How to Respond to Insensitive Comments about Pregnancy Loss
Takeaway: Women who experience a miscarriage, stillbirth, or lose a pregnancy deal with insensitive comments from people who don’t know what to say or have uninformed beliefs about pregnancy loss. In this post, Dr. Julie shares her personal story with recurrent miscarriage & gives you strategies to use as you respond to hurtful comments after you’ve experienced pregnancy loss.
Miscarriage is incredibly common. It’s so common, in fact, that almost every mom I know has had one. But being common doesn’t make them easy,
On top of the physical experience of a miscarriage, which is emotionally devastating and difficult to endure, women who lose a pregnancy often deal with insensitive comments. Given how many women experience pregnancy loss, it is alarming that people haven’t learned to be sensitive, caring, and kind when they offer condolences.
Feel free to forward this blog post to anyone you know who could use a primer in “what not to say” to someone who’s trying to cope with pregnancy loss.
Dr. Julie’s Story of Recurrent Pregnancy Loss
When my husband and I started trying to get pregnant, we knew the odds. We were aware that at my age (35), around 15% of pregnancies end in loss. But like any couple, we were hopeful that we’d escape those odds. We chose to focus on the positives.
But when I got pregnant each month and quickly (or not so quickly) lost the baby, it was devastating. The first miscarriage was the worst, because I didn’t expect it. I didn’t realize that it was happening right away, but when it became obvious, it stung. Like many women, I blamed myself. I felt like a failure. And I was more sad than I’d ever been in my entire life.
After my first miscarriage, I approached every pregnancy with trepidation. Were we going to make it past 6 weeks? Past 8? Past 10? I also wondered if I’d ever be able to carry a baby to term.
After my second miscarriage, I insisted on the support of a reproductive endocrinologist. I wasn’t willing to wait to get answers, even though my OB thought I should have a third miscarriage before seeking help.
Reproductive endocrinology ended up being our miracle, and we eventually had our miracle baby. The fertility clinic we went to did testing, provided assurance, and offered us support. The procedures I went through were brutal reminders of every pregnancy I’d lost. And in the end, the doctors couldn’t explain why I wasn’t able to stay pregnant.
I chose to share my story here because I want you to know that you’re not alone. I can’t promise that you won’t endure another pregnancy loss, but I believe you are strong and capable of processing the grief and pain that comes with this kind of loss. And I think it is easier when you know how to stop the insensitive comments.
The Insensitive Things People Say After Pregnancy Loss
One of the hardest parts of healing from each miscarriage was the perspective from the peanut gallery. Although I think my friends and loved ones meant well, their words often communicated messages of shame, false hope, or insensitivity.
Many people struggle with not knowing how to support a grieving woman after pregnancy loss, and I can understand that. It can feel uncomfortable to sit with a woman who feels so much emotional pain.
Here are some of things people said to me that didn’t feel good as I processed the loss of each child:
“At least” you know you can have a baby.
Everything happens for a reason.
You can get pregnant again.
There must have been something wrong with your baby.
“Just” do IVF. It worked for me.
Have you heard of adoption?
It was God’s plan.
My husband just looks at me and I get pregnant.
Being pregnant sucks, so maybe this is for the best.
Now you can drink with me again! Yay!
When pregnancy loss was new to me, I tried to correct these statements. I’d explain EXACTLY what was wrong with every single syllable of their sentence. I recited facts about miscarriage, pregnancy loss, infertility, and more. I got angry. It took a lot of energy, and I don’t think it really helped me.
After my second miscarriage, I went through a phase of apathy, where I’d thank the offending party for their “kind words”, even though I felt really lousy about what they’d just said. I tried to look strong, even though I was the exact opposite inside. My intention was to get them to stop talking about my situation, because it hurt so much. And pretending like I was okay was a great way to do that.
Eventually, when I realized that pregnancy loss was going to be an ongoing party of my journey, I found strategies that were honest representations of my feelings and experience while protecting me from anyone I didn’t trust to respond in a way I appreciated.
Be Honest about Feeling Hurt
Although this may be controversial advice, I think it’s always okay to be honest about someone’s words making you feel bad. To me, honesty is a form of kindness and generosity. It lets the other person know where your boundaries are, that they’ve hurt you, and it gives them the chance to repair.
I used a few key phrases to convey my honest feelings about the insensitive statements I endured:
“I know you’re saying that because you mean well, but I don’t want to hear xyz. It doesn’t help me.”
“Let’s keep God’s will out of our conversation.”
“People keep saying that to me, and it hurts.”
“I’m feeling really low, and I just want that to be recognized without any kind of promises about the future.”
