October is Pregnancy, Infant, and Child Loss Awareness Month. Estimates suggest that as many as “1 out of every 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage and 1 and every 160 pregnancies end in stillbirth.” These losses are traumatic for women and their families, and yet, as a society, we generally don’t talk about them. This means that most women face their grief over these losses alone. Over the past decade, however, Emily Carrington has been working to change this through her nonprofit organization, The Early Pregnancy Loss Association.
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You wrote a powerful and deeply moving piece nine years ago in Public Discourse about your experience with miscarriage: You felt and knew that you lost not just “products of conception” but your baby. This terminology matters a great deal, you noted, for how we think and speak of human life. Looking back to those experiences now, is there anything you would add? Anything you wish you had known at the time? Â
I still think we must reconcile the medical terminology with our vernacular. Unfortunately, this is just as much of a problem today as it was in 2015 when I wrote the piece. I think it is appropriate to talk about a “baby” in the mother’s womb. It would be absurd not to; no one wants to go to a fetus shower. But I also think the words embryo and fetus are acceptable. These medical and scientific terms are not necessarily dehumanizing. For me, embryo is one of the few words I have to describe my miscarried children, the word embryo helps make those children real for me.Â
Ultimately, I think it is okay to embrace these words and use them accordingly. As I mention in the Public Discourse piece, embryo and fetus simply refer to a stage of life, therefore we cannot consider one “unhuman” just because the developmental stage is early. But also, the more common application of the word “baby” doesn’t mean we don’t understand stages of development. This is much like a parent referring to their teenager as their “child” or “kid;” We seem to be able to communicate without confusion for older children, and I think the same can be true for humans in the womb.Â
What has changed in nine years is the obfuscation of the words miscarriage and abortion. The term “miscarriage” is a common term, but not a medical term. This can be confusing or even painful for a mother as the medical term used for a miscarriage is “spontaneous abortion.” A spontaneous abortion is clearly different from an “elective abortion” but if a woman does not know that an elective abortion is the alternative to the spontaneous abortion the word abortion might be misunderstood. There is also a recent inappropriate conflation of this language that, regardless of one’s position on elective abortions, will only hurt women and confuse things more.Â
I’m realizing that the emotional repercussions of miscarriage perhaps just never fully go away. There is a sorrow that lasts, and it seems like this is your experience as well. What are the most important things you wish women knew about miscarriage–whether from the physical perspective or emotional?Â
I am not sure I can point to one thing. As you noted in the question, miscarriage has repercussions, it is a process. My first miscarriage was ten years ago. I have a beautiful family and many of the raw painful emotions are gone. The wound has largely healed, but it has left a major scar. It has forever affected the size of our family and as the end of our child-bearing years draws near, I feel this more deeply right now. It also must be said that while my living children are a blessing and a balm, they did not replace our first three children. I will never hold those three children, no matter how many children I have.Â
As time passes, I am becoming more aware of the scar it has left on our family. For a while I was just thankful for the relief from the raw pain. I had two live births, and I have enjoyed raising my children, but now the scab has fallen off and the scar has formed. And not the kind of scar that disappears or is mostly negligible, the kind of scar that itches, and feels tough and rubbery and sometimes it feels stiff and bothersome. You forget it is there and then suddenly you are so aware. Our family is incomplete, and it always will be on this side of heaven.Â
It seems like while there is a bit more openness about miscarriage now, it’s still largely silent. In fact, I’ve heard repeatedly the default advice that women should wait until the twelve-week mark before telling anyone they are pregnant–because if they experience a miscarriage, then they have to go back and tell people about that. What are your thoughts about this? Why is there such a hesitancy to talk about it?
After experiencing three miscarriages, I have stopped waiting until 12 weeks to announce a pregnancy. After my first miscarriage, I felt like all I did was rob myself and my baby of the joy of life. Instead of getting to announce our pregnancies and enjoy the short life of our little ones, I was announcing their deaths.
I also don’t think keeping a pregnancy a secret does anything to protect the mother or family when a miscarriage does occur. The implication seems to be that if you don’t share your pregnancy, you won’t have to share your miscarriage. Perhaps at its best it is an attempt to let the mother grieve quietly and privately; it is a pretty gruesome and vulnerable experience, I understand not wanting to talk about it in the grocery store. But I don’t know why treating her with discretion and care would assume she should keep her pregnancy and therefore her miscarriage a secret. There are plenty of other tragic and traumatic events we share with discretion and care, why not miscarriage?
Ultimately this hurts mothers and families. Not just on a social and emotional level, but on a physical level. Women are often under prepared, not properly cared for by her community, and left isolated and frustrated. Sometimes this can lead to a dangerous situation if a woman is not prepared to monitor blood loss, if she doesn’t know the signs of infection, or she has not been equipped to recognize mental, emotional, or hormonal imbalances following early pregnancy loss.
Your experiences with miscarriage led you to found a nonprofit that focuses on early pregnancy loss. Would you tell a little bit about this work and why it is needed?Â
The Early Pregnancy Loss Association was founded in 2016 by a group of women who had walked through miscarriage themselves or with a loved one. We started with a simple vision that no one suffers miscarriage alone. This is still our vision, though we know it is a monumental task. We started with providing educational resources and have since added small and large miscarriage care kits. We have distributed over 4,000 of these kits since launching the program in 2019.
The small miscarriage care kits provide educational information, sanitary items, and comfort items. The large kits are more involved, they include all of these materials plus more sanitary items, a urine hat to monitor blood loss, and a body retrieval kit to be used to retrieve the body for testing or burial.
Miscarriage can be a devastating experience physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We know we cannot meet all of the needs during or following a loss, but we are here to meet the crucial and practical needs in the pinnacle moments of loss.
How might someone learn more about your work and support it? What other resources do you recommend?
You can find all of our educational information, care kit requests, blog, and podcast on our website: www.miscarriagecare.com We also recommend finding us on Facebook and Instagram (@earlypregnancylossassociation). We use those platforms to share not only our work, but to connect and promote other amazing organizations caring for women and family after pregnancy loss.