Not sad about my pregnancy losses?

[tempnamechg9]

I'm so so sorry if this is triggering for anyone.

I'm sitting watching a Jessie J interview where she is talking about a miscarriage she had, very emotional interview. She's talks about where she broke down in the middle of the street, stood next to a bush frozen for 2 hours etc.

I've had 3 pregnancy losses in the past, one after the other. I now thankfully have a little boy and am 20 weeks pregnant with my second. However, I have never felt that kind of grief that Jessie speaks about. The first loss I had, I was upset and cried for a day or 2, but I could put it to the back of my mind and still function. I remember I actually passed the remains whilst I was at work, and went straight back to my desk after and carried on. The second 2 losses i didn't even cry, I was expecting to miscarry. I don't remember even feeling sad really.
Fast forward to now and I rarely even think about my miscarriages. I couldn't even tell you the dates I lost them, or what their due dates would have been roughly. I don't feel the need to light a candle for them every year when others do. I don't feel the need to tell my other children about their lost siblings when they're older.
Now I worry that there is something wrong with me in how I feel. I absolutely adore my son, he is my whole world and having a big family is all I've ever wanted.
So why am I like this? Is anyone else like this? Surely I should feel sadness about the babies I lost.

Everyone’s different OP, how you feel is just as valid as how anyone else feels, so don’t worry about that.

Ive had 5 losses, 1 natural and 4 from IVF, and while I’ve been sad I’ve never been completely incapacitated by grief in the way some people are or others seem to think we should be. I know after the first IVF loss my expectations became a lot lower, so I didn’t get emotionally attached as quickly, you may have done the same thing. Clearly you love your little boy very much and will be the same with his impending sibling (congratulations!) so you’re absolutely fine.

Emotions and how we feel them are a spectrum. Some people feel things more keenly than others. I've had multiple losses and am more the way Jesse Is. I have healthy children now (thankfully) but think daily about my losses. Some people hold onto sadness more than others, some people feel more sad than others. There is no right or wrong way of feeling and certainly nothing wrong with you. We're all different. There might be something else that would trigger great sadness in you and not in me.

You only have to look at the Queen dying to see the differences in how people feel. Some queued for hours to see her coffin, others didn't even switch the TV on on the day of her funeral and just enjoyed an extra bank holiday!

I'm the same op. Had mc, dd, mc, dd. Luckily for me, mine were around 8 weeks and the mc passed without intervention.

I do feel that you lower your expectations and are more realistic to the realities of pregnancy.

I do generally feel emotionally cut off though and don't think my dd are "my world" so I always think its odd when people say that - which says more about me tbh.

I had a miscarriage in between my two children. At the time it was awful and I was devastated.

Now it’s something I barely think about, I don’t get upset about it. I’m not still caught up in my grief years later.

Partly because if it hadn’t have happened I would never have had my second child and I can’t imagine my life without him. I appreciate that my feelings may be different if I wasn’t as fortunate to have another baby.

Your feelings are as valid as anyone else though.

Two ectopics here - the 2nd was last month. I don't have sadness over them. I get irritated when people want me to talk about them like they're mining me for their own indulgence. I have other feelings (the last one was on holiday, saw a v new junior doctor in a small hospital and was gaslit to all hell by him about what I knew was happening, plus he kept talking to my husband and not me) but mostly I'm just annoyed that my body can still make embryos but they can't get to where they're supposed to be going. And that my holiday was scuppered. After the 1st one people were saying to me "oh I know someone who got preg straight after, keep the faith" etc and it was meant in kindness, but I laid there and thought, why would I want to try again now? We'd been trying for ages, 2ndary infertility, fibally preg and it was ectopic - and I came out of surgery and thought, nah, I'm done. And it was a relief. 2nd one was a total fluke surprise. I have an attitude towards fertility that seems rare, which is that it happens or it doesn't. However - I have a child. It's easy for me to say that, therefore, no doubt. I used to go through cycles of wanting another but I realised they were seasonal and that they passed. They don't happen now. I'm not in 40s yet. I don't say this aloud a lot. One thing I do get annoyed with is people who presume their fertility is guaranteed and talk about getting pregnant as if it'll happen on command... but that's more to do with a certain type of person that prickles me than the fertility side I reckon.

