Breaking the silence of early pregnancy loss

This is the fourth instalment of a six-part series, Be Fruitful: Fertility Journeys in Modern Jewish Lives, which explores the complex and sometimes taboo journey to parenthood in the Jewish community.

Just because you decide to have a baby, doesn’t mean you’re going to have one or that your road to get there will travel in a straight line. Lord knows, things don’t always go according to plan. 

We have lots of ways to celebrate when they do; naming ceremonies, gender reveals, baby showers. But when it comes to baby-making, we’re not very well-equipped to deal with it, when those plans go slightly – or very much – awry. 

Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you there is probably no one more stubborn in the entire world. So when I decided that I wanted to force cultural change in the early pregnancy loss and miscarriage space, the silence, the taboo, the inexplicably sub-standard care, they didn’t stand a chance. It took me around five years to get a full and complete picture of these challenges.

My own pregnancy journey had resulted in seven angel babies and two living children. But my journey wasn’t just informed by my own lived experience. My presence in so many support groups, both receiving and offering support, meant that over the years I gained a wide insight into the common and not-so-common challenges faced by patients, their partners and their families and friends.

I had doctors telling me that if only women had a proper education, they wouldn’t even be sad when they lost a baby. I was denied entry to the Orthodox mikveh to mourn a termination for medical reasons because my partner wasn’t Jewish. I had to sit in waiting rooms to see if I was losing my baby while heavily pregnant women around me talked about baby names and showed off their ultrasounds. Friends minimised my losses or got bored of watching me grieve and just… moved on.