Your grief over the loss of a child you never had is valid, remember that.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on November 17, 2021. It has since been updated.
Trigger Warning: This story discusses miscarriage that may be disturbing to readers.
As common as miscarriages are, it's a devastating experience and takes a toll on the person who's lost their child. Often, miscarriages occur even before a woman knows she's pregnant, but according to Mayo Clinic, approximately 10 to 20% of known pregnancies end in a miscarriage.
Despite being common, it is considered somewhat of a taboo in different parts of the world, often forcing a woman to grieve her loss in silence, which can actually affect them a lot more. But, one brave woman named Kristen R. More, not only spoke about her miscarriage, but she also shared 14 things that no one really tells anyone about the situation.
"Today, I paid over $1000 out of pocket for my miscarriage,” she wrote on Twitter, adding, “They didn’t tell me it would cost so much to lose a baby.” Here's what More had to say about what she learned from her miscarriage:
1. It takes a long time. It's not an event that's suddenly over. It's like a fucking marathon. A sad, dehydrated marathon with nothing on the end but empty.
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
2. Practitioners who support birth don’t necessarily know how to support miscarriage—the joy of birth is so stark when compared to the grief and loss of miscarriage. Some of y’all need training.
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
3. There is medication to help the miscarriage along. It is used for abortion, too, and your pharmacist may treat you like you’re entering an abortion clinic when you want more information about how it works.
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
4. The most commonly used medication is officially prescribed for ulcers; all use for miscarriage management is “off books.” This gives your pharmacist permission (tacit or explicit) to deny you information about vaginal (rather than oral) use.
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
5. The informational inserts for the medication—Misoprostol—warn you about how it can trigger miscarriage. If you have a decent pharmacist, they’ll give you supplemental information that they print off from the internet.
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
6. When you’ve been through infertility treatments, a natural pregnancy doesn’t always feel like a miracle. Sometimes it feels like a tightrope walk, a risk, a pain waiting to happen.
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
7. Miscarriage is so, so lonely. Y’all. The emptying of your body like that…bless it. You really DON’T want to talk about it, but you sometimes want to scream about it. Where can we go to scream?
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
8. You want it to speed up and slow down all at once. Hurry, hurry, hurry up, and then no, don’t go--please don’t go.
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
9. Non-birthing parents are ignored in the miscarriage experience: their grief and pain and suffering is real, too.
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
10. When the miscarriage happens at 13 weeks, the weight stays on; you still have to pull out the pregnancy pants, as a reminder of your previous maternity state.
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
11. No one talks about it, so you don’t know how to talk about. People say the wrong thing, but you’re so sad that you don’t want to say, “don’t ever say that to a person miscarrying.”
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
12. Related, do not recommend: “But you can try again soon, right?” upon hearing the news. Also, do not recommend: “Everything happens for a reason.” Or “This is all part of God’s plan.”
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
13. There are humans who feel like little angels, the tech who asks if you want to hear the lack of heartbeat, the friend you can scream with, the partner who'll hold you in your grief. Mostly they feel like blips on a terrible painful road.
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
14. It's expensive and painful (like birth) and at the end you don't get anything except a bill and a new playlist called, "Shit to help you get through the baby that never was."
— Kristen R. Moore (@kristen4moore) November 1, 2021
Losing a loved one is never easy, even though you may not have seen them at all. Grief is grief, and it comes in all shapes and sizes, and you grieving over the loss of a child you never had is valid, remember that.
References:
https://twitter.com/kristen4moore/status/1455156768661778433
Cover Image Source (Representative): Getty Images | Mikhail Seleznev
