I am currently 7 and a half months pregnant.
My sister recently had a miscarriage at 10 weeks. She had some spotting over several days, went for an early scan, and was told that the baby had never developed beyond the first four weeks or so. She was advised just to wait for it to pass naturally, which it did a week or so later.
We were all totally devastated for her. It was a much wanted baby, and she and her husband were understandably hugely excited about it.
I found it very hard to know how to support her in the weeks that followed her miscarriage, because I knew she might find the fact of me being pregnant hard to deal with, and I also expected she didn’t want to upset me by talking about miscarriage while I was pregnant. Probably as a result of this, she hadn’t said a word to me since it happened until today, either by text or phone (which is quite unusual because we spoke every day before).
I’ve been checking in with her by text. At first it was every couple of days, more recently every 3-4 days as she hasn’t been replying. Nothing she needs to reply to, just messages saying things like ‘thinking of you’ and ‘love you’. I also sent her a box of her favourite luxury cosmetics and a couple of other bits like new pyjamas and a face mask she likes. I didn’t expect any acknowledgment of these and didn’t mind her not texting me etc, because I felt like it was up to her to decide how she wants to communicate. I just wanted her to know I was thinking of her.
Anyway - that would all have been totally fine, except that today she has sent me a really long email (we never email each other) saying she is really disappointed in how I have responded to her miscarriage. Her specific concerns are that she thinks I shouldn’t have sent ‘normal’ messages in the family WhatsApp because that was insensitive, and that I told our mum I didn’t want to hear details of her miscarriage.
The text messages thing feels unfair, because for about a week after it happened nobody sent messages on the family WhatsApp (very unusual for us). After a week or so after it happened my mum started sending very gentle things (photos of nice countryside, videos of her goats etc) and so I sent a couple of pictures of my garden. Nothing that required a response etc. Other people in the family have also texted on that group in the last week or so.
The bit about telling mum I didn’t want to hear details was because one evening my mum was forwarding to me the messages my sister was sending her describing the actual mechanics of the miscarriage. I did tell my mum that I would prefer not to receive these because it felt like a breach of my sister’s privacy, and because it was distressing to me while pregnant. It wasn’t a fight at all - mum apologised and stopped, and we carried on chatting about other things. But I assume she must have told my sister what I said (I have no idea why she would do this).
Anyway - sorry for the essay. My question is, what do I do now? I don’t really think I have done anything wrong, but I also don’t want to hurt my sister when she’s hurting already. Do I apologise to keep the peace? Do I tell her I don’t think I have been unfair but that I appreciate she is hurt anyway and needs some time / space? Do I ignore? We’re close and I hate to leave something festering, but I’m happy to take the hit and apologise when I know she’s going through such a tough time. What I don’t want is for there to be a narrative that I’ve been selfish and mean when I have really tried very hard not to be.