Grief & Loss~Things not to say or do

A little over 3 years ago, my husband and I suffered a miscarriage. It was by far, the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and I will never forget the feeling I had when we were told that our child had died. It literally felt like my heart had been ripped out of my body and handed to me on a plate.

When this happened, we were told TONS of horrible, offensive, rude, and inconsiderate comments. Hearing such horrible things actually made us feel worse than we already did, if that was possible. At first, I wanted to write a book about miscarriage and how to get through it with your sanity in tact, and how to deal with people's ignorant remarks. However, when I sat down to write the book, I only got about 5 pages into it before I broke down in tears and just couldn't do it anymore. So, I've decided to just write this article to help others know how NOT to respond when a friend or family member suffers a loss such as this.

Let me explain to you what our child meant to us. My husband and I dated for 3 years before getting engaged. We were engaged for 13 months before getting married in an elaborate wedding ceremony. We have always wanted tons of children, as many as God will bless us with, we will gladly accept. From the moment we got married, we knew we wanted to start our family. But, we wanted to be prepared. So, we both met with our doctors to determine if we were healthy enough to conceive. Once we were given the ok, we started taking extremely good care of ourselves. No drinking, no fatty foods, etc. I began taken prenatal vitamins before we were even pregnant at the advice of my Gynecologist.  We started tracking our fertile days, and planning around those days.

Within a few months, we were lucky enough to conceive our first child. I'll never forget the feeling of joy when I got that positive pregnancy test result. But, sadly, our joy wouldn't last long. Shortly after we discovered we were pregnant, I started having cramping and bleeding. I immediately called my doctor who told me to come in ASAP. Once we got to the doctor's office, we had an ultrasound. The doctor informed us that she couldn't find the baby's heart anymore, but that she wasn't sure if I'd miscarried or not. I had to go through a series of blood work and more ultrasounds and wait another week before finding out that our baby had passed away. I literally felt like I died too in that moment.

Over the next few months, we received lots of horrible comments from friends, family, and even our doctor. For example, when our doctor told us that the baby had passed away, she said "Your baby is dead. The tissues are over there." and walked out of the room. Talk about having no bedside manner.

Family members would say things like "Don't worry, you'll have another baby." or "That's ok, you weren't that far along." But, by far the worst was when my mother in law said "Get over it! I lost a baby and it's no big deal. One day you're pregnant, the next day you're not. It's no big deal. Just get over it and move on!"

I think maybe it's because many people don't think of a baby as a person until it's born that people are so rude, but that's not how a mother feels. A mother connects to a child on a level that is undescribable. This connection begins from the moment of conception. I knew that I had my child growing inside of me, and I could feel that connection the whole time. When you love someone so much who you've never even met and then that person dies, you have many questions that will never be answered. Sometimes, you blame yourself. You may think that if you had done something differently, taken better care of yourself, eaten differently then maybe that child's life would have been spared. So, not only are you in a state of shock, grief, and loss, but in a state of self-blame.

Not to mention, miscarriages are so common that doctors won't usually test you for genetic problems or the cause of the loss until you've had multiple miscarriages. So, you are left for the rest of your life not knowing why this happened to you or if it could or would happen again.

I think that's why the comment of "Don't worry, you'll have another baby" bothered me so much. I wanted to shout at them, "You don't know that!" or "I don't want ANOTHER baby, I want the baby that I lost back!"

I think that if you know someone who has suffered a loss like this, the best thing you can do is to offer your ears. Don't try to say that you know how that person feels or that you understand, because I'm sorry to say that you don't. Even if you've gone through a miscarriage yourself, you don't know how the other person feels. Their pregnancy and loss could have meant more or less to them than yours did to you. So, you don't know how they feel.

All you can do is listen and let them cry it out. I didn't really get that kind of support and I wish that I had. If I had just been able to sit with a friend or family member and cry or talk about it without having them pass judgement it would have made the grieving process easier. Also, don't try to put a timeline on someone else's grief. Just because you might be able to get past something in a short amount of time, doesn't mean that other people are able to do the same. Respect that person's need to take their time with the grieving process.

For me, still 3 years later, I still think about that child each and every day. I remember my due date and every year on that date, I make it a point to spend that day with my family as quality time and remembering our child who has passed away. I am fortunate enough to have been blessed with a child shortly after our loss. But, that doesn't make our first child's existence any less important to me. As far as I'm concerned, I have two children, it's just that one of them is in Heaven.