If you had a miscarriage 1/2/5/10/20+ years ago... (TW for the obvious reason)

[EssentialHummus]

If you had a miscarriage some time ago, how do you feel about it now? How often if at all do you think about the child you would have had, or the circumstances around your loss?

I suffered a loss last year, around the time that covid hit the UK. So we're now just over a year on. I'm pregnant again and touch wood this time things are progressing well, and tbh I feel very lucky as I'm expecting twins. But I still think about my loss quite a bit - sometimes with sadness, sometimes (especially lately) in a more pragmatic/constructive way, ie it led to my current circumstances. For fullness, my MC led to my marriage going into a tailspin that took a long time (and therapy) to resolve, and it destroyed a close friendship (because my friend was so foul and lacking in empathy about it all that I couldn't continue). But it also allowed me to build a stronger marriage, and to create and run a really interesting small charity that is going well and helping a lot of people.

I feel that my feelings are normal, if maybe a bit on the emotional side, especially as I know women who have had many losses and had to endure far worse. But I'm interested - if you've had a MC however long ago, how do you feel about it now?

(And no, it's not really AIBU, but I'm very much "the more this topic is talked about/out in the open, the better") - so here it is on the busiest bit of MN.

I had 2 missed miscarriages in 2011 and 2012. I already had two children.

I think about them often, esp in recent years once we'd decided we weren't going to try again - it made me yearn for them even more I think. Hope that doesn't sound bad, just felt so unfair.

But yes, I always think of them the day we found out they'd gone and the day they were due x

I had a miscarriage at 11 weeks, 7 years ago. I didn't know I was pregnant and I very much didn't want to be, it was a contraceptive failure. So I very rarely think about it, and if I do it's with a kind of... neutral relief?

I can imagine it's very, very very different if it's a wanted and planned for baby, though. Or even if it's not, of course - I was just very lucky enough to be in the headspace that the miscarriage was by far the better outcome for me.

I have friends who run the full gamut of feelings about it - from talking to her subsequent children talk about the sibling that would have come before on every anniversary, due date, etc 10 years later (which I admit, I find a little bit sad for her children) to being pragmatic and 'it happens' and not being particularly upset.

There's no 'right' way to feel. It's how you process grief (if it is grief you feel - that's also not required) and how you feel about it is the important part. If it feels important to you to hold space for that memory and mourn it, that's fine. If it's also important for you to be able to see how that has positively affected your life in the long run, that's also fine and a healthy way of viewing it. But if you viewed it as having been a devastating and traumatic event that you can't really get over, that's completely normal too.

Sending love to all the women in this thread who still struggle with these memories.

I had a similar experience to queenMab99 when I had a still birth 43 years ago.

The baby was taken away from me as soon as it was born so I never saw him/her and never learned the baby's sex. The baby wasn't named and didn't have a funeral.

No one talked about it and it was almost dismissed as a non event by everyone both medical and family.

I went to my ILs a couple of weeks afterwards and it was as if it hadn't happened no one mentioned it and I was too overwhelmed to say anything; in fact there was another family member at ILs who asked me how long I had till the baby was due because no one had told her I'd lost the baby.

I don't think about it often but when I do the whole thing still makes me angry and sad.

I went on to lose another pregnancy at 4 months - what was then called a 'missed abortion' - I think it's called a less unpleasant term now, and then a miscarriage at 9 weeks.

I only had about three months between each pregnancy, which I think was a big mistake for me as I never had time to really grieve properly or come to terms with what happened.

I did however, go on to have three healthy babies but suffered quite severe pnd with the first one, something that I'm sure was the result of all that had happened.

It's good to see that so much has changed around miscarriage and particularly still birth, and that mothers now get to hold their babies, name them and give them a proper burial and are given the chance to say goodbye.

I had one 7 years ago. I was incredibly upset at the time as it was an ivf pregnancy and it had taken a very long time and a lot of prodding, poking and jumping through hoops to see that second line on a pregnancy test. The best healing for me came from a later successful pregnancy, and time, which really does heal.

3 miscarriages - one before emotionally first and two in a row after my second.

Feel guilty about the first as I had spent weeks being upset at falling pregnant on the pill. I didn't realise I wanted it until it was gone. That was 7 years ago now and still feel the same.

Second MC was the worst. Planned pregnancy, all seemed to be going well, many people in my 'mum group' were also pregnant. Then lost it at 12 weeks, it was physically and emotionally awful. In a way, I'm glad lockdown happened as it gave me the best reason in the world to not have to slap on a smile whilst everyone else had their healthy babies. I still am having a hard time processing it, especially how bad/scary it became at one point (genuinely thought I was going to bleed to death in my bathroom).

Third one happened at 6 weeks. At this point I was just apathetic about the whole thing. Came very close to giving up but fell pregnant one last time and it seems to be going OK. I can't relax, even though I'm now 9 months gone, I dont think you ever really do after losses. They still affect me, but I am also very lucky that I have had children regardless of those losses. I will not be going through another pregnancy even if I wanted to.

