When I had my first miscarriage, I found myself looking to the internet for some sort of consolation. I wasn’t finding solace in any family members or any friends for that matter, either. Not because they weren’t offering, but because no one close to me had gone through a miscarriage. It was foreign to them and therefore, their hugs and words seemed foreign to me. No one is ever prepared for a miscarriage. Or at least no one is prepared for or expects her first (or any) pregnancy to end in a miscarriage. So when the bleeding does begin and it’s sure that a miscarriage is underway, the need to know what’s happening and how to cope sets in.
There isn’t a miscarriage survival guide, but there are hundreds of books on surviving nine months of pregnancy. And so in my search to find anything to lesson the blow my body and heart were enduring, all I came across were creepy and depressing, outdated and extraterrestrial looking websites. Websites with PayPal shops to purchase lapel pins of tiny bronzed baby feet or silver angel wings, to wear on your sports jacket or Sunday purse, in memory of your lost child. Websites with running lists of deceased babies, with names and dates in alternating pinks and blues. And visiting these sites seemed to only make me feel crappier and more alone. I searched high and low at book stores, online bookstores and local libraries, with access to hundreds of thousands of books, and still came up with nothing but trite, now-I-can-laugh-about-it, everything-happens-for-a-reason, memoirs.
Plain and simple, there just isn’t enough literature or support in general for miscarriage. People are uninformed and unaware it is a common thing. We hear about and can identify with all kinds of different diseases and sicknesses that people suffer from, but something so common and everyday as a woman going through miscarriage gets swept under the rug and is anything but talked about. I have lost so many friends over the years, simply because they didn’t know how to talk to me after I miscarried. There needs to be a remedy.
I created this website to start a conversation. Maybe you have experienced a miscarriage, or maybe someone you work with or go to church with has. Maybe a close friend of yours has miscarried. Once, twice or even three times. Maybe your sister or sister in-law has. Whatever the relationship, we all know someone who has miscarried. Some of these women have told their stories but so very many have not. It’s time we speak up and embrace miscarriage and the women going through it. Share your story. Listen to hers. These women and our babies, we matter.
SASH for Miscarriage 