Miscarriage Support
After a miscarriage your emotional health, mental health and wellbeing will be at it’s most vulnerable and it is a moment in time to really put yourself first and deal with how you are feeling. Find out more below about the miscarriage journey you may go on and how to overcome your loss and improve your mental health and wellbeing.
Experiencing a miscarriage at any point in your pregnancy is a difficult and emotionally damaging experience. The emotional impacts of miscarriage can be profound and long-lasting and include grief, depression, anxiety, isolation, self-blame, feelings of worthlessness, failure and letting people down.
Up to 1 in 4 women are thought to experience miscarriage at some point in their fertility and pregnancy journey, and as one of those 1 in 4 myself, I know only too well the long-term impacts a miscarriage can have. It is a weight I carried with me for many years after losing my own baby at 7 weeks in 2015.
When and why does miscarriage occur?
Miscarriage can occur any time up until the 24th week of pregnancy, at which point it is considered to be baby loss or stillbirth, but the risk of miscarriage is much higher within the first trimester.
From a physiological pint of view, it is not always known why miscarriage occurs and it can be down to a number of factors that are unfortunately out of the control or the mother, or care teams.
Physically it is hard to comprehend what happened or why. Emotionally it is even harder!
With proper care and support, many women go on to have health pregnancies and heal from the trauma of that loss.
Emotional reactions to miscarriage:
The emotional responses you may experience can include:
Grief – dealing with a strong sense of loss, sadness and anger are really common after a miscarriage. This can be coupled with feelings of guilt, fear, frustration and failure.
Depression – women can often feel worthless, hopeless, isolation and loss of joy after the loss of a baby, because it wasn’t just a baby that was lost but their hopes and dreams for the future that feels snatched away.
Anxiety – is created about what the future holds, if there is something “wrong” with you, fertility worries, and even thoughts of future pregnancies and it happening again.
Isolation – is often felt by women who don’t know where to turn, are expected to just get on with things, whose feelings of loss are not acknowledged, or well meaning advice given is “it will happen when the time is right” or “at least you know you can get pregnant” or “maybe it just wasn’t meant to be” which completely dismisses the loss you feel!
Physically – you may even experience headaches, fatigue, insomnia and even phantom pregnancy symptoms.
My own personal overriding feelings after an early miscarriage was one of letting people down, failing my baby and my body failing me – all things that I held onto and impacted my subsequent pregnancies, motherhood journey and other areas of my life.
Those feelings can have a ripple effect through your whole life and disconnect or distance you from a lot of things in your life that are important to you, but you feel afraid to lose, and so you cut yourself off emotionally.
Support for miscarriage:
I always urge anyone who has experienced early miscarriage to seek emotional support to help you process and overcome it, without self-blame and feelings of failure clouding your future.
That support can come from family and friends, but their support can often be more focused on feeling positive about the future, while, unwittingly, dismissing how you’re feeling right now and the loss you feel for the baby that you had!
Professional mental and emotional support will help you move on from your experience without the negative emotions sitting on your shoulders or in your heart, while allowing you to remember and cherish the baby you had.
The Mother Nurture Method will prove the emotional support you need during this really difficult time in your life. As a professional, and as a mother of miscarriage, I know only too well what you are going through.
My emotional health programme will help you remove the negative thoughts and feelings you have about yourself, your body and your ability and help you manage your negative thoughts and worries, so that you can process and overcome your loss, without it impacting other areas of your life, the decisions you make about your next steps or how you feel in any future pregnancies or in motherhood.
After a loss your emotional health and wellbeing will be at it’s most vulnerable and it is a moment in time to really put yourself first and deal with how you are feeling.
Support available in North Herts (Stevenage, Letchworth, Hitchin, Baldock, Knebworth, Royston) and online nationwide across England.