I found that the friends and family members who were truly in my corner responded to my honesty with hugs, kindness, and empathy. They apologized. A few people even said, “I’m so sorry. I truly don’t know what to say.” And I think that was what I wanted to hear the most, because I didn’t know, either.
Enlist the Support of Your Partner
Aside from the insensitive comments, I got a lot of unsolicited advice about getting pregnant and staying pregnant. Some of it was really wonderful, but most of it sucked. I learned a lot about the way other women had been successful at pregnancy, even though it was the last thing I wanted to be thinking about while I was grieving.
I asked my partner to run interference for me whenever he noticed that a conservation about pregnancy loss was headed in the direction of advice-giving. He often changed the subject, asked me to do some kind of task or errand so I needed to exit the conversation, or even interrupted the person and told them that their words weren’t helping me.
It was really, really nice to have someone else set the boundaries and limits around pregnancy loss talk when I was at my lowest points.
Avoid People who Continue to Who Make You Feel Bad
It’s okay to avoid people during your fertility journey. I avoided a handful of people that I didn’t trust to respond to me in a way I could manage or whose life experience was so different from mine that it made me feel bad. For me, this list included:
Friends or family members who were having current, healthy pregnancies. It was just too hard to watch a pregnancy unfold when I’d lost mine.
Friends or family members who had said insensitive things about pregnancy loss + didn’t accept my boundaries and feelings
People who wanted to help by giving advice or sharing their experience with fertility treatment, pregnancy loss, or birth trauma before I felt ready to hear it
Making my circle smaller gave me the space I needed to process the loss of each pregnancy and make decisions about how I wanted to. move forward with my fertility treatment and care.
Consider Keeping Your Ongoing Journey Private
My husband and I tend to be pretty private about our personal lives, so we only shared our first pregnancy with a small circle of close friends and a couple of family members. With each subsequent pregnancy, the list got smaller and smaller.
One of the reasons for keeping our circle small was in response to the insensitive comments or statements we heard about pregnancy loss. But the other was because we found it exhausting to keep everyone informed of each step of our fertility journey. After my second miscarriage, we made our list pretty short. When we were finally able to announce a healthy pregnancy with our son, most people were shocked to find out that we’d been going through fertility treatment, but they understood.
I want you to know that it’s okay to choose to stop talking to other people about your pregnancies as you move forward. It’s okay to go through fertility treatment or another pregnancy in secrecy until you feel ready to discuss it publicly. This is a way of taking care of yourself.
Find a Community of Women Who Get It
It’s important to find support as you navigate pregnancy loss, especially if you can’t get it from your loved ones. Each woman is unique, so the type of support you need and benefit from might be different from me or someone else. Here is a list of options to explore:
Check with your local fertility clinics to see if they offer support groups for women who are facing recent miscarriage, recurrent pregnancy loss, secondary infertility etc.
Online communities where you can meet other women who get it. One of the risks of this kind of support group is that people sometimes unload their traumas, so a good rule of thumb: if the community is triggering you or if it is not helping, quit.
Look for a support group online. There are many different communities, and some are very specific to the type of loss. A community I appreciate is the Pregnancy and Infant Loss community through Postpartum Support International.
Another option is to access Postpartum Support International’s Helpline for women who are experiencing the loss of a pregnancy. This hotline advertises its nonjudgmental support and allows you to talk with someone who gets it.
Therapy Can Help You Cope with Pregnancy Loss
Grief around pregnancy loss can impact women for years. Many women experience feelings of guilt, low self-esteem, self-blame, fear, and anxiety after miscarriage or other kinds of pregnancy loss. Additionally, women who go on to carry another pregnancy often experience increased anxiety and stress during pregnancy because they fear another loss. Sometimes this extends into the postpartum period and shows up as postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, or difficulty with attaching to your infant.
I want you to know that I understand that your experience with pregnancy loss created a situation where you feel this way. It makes sense.
Therapy can be a valuable tool for navigating the way grief and trauma impact you during the time of your pregnancy loss and into the future. Having a safe space to share your complex feelings, process your grief, and understand the way this experience impacts you often helps. We can find ways to help you feel better.
Get in touch to learn more about counseling with me and see if my care is a good fit for you.
MEET THE AUTHORHi, I’m Dr. Julie Franks.
Dr. Julie is a maternal mental health therapist in Washington State and founder of Nurturing the Sisterhood. She cares for women who aspire to become mothers, pregnant and postpartum women, and women in the early years of motherhood. She specializes in anxiety care. She believes that her transparency about her personal struggles with infertility, pregnancy loss, high risk pregnancy, birth trauma, and anxiety help the women in her practice feel seen and heard.
