a baby. I haven't pinned down a concrete due date and although I've joined in conversations e.g. on mumsnet about the due month, I've only really thought about it as a potential pregnancy.

With our first one, DH got really excited and wanted to go and look around baby shops, talk about names, he announced to family, etc. This I was all OK with, but he was totally crushed when we lost the first one, and refused to do any of that with the second, which we lost again. Now we have our third he has started to do this but after we've got past the point we lost at before. I'm feeling more hopeful for this one, but still don't really think of it as an actual baby, and I don't know when that will happen. I am a little bit anxious at this sudden change and wonder if we lose this one a little later on whether it's going to be as hard for him as the first, or even worse.

Although obviously I've been upset by both of our losses, it's been more the lost pregnancy to me than a lost baby, the frustration at the lost time and chance more than anything else. The due dates didn't bother me when they came around and I see it as a matter of fact thing, I even find that other people's sympathy is more upsetting to me. So for me, this idea of not being heavily invested, not thinking of it as a "baby", has helped me to cope better - but I just can't support this as blanket advice. I'll happily explain that it worked for me if somebody is asking, but I'd never expect everyone to be the same. Partly because I think this is just my personality - I'm always optimistic anyway so it helps for me to put a downer on myself to keep my optimism in check and doesn't depress me. The problem isn't on my side, so it's not something I can take personally, which I know is incredibly hard for a lot of women struggling with repeated miscarriage. I think that some people struggle more with negative thoughts and can get themselves into a really low mood when trying hard not to be positive and so for them, positive thinking is more helpful. People are just different - and I absolutely don't think I've got it "sussed" or that my reaction is any better or more right than somebody else's. I would much rather that somebody like me is given support and sympathy they don't need, than that someone who really needs the sympathy is treated coldly. I don't know how I will react to any potential miscarriage in the future - if I do have more, I might find them harder, or just react in a different way.

It is not snowflakey at all to experience sadness, and loss, and grief about the loss of a much-wanted pregnancy (or even a surprise one!) whatever stage it happens at. It's also not strong or smart or unfeeling not to be very upset by it - it's just a different reaction to a different situation.

Not read the whole thread BUT I wholeheartedly agree with the stiff upper lip sentiment . I recently learnt that my Great Great GM lost her youngest daughter aged 8 and it changed her irrevocably . She turned into an unloving and sad woman

I always argue with my Mum on this stuff an after that our talking sharing culture has its advantages.

I would not have considered myself pregnant under 8-12 weeks
If you’ve spent some of those weeks vomiting, do you tell yourself you have a bug?