To think a miscarriage is not ‘basically the same’ as an abortion?

[AnneTwackie]

I told an old friend that I’m having a hard time because of a miscarriage and she said she said that my hormones must be haywire because hers were last year after her abortion. I said it’s completely different circumstances and she said ‘yeah but basically the same thing’. Yes she’s insensitive, but is she right i.e the hormones?

Having read the remainder of the replies now it has occurred to me that one of the main lessons I learnt whilst going through the horror of a missed miscarriage over 3 weeks was don't empathise or sympathise by with someone going though it by monopolising the conversation with a recounting of your own experience UNLESS the person actually asks you.

It really really pissed me off that people would say 'oh I'm sorry to hear about your baby (so far so good) and then 'when it happened to me blah blah blah bloody blah' to the point where I was sympathising with them and in my head I was screaming Shut Up - I don't give a fuck about your situation from 5 / 10 / 20 / 40 years ago - I am in it right now!

My own family were the worst offenders tbh.

I know they meant no harm etc etc before I get ripped assunder but it would have been far easier emotionally on me if they just said sorry it's shit this is happening. and then shut up.

This is what I really try to do now if I find myself in that situation

I had a termination at 17 weeks and actually physically it didn’t feel like my hormones fell off a cliff. I was still breast feeding my son though so maybe that helped 🤷‍♀️

I think a lot of posters are confusing common usage of a word and literal meaning. We tend to use the word abortion to mean a medical abortion, whereas the actual meaning of the word abortion is the ending of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus before it can survive outside the uterus.

A miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion. Our body can't tell the difference so the physiological response will be the same. Obviously, the emotional response may be very different, depending on the woman's feelings about the pregnancy.

Not every miscarriage is expelled

I have had two MMCs (Missed Miscarriages, discovered at c11-12 weeks which both had to managed medically by the equivalent technique to a termination

And yes, my hormones were all over the place

An abortion can be devastating for the woman who feels she has to have one.

I was mortified when I read my medical record to find that my miscarriage was noted as a 'spontaneous abortion', I didn't realise that this was the correct term for it.

I agree with PP that she is a bit insensitive though

So many sad memories but stayorgonow even though the hormonal changes you and I have gone through may be similar I would not say your experience of losing a baby and my experience of losing the dream of a baby are comparable either. I am sorry that happened to you.
caperplips I suppose no one knows what to say. I don’t know what I want people to say so how should they.

@prettybird - Not every miscarriage is expelled

I think technically it is not a miscarriage until the expulsion happens. The majority of missed (or delayed) miscarriages will, if left to their own devices, pass naturally within a month or two but obviously that is not something most woman would want to endure.

Sorry for your losses.

I think she just worded it poorly and meant to it was biologically the same. Obviously it would be emotionally different. Not necessarily better or worse but just different. I hope your ok

@desperadodan I’m sorry, I hope you have someone in real life to talk to about it, you sound traumatised.

OP, you have an awful friend who is trying to feel better about her decision. She hasn’t got a clue how you feel. On the road to recovery, avoid her for a while

scrapbookqueen1 Thank you, but I’m not upset by my friend. She’s straight talking and phrases things in an unusual way but she wouldn’t do me harm. I was just interested to hear other’s opinions on the similarities, thanks for your kind responses.

Every pregnancy is different, and the same holds true for those which unfortunately end prematurely. It sounds to me as though your friend was trying to sympathize, but did so clumsily and has unwittingly put her finger right onto one of those sensitive and sore spots.

I've miscarried a number of times. I underwent a medical procedure very untactfully referred to as 'Evacuation of the Retained Products of Conception'. Essentially this is an abortion, only my baby was already dead. Abortion is also the medical terminology for miscarriage, which I know some women also find upsetting. In this sensitive situation, even the normal medical language used to refer to it is found by some women to be deeply upsetting, cold and clinical; even offensive. I'm very much a matter-of-fact type, so it troubled me less.