Mine was 12 years ago and I rarely think about it, it was traumatic (MMC and heammoaraghe so??).

I don’t really feel any sadness about it, have 3 DC now, just a memory of it being a shit time in life.

I had a MC 10 years ago at 7 weeks + 3 and was absolutely devastated at the time and found it really tough, it was my first pregnancy. I literally shut myself away for 2 weeks and didn’t speak to anyone apart from DP and didn’t go to work. I became pregnant again the following month and had a full term healthy pregnancy.
Now I don’t think about it that often unless the subject is spoken about , I remember how sad I was, what happened and my due date but it isn’t something that stirs up sadness in me now.
It made me very anxious with following pregnancies but its not something that would make me cry or feel overly sad to talk or think about now.

I think I'm a little from the norm here. I had 2 miscarriages around 6 months apart, 14 years ago. Both were early miscarriages in unplanned pregnancies, where a medication I was taking stopped my birth control from working and no one pointed that out and 17/18 year old me was too know it all to read the leaflet and thought the first time was a one off.

At the time, I was honestly relieved, a few years later I became sad and dealt with the trauma it actually caused once I had the maturity to deal with it. When I had DC 1 and 2 I then spent a lot of time considering who those babies would have been now, what they would have been like etc.

However overall, my feelings towards both are very neutral, whilst they clearly caused my distress both in the moment and some years after, I do believe I would feel very differently if they had been planned pregnancies.

My second son was stillborn 44 years ago this week. If I’m honest I think about him a lot sometimes and I go for months without thinking about him. It was such a long time ago and I was a different person then.

I’ve had 3, 2 of which I don’t really think of, they were early and no more than a period to deal with really. They must have been devastating at the time. The one I do think of was the last one, almost 5 years ago, at about 11 weeks and it was awful. My initial response to your question was I don’t think of that child either really but I’ve realised with a bit of a jolt that that’s not really true. I think the whole thing was so traumatic and sudden that that’s my overriding memory, the fact it was a child I lost almost feels secondary. I was in the house alone when I suddenly started bleeding more heavily than I can quite believe now. I went to hospital in an ambulance, had a d & c and that seemed to be that. Until I tried to get up to go to the loo and I collapsed and needed a giant blood transfusion. I felt myself giving in to my death, it felt very relaxed and inevitable, I could hear the people around me talking about cardiac arrest and it wasn’t until the next day I realised they were talking about me. The whole thing messed with my head hugely, I felt enormous guilt for giving in and being so willing to die when I would have been leaving my dc and dh behind. I was physically weak for a far longer time afterwards than I expected, physically it took me about 6 months to get my strength back. We’ve since had 2 yo dd and realised that I spent a lot of last year thinking we should be going through lockdown with a 4 yo. Dd had an enormously difficult first year with reflux and cmpa which no one would help us with. She pretty much just screamed for a year. That got me down enormously and it was then really that I started to think about the dc that we’d lost, more in a wishful thinking, god I wish I was past the baby stage, kind of way. I did have terrible PND which I think was inevitable really because of how difficult a baby she was, but also I think it was made worse because of all the unresolved trauma. My sil suffered a stillbirth at the end of last year and I’m ashamed to say I was scared to talk to her about it. I’m still not really ready to talk about my own experience and I just found the idea of it too much to handle. I’ve since sat with her and looked at her photos which I know are so precious to her but I found it staggeringly difficult.

I think it depends on the circumstances.
I had an abortion young and it destroyed me for years.
I know it's not the same I had little choices it felt forced.
I had a miscarriage between my two DC.
I never think about it, I was very matter of fact about it and I know if the pregnancy went ahead we'd have never had DS so it evened the loss and gain.

11 years ago , I cried everyday for the 9 months I should have been pregnant I waited for those 9 months to conceive again . I know that sounds dramatic I wasn't crying all day everyday but did become a bit low . I think about it rarely now mostly around the time it happened . Baby that came after is the light of my life and wouldn't have had her if I hadn't had the miscarriage

I had a missed miscarriage 5 years ago the embryo never passed 5 weeks but I was 13+4 at my scan before I found out. Although I knew from the minute I got my positive test there wasn't going to be a baby, I can't explain it it was a heavy gut feeling and I told the sonographer I knew something was wrong before she started the scan.

I was really depressed in the months following and thought I would never get over it until i fell pregnant 6 months later. My anxiety during that pregnancy was horrendous but I was given extra midwife appointments towards the end for peace of mind which actually picked up a problem that almost killed myself and my baby. If it hadn't been for my anxiety I wouldn't have had that appointment and it may not have been picked up.