I'm not sure we know how far into the pregnancy she was? I think that makes a difference.
I had a MC at 7 weeks and I was sad for a couple of days but then was fine really. I would occasionally get sad if someone mentioned having more children, but that was more a general fertility thing than a MC thing.

I think it's because I expect things to go wrong in the first 12 weeks because it's so common. I treat the first 12 weeks as being tentatively pregnant. If I had a MC in the second trimester I think I'd be a lot more devastated, especially because then you have to birth the tiny baby and I imagine it's a lot more traumatising.

I also already had a child when I had the MC. That can also make a difference to how you feel about it.

Everyone grieves differently, everyone manages differently. My sil does not mark the dates but she already had a child and has another now so she prefers not to dwell. My sister had a miscarriage during her first pregnancy, very early on and has a 1 year old son now, she is sad on the date and marks it. It's OK to feel as you do op. x

You are not unreasonable to feel however you felt. The only unreasonable thing would be to suggest that other people were overreacting because it upset them more than it did you. To have your own individual response based on your personality, circumstances, faith/philosophy etc is totally reasonable .

I had multiple losses and was devastated by some and not others. There is no rational explanation for that, it just impacted me differently. I’m also very warm that how I feel now is not how I felt then and whether you go on to have a healthy child can also impacts how you continue to feel. It’s as individual as any other loss.

People are just different , FWIW I am the same as you @tempnamechg9

I had two and I was sad but they were not life defining moments. I don’t actually remember the due dates if I’m honest. Roughly but not exactly.
I was trying for DC but I didn’t consider I lost babies - these were cells that sadly were never going to make it into a baby. Just part of the journey in getting to my DC. If I’d been trying 40 years a go I perhaps would never have known I was pregnant, just passed it off as a (very) late period. I’m not sure if helps having all the information we have now.

If I’d never had my DC I’d perhaps see it very differently and I’m lucky I never had a later loss which I think would be very different. One of mine was 5 weeks, one 11.

I think I had 6 miscarriages before my first was born

I didn't cry or feel devastated either. I couldn't tell you the dated either.

I know the ectopic was around Easter cos I had to in to the hospital for blood tests on good Friday and I was watching Kate and wills Wedding for another one

Other than that haven't a clue

I'm the same. I had four miscarriages and two live births ... mc,mc,DD, mc,mc, DS. All of them were around 8-10 weeks . On every occasion I was upset for a short time, but I looked at it as "they were not meant to be" and I then just carried on with life. I couldn't tell you now, what the dates were or anything like that.

I'm sorry for women who are very badly affected about their miscarriages, but for me it didn't happen that way.

That’s because you went on to have two children and she hasn’t.

Yanbu. Grief comes in many forms and there's no normal for it. I've had 8 losses, each effected me differently. Some I was upset about, others i was devastated for. It's okay to not have an extreme reaction, just as it's okay for Jessie and others to have an extreme reaction.

YANBU, I'm the same - I miscarried my second pregnancy at 10 weeks. But, my first and third pregnancies were easy peasy and resulted in happy healthy babies. All three pregnancies conceived first month of trying. So mainly I just consider myself to have been enormously lucky in the baby making stakes, and think one early miscarriage is not a big price to pay for two healthy children.

If my pregnancies were more difficult to conceive, if I'd miscarried my first pregnancy, and if I hadn't gone on to have my children, I imagine I'd feel very differently.

There's no right or wrong.

Not necessarily, I’ve not managed to successfully carry past 11 weeks yet. I’ve got one frozen embryo left, and if this one doesn’t make it of course I will be upset as it’s my last chance to have my own child, but I know that life will still go on exactly the same as before, and I will be ok. (I’ll probably end up a crazy cat lady, but I’ll be ok!)

Same. It took having my second to really to put the MC to the back of my mind.

Everyone is different, and everyone’s feelings, actions and reactions are perfectly valid and acceptable. There is no right way, The only unacceptable thing, ever, is telling other people how they should feel or act. That is never excusable.

I suffered 7 losses over 3 years, and have no children. All mine were quite early, once making it to 10 weeks. I didn’t feel hugely upset about each loss as it clearly meant they weren’t viable. The upsetting part was realising that this was going to continue to happen. Because I hadn’t made it to my 12 week scans I’d never looked into due dates etc and wouldn’t think about trying to mark anniversaries etc. I still don’t feel as though I lost babies, just potential ones.

