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 miscarried my first baby at 18 weeks 10 years ago. It was one of the hardest and saddest things I have ever gone through and I do think about that baby often. I got pregnant with my son around the time of my first babies due date. I do have very mixed feelings as know that I couldn’t have both of them, and absolutely adore my 9 year old. But I do see children in the year above him and wonder what my first baby boy would have been like, who he would have been friends with etc. On the other hand I and another miscarriage 6 years ago at 7/8 weeks shortly before getting pregnant with my daughter that I very rarely think about. I think with that pregnancy I hadn’t had any scans and was naturally cautious after the first loss, so hadn’t really started to see that pregnancy as a baby. I was upset at the timr buy certaimly didn’t grieve in the same way.

I had 2 between DD1 & DS, both at around 11 weeks. DS is 15 now. Looking back I feel like it was all part of the process to get him, an 18 month pregnancy if you see what I mean. We knew we had a chromosome issue that made miscarriage more likely though so I think I was always almost expecting it. It was hard to get through at the time, don't get me wrong but his and subsequently Dd2's problem free arrival made it so much easier to bear. I used to think things like "oh really you should be 2 by now" or "DD should've been a big sister at x age" but honestly it is years since anything like that crossed my mind.

I’ve had a couple of losses but the one 7 years ago sticks in my mind and it took me the best part of 3 years to be anywhere near normal again. I was only 9 weeks but I was rushed into hospital as I lost so much blood. The bathroom looked like a murder scene and it took me a long time to get over it. My other loss was I guess more “normal” if you can call it that? I don’t really think about that one very often.

I think about it whenever DS has had a birthday as the baby was due a few weeks after he turned 10. I've never had another though, it may have been different if I had.

The baby would be 5 this month.

I had one maybe 4 years ago when I was 8-9 weeks pregnant. I was devastated at the time and was for about a month and then the pain eased.

Three months after the loss we started trying again and it took 10 months to get pregnant and that time it led to a live baby.

I don’t really think about it because if I hadn’t had that loss my second born wouldn’t be here, and I can’t imagine a world where he was never born.

Yours is new.
I don't think about mine at all now, it was between Ds1 and Ds2.

Mine was about 25 years ago. I honestly never think of it unless other people talk about miscarriage. It was in between the children I have now. It was hard at the time, but obviously it wasn't meant to be, and the children I do have were. I wouldn't change it, because if I did I wouldn't have one of the children I do have, and there's no way I would not want them in my life. But I am not someone that lives with 'what ifs'. I much prefer to look to what could be in the future, rather than what could have been had things turned out differently.

I miscarried my first pregnancy about 5 years ago. I still think about it a few times a month. I conceived my DS immediately afterwards and I always think about the fact that if I had not mc the first pregnancy he wouldn't be here. Can't imagine life without him!

I had mine 3.5yrs ago. Tbh, it didn't really affect me too much. I found out I was pregnant on the Monday and miscarried on the Saturday, so I didn't have much time to get my head around being pregnant before it happened. I was a bit sad about it but figured that it wasn't meant to be. I was very lucky though, as I conceived my dd 2 months later. Nowadays I don't give it much thought. Although I did think about it last week and wondered if it had been a boy or girl, and what they would've been like.

Mine was 13 years ago, it was my first pregnancy, I have since gone on to have 2 children. The grief was terrible for the first year or so, and then became a knot of pain that was always there. It wasn’t until my second was born and I knew that my family was ‘complete’ and I didn’t want any more children that the pain lessened. Now I don’t really think about it, unless I’m hearing about someone else’s miscarriage, then I will often become quite tearful as it brings back the memories, but it no longer impacts me emotionally day to day. If I’d had that baby then I wouldn’t have had my first and I do sometimes have days when I wonder what would have been.

I’ve had multiple first trimester miscarriages and I rarely think of them now and when I do, I feel quite detached from the whole experience. I couldn’t tell you my due dates any more and I can’t imagine the family I’ve ended up having being any different (or better!) which maybe explains why. But the emotional hurt at the time was intense.

My loss was 2 years ago since March. Not a day goes by without me thinking what age they would be and what stage they would be at etc. I have 2 other children, 4 & 10 but still, it’s every day. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. I’ve decided to stop at two and not try again because I don’t think I could take the pain if it happened again or the fear throughout w pregnancy

I had two miscarriages around 15 years ago. I already had children and I another after.
I was sad at the time but philosophical. I was quite old in child bearing terms. I don't give them a second thought now. Far more distressing events have occurred since then.

I had a miscarriage 29 years ago. I think about the extra child I should have had infrequently now. The loss no longer upsets me but I went on to have three children after that first loss. I think I would feel differently had I not been able to have children.

