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"How sharing my pregnancy news early helped me cope with a miscarriage"

Photo credit: Issy Muir - Getty Images
Photo credit: Issy Muir - Getty Images

From Cosmopolitan

As Meghan Markle shared the sad news of her miscarriage this week, she raised an interesting point. "Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few," the Duchess of Sussex wrote in a New York Times essay. "Despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning."

Here, writer Becky Kleanthous describes why she's glad she broke the mould with the '12 week' rule for announcing a pregnancy - because when she later came to miscarry, it meant she didn't have to carry the burden in silence...


It was January, and heavy snowfall had turned my town into something resembling a giant, white wedding cake. The pavements were thick with slippery ice, and I found myself gripping onto front garden walls to slowly inch my way to work. Every time my foot slid out from underneath me, I drew a sharp breath of terror.

My friend Joe took comically small steps alongside me, his endless patience owing to the knowledge that I was six weeks pregnant and terrified of falling. This type of kindness is what happens when you blurt out your secret in the ‘early days’. People offer seats; they do your heavy lifting; they allow you to nibble salty crackers while teaching GCSE poetry so you don’t vomit all over the students.

They also release you home without interrogation when you appear from the staff toilets, blanched and trembling, offering up only the words, “I’m bleeding”.

Mine was one of the vast majority (over 99%) of miscarriages that occurs before 12 weeks. Most women choose to keep their pregnancy a secret until this milestone and its accompanying scan, after which the chance of a loss shrinks enormously.

Personally, I think it’s hard enough just being pregnant without all the acting, prop mocktails and baggy clothing required to keep the secret. (Browse the 26 million Google results for ‘keeping pregnancy secret’, and 44 million for ‘not drinking excuse’ to get an idea of the effort involved.) Then, if tragedy occurs, as it does in the 25% of pregnancies which end in miscarriage, we are expected shoulder that grief in silence.

What made my loss different to many of the other early miscarriages was that it wasn’t a secret: I had already told my friends and colleagues about the pregnancy.

Like many other women, I had started out by following convention, keeping the news between just my husband and myself. But then, my hand was forced when I threw up in my colleague’s car. I needed to explain myself.

It was fine; people were excited for me. I was relieved to share. Suddenly they understood that my energy levels were low, and it meant I didn’t feel compelled to help lift tables when rearranging classrooms. But then, less than a week after telling everyone, I had a miscarriage.

For some women, this is a nightmare scenario. They keep the secret precisely because they might suffer pregnancy loss. But for me it was the opposite; the people I had told offered support in a dark time. I was grateful that I’d thrown up in that Skoda. I was glad I had shared our news with my wider circle. I can’t imagine how angry I’d have felt with the world if I’d had to carry on like normal, smiling through inane staffroom chatter while my body felt like a solitary graveyard.

More and more, we’re recognising the importance of discussing mental health. So why is this any different?


The silence around miscarriage makes each loss doubly painful: not only because we miss out on vital support, but also — crucially — because it’s a much greater shock when it happens. Many women I spoke to hadn’t realised how common miscarriage was until it ended their pregnancies, and they spoke of the loneliness that surrounded their grief.

One of those women, Annika, told me how at nine weeks pregnant, her doctor confirmed a blighted ovum, where the amniotic sac developed but the embryo didn’t. The pregnancy was over, but her body didn’t acknowledge as much, so she needed surgery. Having kept all this a secret, she went on to suffer alone through months of guilt and mourning. She felt tortured.

Eventually, Annika told a friend. And then another. And things felt a little better.

“I was really comforted by other women's stories of miscarriage… Those conversations normalised the experience for me, little by little. I felt so guilty, before that, like I was an unusual case.”

Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

I know exactly what she means. After stumbling out of that ill-fated toilet cubicle, and after three days bleeding and sobbing in bed, I grudgingly returned to work. It felt disorienting to see that the world was still turning, but at least I didn’t have to come up with a story about being struck down with flu. I didn’t have to endure any uncomfortable banter about ‘skiving off’. I didn’t face any guilt trips about extra workload during my absence.

What I did get was a lot of women — and even a few men — sidling up and sharing their own pregnancy heartbreaks. I received smiles and shoulder squeezes and support.

There were so many of us, and I hadn’t known.

When I became pregnant again after that experience, I told everyone straight away. Having a miscarriage had been awful, but for me, pretending would have been worse.

This time, while some people were delighted with the news, others balked, their faces betraying the desire to stuff the information back inside me where it belonged. Clearly the ghost of my previous miscarriage was haunting them, making them fear the worst for this time around.

“You do know you don’t have to tell anyone yet?” a senior colleague warned me. She was worried I might be ‘jinxing things’. Lots of women worry about this. The idea of tempting fate is at odds with the facts, of course, but the lack of conversation around early pregnancy means this morbid superstition hasn’t been touched by modernity, by logic, by feminism.

But, in hindsight, was I being thoughtless by pulling other people into my precarious plans? After all, one common reason for keeping early pregnancy a secret is to protect others from the potential hurt of miscarriage.


Melanie told her family the big news early on in her first pregnancy. Sadly, she went on to experience a loss. “I told my mum and sister after six or seven weeks, but I had a miscarriage a few days later. So I didn’t tell them the next time. I didn’t want to upset my mum. I found it hard telling her about the miscarriage.”

After conceiving again, Melanie and her partner went on to welcome their first baby, but then they privately endured more miscarriages over the next few years. “There was no way I was telling anyone before 12 weeks,” she says. “Although I don’t know… I might do things differently now.”

Protecting others. Feeling shame. Not wanting to tempt fate. There are many reasons that we still keep the first trimester a secret. Sometimes, we’re ruled by the 12 week milestone just because we think… well, that we should be.

“I tried to not tell, as I thought that was the thing to do,” says Jenny. “But I felt so unwell and lonely. I avoided people and made excuses. It was a horrible feeling.”

Jenny wished that her friends knew how she was feeling. Annika felt a weight off her shoulders when she began to talk about her loss. I felt I had permission to wobble, to be distracted, to take my time, because my colleagues knew about my pain. But Melanie felt protected by her boundaries, reassured by the knowledge that she only had to cope with her own feelings, and not carry the sadness of others too. One woman’s prison is another woman’s sanctuary. That’s why choice is so important.

Photo credit: Hearst owned
Photo credit: Hearst owned

Talking about things rarely makes them harder. That feels important to consider. And, as pregnancy can already feel a lot like walking on slippery ice, I was certainly grateful to have friends by my side while I fearfully shuffled along.

Some names have been changed.

If you’ve been affected by pregnancy loss, you can talk to a Tommy’s midwife. They’re trained in bereavement support and can be reached for free, Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm on 0800 0147 800, or at midwife@tommys.org.

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