This was all over 20 years ago, and although home pregnancy tests were available easily, nobody really tested before their period was due and there wasn’t the obsessing over lines and early tests there is now, which I think piles pressure onto people ttc. Getting an early positive because you have a fertilised egg isn’t the same as knowing you have an implanted pregnancy, and leads to all kinds of woe when, inevitably, so many of them don’t progress any further.

We decided not to go further into fertility treatment due to the risks to me. We had an honest conversation and were clear that we’d rather still have each other and no children than risk my life and our marriage. We’re still happily together now in middle age.

I had a rather long drawn out miscarriage between my 2 children.
I consider that baby to have been unviable and am proud of my body for doing the right thing. I don't of it as ever having been a possible child.
Was sad and shocked when it seemed like the pregnancy wasn't going to progress, but towards the end just wanted it over with.
I feel like people don't talk about this much and sometimes feel embarrassed about not caring more.
Might feel differently if I didn't have other wonderful children.

I agree, everyone has their own reactions, but for me the grief was much more the fear that I’d never have a child, not grief for the loss at that moment, or for that particular pregnancy. I had one blighted ovum at 10 weeks that required surgical management, and one chemical pregnancy about a week after the positive test.

I cried a fair amount at the time, for a few days, but was able to get on with life (although I did take two weeks off work after the D&C with the first one, because I work a super intense city job and so why not…?). I think the fact my mother was always super open with me about her miscarriage and the fact they are so common, I had no unrealistic expectations that positive pregnancy test = healthy live birth, which mentally has been extremely helpful for me I think. I will make sure my children also have the same awareness, as I do find it surprising that some women genuinely seem to think it would never happen to them when so so many pregnancies end in miscarriage, and I think that means they’re much more taken aback and shocked and grieved when it happens. I think it’s a responsibility of all parents, to be honest, to make sure their children are mentally prepared for how common it is so hopefully helping them to be more resilient if it does happen.

My circumstances also maybe made it easier perhaps as the first one had no “baby”, just an empty sac, and the second one was so early. I think if it happens after a healthy scan it must be much much harder to deal with.

It’s nice to see someone bringing this up as sometimes with all the narrative about pregnancy loss becoming less taboo I do wonder if I should be more upset.

I’ve had: termination, mc, mc, DS, mc, DD.

I don’t think about the mcs at all or feel sad about them now, though I was very upset at the time. I think this is because I went on to have my kids and I know I wouldn’t have them if the other pregnancies had worked out. They were also all early - c6/7 weeks - and I think I would feel completely differently if they had got past the first trimester.

However, I often think about the pregnancy I terminated. It was an accidental pregnancy within months of meeting my now DH. I was very young and a student and the timing was terrible, so it was absolutely the right thing to do. But I obviously stayed with DH and I often wonder what life would have been like if we’d kept the baby, and think about what age they would be now etc.

All feelings are valid though. Your body, your losses.

Everyone is different, I wouldn't worry.

I had a MC before my children and found it incredibly hard at the time. There were complications so it dragged on too. When I was subsequently pregnant it really impacted me too. Now I basically never think about it, although it sometimes puts me off a try for a last baby because I remember how devastating I found it.

As people have said - everyone differs. I found the first MC I had before I had kids hit me less. I worked away and had a cry at night and then moved on quickly.

When I had a MC when my eldest was 4 I was devastated. I was just 13 weeks along had had the scan all good and went on to have a MC. I think because I had naively thought scan all good - past the high risk area. I had let my brain plan them - so I had an image in my mind of what they would look like etc - so I think that was the difference in how it impacted me. It probably affected me daily for about 6 months and by degrees the pain lessened.

Happily I went on a year later to have my youngest. I have the privilege and fortune to have two healthy children so while I morn their passing in my head they were not healthy enough for this world. i

There is an Irish midwife (Helena Tubridy) who did a programme with an Irish celebrity Sile Seoige about fertility and miscarriage. Helena spoke of how when you conceive the baby's DNA mixes with the mothers and stays within the mother even when passed - I found this a beautiful and comforting thought.

@Floralnomad not at at all. There is 3 years between my last MC and my first born. Ive never been overly upset by them

You feel how you feel and that's absolutely fine.