DEAR Meghan, I hope you don’t mind me writing to you like this. You don’t know me, and we’ve never met, but I cried when I read what you’d written about your miscarriage yesterday. Your sadness and grief leapt out of the page, along with your desire to comfort other women who have been through […]
DEAR Meghan,
I hope you don’t mind me writing to you like this. You don’t know me, and we’ve never met, but I cried when I read what you’d written about your miscarriage yesterday.
Read our Meghan and Harry blog for the latest news on the Royal couple
Your sadness and grief leapt out of the page, along with your desire to comfort other women who have been through the same heartbreak.
I am one of those women. Because like you I also had a miscarriage in July – one of the ten or twenty women in a room of a hundred that you wrote about who will know the particular pain of losing a longed-for baby.
I’ve not talked about this before, but it was my third, each one a devastating loss on my longed-for journey to motherhood.
I’ve been trying to have a baby for nearly a decade now, only to have my hopes dashed time and again by first one miscarriage, then another.
This last time my miscarriage started, just like yours, with sharp cramps which caught me by surprise one morning.
Unlike you though, I didn’t know I was pregnant and dismissed them as the symptoms of a heavy period.
I was on my own at the time, like many of us in lockdown, and for days I just tried to push on until one day I broke down on the phone to my sister and she forced me to ring a doctor.
The doctor sent me to hospital where they told me that I’d had a miscarriage.
In a single instant, I learned that I’d been carrying a baby and lost it, meaning that once again I found my longstanding dreams of motherhood shattered into pieces.
Those dreams were shattered for the first time eight years ago. On that occasion I woke up with horrendous pains in my stomach that were so unbearable I rang an ambulance.
After that terrible first miscarriage, I cried buckets of tears in private but in public I felt I had to put on a big Gemma Collins brave face.
By the time they came it was too late and I gave birth on my landing to a four-and-a-half-month-old baby, my whole body shaking with shock as it happened.
It died in front of me, an experience so traumatic I find it difficult to write about to this day. It was one of the worst things I had ever been through.
In your article you talk about the unbearable grief so many of us have felt but so few of us feel able to talk about.
After that terrible first miscarriage, I cried buckets of tears in private but in public I felt I had to put on a big Gemma Collins brave face.
Aside from those close to me, no-one would ever have guessed that I was grieving, and even among close friends I didn’t talk about it much.
It was the same the second time. I drew a veil over it which I wouldn’t let anyone peek through.
Now, looking back, I realise that it would have helped if I’d been more open, and allowed more people to ask if I was ok.
That’s why I think it’s really powerful that you’ve shared your experience. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the public eye or married to a Prince, miscarriages don’t discriminate, and the pain is the same for us all.
A miscarriage is the loss of a pregnancy before 24 weeks in the UK, and 20 weeks in the US.
After this point, a pregnancy loss is classed as a stillbirth.
Sadly, miscarriages are common with most happening in the first three months – the first trimester.
An estimated one in eight pregnancies will end in miscarriage, according to the NHS.
But, in many cases a miscarriage will happen before a woman knows she’s pregnant.
It is important to know miscarriages rarely happen because of something you did, or didn’t do. In most cases, doctors don’t know what causes the loss, which makes it very hard to prevent them.
However, there are lifestyle changes that can help reduce the risk of a miscarriage, according to the charity Tommy’s.
They include not smoking, eating a healthy, balanced diet, losing weight before pregnancy if you’re overweight or obese, trying to avoid infections in pregnancy like rubella, not drinking alcohol or using illegal drugs, staying active and limiting caffeine intake.
The risk of miscarriage does also increase with age, according to Tommy’s.
Women under 30 have a 10 per cent chance of miscarriage, which doubles to 20 per cent for women aged 35 to 39. For those over the age of 45, the risk is 50 per cent.
The most common sign of miscarriage is bleeding, but cramping, a discharge of fluid or tissue from your vagina and no longer ‘feeling’ pregnant are also symptoms.
Many women will notice light bleeding in the early stages of pregnancy, but if you are worried it is important to speak to your midwife or hospital straight away.
Losing a baby is a deeply personal experience that affects people differently.
No matter when in your pregnancy you suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth, support is available from hospital counselling services as well as Tommy’s and other charity groups.
https://www.tommys.org/
I know my heart, like yours, will never repair from the loss of my babies, the sweet souls who never made it to earth.
But I also know that this is not the end of my dreams of motherhood, or your dream of giving Archie a baby brother or sister.
You and Harry have made a wonderful new life for yourselves across the ocean, and I feel sure that when the time is right Archie will be blessed with a new sibling.
I won’t give up hope either, even though it’s hard. Four months on from my last miscarriage, I still think about it every day.
I’ve since broken up with James, the man who would have been the baby’s father, and it’s hard being single.
I also suffer from polycystic ovaries, which means it’s harder to get pregnant.
On bad days, I worry that those lost pregnancies were my only chance of motherhood.
At the same time, I am trying to trust in Fate. I know I can give a baby a brilliant life – a life a world away from the world of ‘GC’, the larger-than-life character that most of the public know, and when my time to be a mother comes, I will do everything I can to protect the privacy of that cherished prize I have yearned for for so long
When that happens is in the hands of the universe now, just as it is for you Meghan.
In the meantime, thank you again for your brave honest words.
It meant a lot to me to read them and I know it will mean a lot to all the other women who are members of a club no-one would ever want to join.
Lots of love,
Gemma
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