Now I don't really think about my miscarriage but when I do I get upset. As terrible as it sounds I don't really think about it as a baby I lost but as a terrible experience I went through and that's what I get upset about. The baby I had following that pregnancy is now 4 and after what we went through I am extremely protective of her and have a lot of health anxiety about her. If I hadn't had a miscarriage I wouldn't have her and that doesn't bare thinking about (I know that if I hadn't miscarried I would have a child that I love just as much as I love her).

I had 5 losses - 3 before my first child and 2 before the second...

I have now half moved on. I am more open talking about them and the only time i stop and think more seriously is christmas day... as my first loss was due christmas day 2010... so instead of a 9yo I could have a 11 year old...

I had an 8 week miscarriage about 20 years ago. At the time it was devastating because we’d been TTC for 18 months. But I became pregnant with DD a few months later, and if the previous pregnancy hadn’t ended then she would never have been born - so it’s impossible for me to regret it.

And as it happens something very traumatic happened to me in between the miscarriage and conceiving DD. I wouldn’t have wanted to go through it while pregnant.

I had one around 20 years ago. I regarded it as just one of those things, which I believe was quite a common view then. I took a week off work (the only time I have ever been signed off); the GP was a bloke and also very pragmatic.

I think I was about 8 weeks' gone. It was painful and confined me to the house for the week. DP was pretty callous, thinking about it now. I didn't want to tell my own mother and DP didn't want to tell his.

I can discuss it openly if miscarriages are a topic of conversation but otherwise rarely think about it. I had a DD in the end so never felt any real sense of loss.

I suppose everyone's different and affected in various ways, both medically and emotionally.

I had 3 miscarriages, all around the 10 week mark, between 3 & 4 years ago. I was very sad at the time but it helped me immensely to focus on my older child, now I am appreciative that the loss of those pregnancies is why i now have my lovely DD who arrived since then. I feel an odd pang occasionally but am generally que sera sera about it, and very grateful for the two happy children I have.

I had a miscarriage 33 years ago, gave birth 25 years ago to DD and another miscarriage 22 years ago. I do think about the miscarriages occasionally. You never get over the grief but you learn how to live with it.

As terrible as it sounds I don't really think about it as a baby I lost but as a terrible experience I went through and that's what I get upset about.

I do sort of feel this a bit. I think I would have felt differently if further along in pregnancy. By the third mc in a year I wasnt expecting it to stick anyway.

It’s such a personal thing. I had a miscarriage at 8 weeks about 15 years ago and I feel the same way about it as I did then. I hadn’t really lost anything, it was just something that can happen. I had another at about 4 weeks and felt the same. It really didn’t affect me.

But had I been trying for a second child and had a miscarriage I would have felt differently. If I had been trying for a long time, it would be a problem. And knowing how I think, I would probably still have some struggles dealing with it after ten years.

There is no right or wrong way to feel. I know I was judged for not being upset about it, but thankfully I tend not to worry about judgey people.

I had two miscarriages, both 9/10 years ago. They were hard to endure at the time, but I felt talking about what I was going through helped a lot. I don't really think of those pregnancies as babies though - I think of them as miscarriages. My younger son was born on the due date of one of the first, and that helps. I feel like he was the child who made it, against all the odds. I found his pregnancy very tough and I didn't engage with it much. I used to sit in the bath every night crying and promising him I'd take good care of him if he made it.... He did, and I do. Good luck with your pregancy, I hope the safe healthy birth of your twins brings you peace (I'm sure it will).

I've had 6 losses and 2 children. They were mostly about a decade ago but the most recent one was maybe 5 years ago.
At the time I was very sad about the 2 miscarriages which needed ERPC. 2 were self-resolving before 8 weeks and I was resigned to those. The other 2 were ectopic and while I was sad I was more conscious of how dangerous those can be.

I never think about my losses as actual babies. I do still feel sore about the years I felt ttc and how hard that was. I envy to this day women who had their families with ease, and I do wish we had had another one, but I am also much more able to focus on what I do have than what I don't.

I had a loss at 7 weeks between DC1 and DC2. It was drawn out and horrible so when it finally ended I think I mostly felt relief. We did go on to have our DC2 soon after and she's so amazing that I would never want anything to be different because I wouldn't want any path of events where she didn't exist, if that makes sense. But all the same I do think of my little lost one from time to time - not with sadness, but just as a kind of nod to that little life that did, very briefly, live inside me, and I have a tiny star hidden in my living room decor that's just little seed of their existence in our lives.

I had 5 - between 20-12 years ago

I do sometimes think about them but I wouldn;t have the kids I have now - one conceived after the first, one after the second and one after the 5th - and I wouldn't change that.

I was very sad when I lost the pregnancies but not overly so - I think I'm quiet a pragmatic person - so in my head it happened so I could have the 3 I got - the others were not meant to be.

I had one miscarriage between number 1 & 2. At the time it was a really bad time and I was very upset. My husband was equally as upset. But I don’t think about the miscarriage so much these days because I wouldn’t have number 2 & 3 now if the MC was a successful pregnancy.