I'm sorry you're going through this. Miscarriage is extremely traumatic - abortion must be too - but the loss of an unborn baby that's desperately wanted is one of life's most painful experiences.

shes a bit honest and dark. cool.its what you like about her.cool...write it off and dont get into emotions with her again tho. telling her shes upset you probably wont get you anywhere-and she wont understand because in her head she wasnt trying to upset you.
even if there are similarities in biological reaction,your emotional one is very personal. If youre on bedrest it means its spinning round your mind in a loop probably. do you have a less insensitive confident? pen n paper can be more theraputic actually-the thing about expressing yourself to people is they form opinions and jump in to speak when really youre in turmoil and still processing. talkings good,when your ready. i am sorry for your loss.and you honestly dont think you need it unvalidated as anything less. xx

One of the best comments on this thread:

I think there's enough pain to go round for everybody

Sad, but true. And there's no sense in apportioning percentage-shares of it depending on what manner of experience led to that loss. They are all losses. And we're all sentient, feeling human beings and not receptacles.

This by no means denigrates the OP's feelings. Of course it's going to be hurtful to hear this.

You know what I found weird when I was miscarrying? I was still bleeding from the miscarriage and my body must have been ovulating as about 2 weeks after the mc bleeding stopped I had a period. Didn’t get another period as I was pregnant again.

I don’t know about abortion as I’ve never had one but after my two mcs I had this overwhelming urge to be pregnant again as soon as I could.

I don’t know about abortion as I’ve never had one but after my two mcs I had this overwhelming urge to be pregnant again as soon as I could.

Yes yes yes

Hormonally it is the same, yes. A miscarriage is essentially a spontaneous abortion or if you have a missed miscarriage, you generally have the same treatment a woman would have for an abortion. I had to have an ERPC after my missed miscarriage and was placed top of the list before abortion patients.

Emotionally not the same of course. You wanted this baby very much and now are grieving. She didn’t want the baby so chose to end the pregnancy. Two entirely different things mentally.

I am so sorry for your loss .

Abortions can actually be worse emotionally. Abortions are often followed by regret and extreme emotional trauma and grief that the woman cannot express like a woman can after a miscarriage.

Miscarriages are awful too, but thy don’t carry the extra baggage like shame and regret on top of the grief like abortions do. There is no support at all.

Physically, if the abortion is a medical one, she’s right it is basically like a miscarriage. The woman takes the medication to induce a miscarriage. So really, it is the same in that way.
The hormones after an abortion can take even longer to settle, because if it was a healthy pregnancy the pregnancy hormone levels would have been much higher in a woman that had an abortion than a miscarriage, because the miscarriage ended naturally and hormone levels would have started dropping before the miscarriage occurred iyswim.

I’m no minimising how awful miscarriage can be, but abortion carries its own unique emotional struggles afterwards.

after my two mcs I had this overwhelming urge to be pregnant again as soon as I could.

This highlights the difference. Someone who has had an abortion did not want to be pregnant so ended it. Someone who has a miscarriage wanted the baby, it was taken out of their hands so yeah, of course that person wants to get pregnant again ASAP.

Having said that, I have a friend who had an abortion last year because she had only just met her BF and it wasn’t the right time. Fair enough, no judgements but she purposely got pregnant again a month later .

Not everyone experiences regret when they have a termination. For some people, it is the right decision at that time and they never give it a backward glance.

Everyone is different

I'm sorry OP. It's such a personal thing, I know people who've recovered quickly from MC and others who've been floored literally for years, same with abortion. So even someone who on the surface has been through the same might not feel the same way / level of pain.

I had an MMC at 13 weeks, baby had died at 10/11 and I'd had no signs whatsoever so found out at scan. Having to walk past all those pregnant women on the way out with their little images and happy smiles was so hard, knowing I'd been carrying what was going to be my baby around inside me, dead, for weeks. I then had ERPC / basically the abortion process as my body was showing no signs of a natural miscarriage. The process itself was probably a lot easier, no blood or seeing the baby come out or the associated trauma, but the GA took its toll and the hormonal fallout was insane - I even came out in a huge crop of hundreds of acne-like pustules, literally covering every centimetre of my face and chest, about 6 weeks later. I also felt guilty about not letting nature take its course.

AnnTwackie thank you and I’m sorry for your loss
I was traumatised at the time (18 months ago) and have recently started councilling for other issues but we have covered my miscarriage. I think I was so devastated because I always wanted more children but didn’t think it would happen, I was 41 and believed it to be a minor miracle. I don’t get tearful about it anymore but I find it hard when I see newborns or imagine how old my baby would be now.
A pp said she didn’t like to hear about other women’s experiences whilst going through the misery of miscarriage. I was the opposite, it made me feel less of a failure when I spoke to other women who had lost babies.
I wish you the very best of luck and hope you go on to have successful pregnancies

AnneTwackie that should be!!! On phone and rushing!