I had a miscarriage a little over 15 years ago. I was young and had just started uni. It wasn't the right time at all to have had a baby. I was on my first placement on my nursing degree - on placement with the health visitor. I started bleeding on the Wednesday whilst I was visiting a home for young, homeless mothers. It was the most embarrassing thing ever. We were sitting in the kitchen, the woman who ran the place was telling me and another student nurse about the charity or organisation. The phone rang, she got up to answer it, tapped me on the shoulder and just pointed to the chair where I was bleeding. I cleaned myself up and went home. I stayed in bed for two days with the heaviest bleeding and the worst cramps I had ever had in my life. I went out with some friends on the Friday night. I was back on my placement, with the health visitor, visiting new mums, on the Monday. I'd only just found out I was pregnant. I hadn't told anyone and to this day, no-ones about the miscarriage.

I had a gynae placement later on in my training and struggled to see why women were so upset that they had miscarried. At the time, I was pleased.

It was a few years later that it hit me. And even now, I sometimes cry in privacy about it, so I try not to think about it. I think it's hard though because all I want now is to be a mum. I think about that time and think maybe that was my chance, maybe I have lost my chance to be a mum.

3 and then had DC1 and another miscarriage and DC2.

Think about it at times - as to what if - but then I have 2 fab DCS now which I would not have if the first 3 had stuck.

Have always had the philosophy they happened for a reason and no regrets, wonder about a girl but....

Ten years ago. Totally devastated at the time to the point of feeling suicidal. These days, I remember and I still think of that child but it isn’t painful. I do wish people acknowledged it though.

Barely even think about it tbh. It wasn't meant to be. Why waste previous joyous moments overthinking

I had a MC 9 years ago. I think about it regularly, I wonder what my third child would have been like, what they'd enjoy doing, etc. I also had thoughts over the past year of "I'm glad I only had one child to homeschool during the pandemic" (dd1 is an adult).

It took me a LONG time to get over my miscarriage. I could barely even say the word for about a year. It took me about 3 years before I could think about it without crying. I think what made mine so difficult for me to get over was that it had been an accidental pregnancy which I desperately wanted, but DH did not. So he was relieved while I was experiencing the worst grief I've ever felt. And he refused to try again, so there's no rainbow baby to help ease the pain. There was just pain and resentment, for a long time.

I sometimes think how my eldest’s life would have been different; not caught up in last year’s A level chaos and non-existent freshers experience in particular.
I’ve had 3 miscarriages. I crave more kids but couldn’t realistically provide for them. I have a guilty secret of sometimes flicking through the Mini Boden catalogue and picking out children of the right age gaps and imagining a family photo with them all there. It’s a wistfulness that is a bit unhealthy rather than the agony of a loss being fresh and raw, though.

I had a MMC in 2004 after taking two years to conceive and another two early MC over the next year while having fertility treatment. I never got pregnant again and ended up creating a family through adoption.

At the time, the MMC absolutely devastated me. I vividly remember being scanned, the confusion, the waiting and then the tears and shock that followed. I look back at that period as the most heartbreaking period of my life and I see my life as a before and after scenario. I have two photographs of myself pregnant before the MMC and I just look so happy and full of excitement about the future.

Saying that, I rarely think about the actual children that could have been, other than sometimes looking at a friend's child who had the same due date as the MMC and think 'Oh 'baby' would have been that age'. However, I still have a lot of upset over feeling that my body wasn't able to achieve something so 'easy' as having a baby. I do think how people view their MC is related to whether or not they were finally able to have children.

I had a miscarriage >20 years ago. Second pregnancy. It was very upsetting at the time, but I was also consoled by already having a toddler. It also helped that I got pregnant again very quickly; had I not been able to, the mourning would have lasted very much longer. I still feel sad about it sometimes - not distressed, just wondering who it was that I lost.

My life experiences definitely influenced how I dealt with it. I'd been through grief by then, and I knew I could and would come out the other side.

I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks, in 2017. I found it horrific because it was full of complications - lost a lot of blood, injection to stop the bleeding, retained products, A&E visits, eventual D&C and then a resulting infection. The pain was immense and comparable to being in labour. I felt absolutely dreadful for weeks afterwards, presumably because of the blood loss. In fact, I actually recovered quicker after the birth of DS2 than I did when I miscarried.

I think what shocked me the most is how awful it was both physically and emotionally, naively I always thought about miscarriages as being a heavy period and back to work the next day.

I was fortunate enough to get pregnant with DS2 very quickly, who was born in 2018, but it ended up being a high risk pregnancy and I was extremely anxious all the way through.

I was devastated, although like I said I was fortunate enough to have DS2 quickly, and he wouldn't have existed otherwise. I don't think about the baby daily anymore, more like weekly, in particular around the anniversary of the miscarriage and the due date. I do still shed tears occasionally. It was one of the worst things I've been through, and it was definitely a life-changing event.

I had 3 MMC's in 1993 whilst undergoing infertility treatment - 7/11 and 15 weeks respectively. Finally had our much loved dd one year later but sadly she suffered a life threatening condition at 6 months old which left her with severe learning difficulties. (Our only dc)

However, although the babies that never were will always hold a place in my heart, our lives are so consumed by our dd that I can't imagine life any different from how it is now. Certainly a different form of parenting but so rewarding to see how far dd has come and how loved she is by everyone.