Sharing The Loss: Can Social Media Help You Heal From The Heartbreak of A Miscarriage?
We explore why keeping mum about the loss of a pregnancy is quickly becoming a thing of the past
I was 10 years old when I first learned what a miscarriage was, that a baby could be “lost”. I woke up early on a school day to find my mother getting ready to go to the hospital. It was a spring morning, chilly and wet, typical for that time of year on the West Coast of Canada. I remember her calmly explaining to me that “The Baby” – one I don’t recall knowing about until this moment – had died inside of her and she had to go see the doctor to have it removed from her belly. While my school had a robust health and wellness curriculum for students my age, miscarriages weren’t covered in great detail; we weren’t privy to know what happens when a pregnancy isn’t viable, when it can’t be carried to full term. While I don’t remember my mother telling me to keep it a secret, I understood that what she had confided in me wasn’t something I should be sharing with my classmates.
It would be over a decade later before the rise of social media would begin to empower and unite millennial women like myself, as we navigate the joys and challenges of starting a family – and with it the heartbreak of miscarriage. In the past, conversations surrounding the loss of a baby at any stage of a pregnancy were shrouded with shame and stigma. Today in 2022, smack dab in a digital age where buzz terms like “personal branding” and “community building” are tossed about, sharing the good with the bad (however ugly it gets) is common place – even for high profilers who, in the past, would have been more concerned with keeping up appearances than shattering taboos.
Through platforms such as Instagram, celebrities have begun to tell their own stories, utilising their influence to ignite discussions, often during moments of their greatest sorrows – and that includes talking about their miscarriages and stillbirths. The likes of Chrissy Teigen, Spanish model Georgina Rodríguez and, most recently, Sharon Stone have all turned to social media to share their own losses, to advocate for women and remind us we aren’t alone in our respective healing journeys.
“We, as females don’t have a forum to discuss the profundity of this loss. I lost nine children by miscarriage,” the award-winning actress (who is now a mother to three via adoption) wrote within comment on People Magazine’s Instagram. “It is no small thing, physically nor emotionally yet we are made to feel it is something to bear alone and secretly with some kind of sense of failure.”
Naturally this begs the question: can openly sharing one’s story regarding miscarriage or stillbirth play a positive role in healing the trauma and sorrow?
According to some medical professionals, there are benefits when it comes to leaning in and participating in these tough conversations. “Women may find support online especially when their immediate support system does not know how to respond to their grief experience,” says Dr. Ottilia Brown, a registered clinical psychologist at The LightHouse Arabia in Dubai. “Social media has become a place where people experiencing similar journeys can connect with one another.”
However, she does note that “social media can trigger grief reactions” and that we need to be mindful of how and when we share our pain – and consume content. “Algorithms will also skew the feed to grief if this has been accessed regularly on social media, thus flooding the individual with grief-related content,” she says. Her advice is to be mindful by managing settings within a profile and to avoid comparing one’s own emotions to the experiences of others.
Danae Mercer, a content creator based between Dubai and Italy, shared her own story with her followers when she had what is known as a ‘missed miscarriage’ last winter – a situation where the baby has died or isn’t developing, but has not been physically miscarried by the mother’s body.
“I have the most amazing community of women and I was able to open up about all of it,” she says, touching on how her audience wasn’t shy when it came to providing her with support and advice. “I did get quite a few DMs from women being like ‘Hey, just a heads up, they [the medical professionals] probably will say it’s not going to hurt… but it’s actually really, really going to hurt. Don’t be afraid of asking for pain medicine or something stronger than aspirin.’”
“It was a massive blessing,” she says. “So much of miscarriage feels shameful or you start to blame yourself… to know you’re not alone in these thoughts, it takes away the shame – and while it doesn’t fix it, it helps you start to heal.” While Danae notes she did have one particularly nasty comment on a post, her overall experience of opening up to her following was a positive one.
Not all creators, no matter how open they appear to be, feel the need to jump into the conversation. Saudi content creator Alaa Balkhy decided to keep her own heartbreak offline when she lost a pregnancy last year. “I never shared on social media, because, I think, we’re constantly talking about the Evil Eye,” she says, touching on why she decided to keep her own miscarriage – which occurred around six weeks gestation – private. “I share a percentage of my life, let’s say 20 per cent so I was really afraid of comments like ‘This is what happens when you share too much. No one needs to know what’s happening in your life.’”
Not wanting to feel belittled or to her have pain dismissed, Alaa refrained from posting about her loss, but did eventually share the news with friends and family (she also notes that her husband “was with me the whole time” and had his support throughout the experience.) “It’s so funny, because they always say ‘Don’t tell anyone unless you’re in your third month…’ And here I am. I didn’t tell anyone and something bad still happened,” she says. “When I told my cousins – and all I was looking for was sympathy – all I got was ‘Oh, me too. Me too.’ And it’s weird because… it’s kind of like people saying it’s okay. It happened to us. I didn’t know that this was more common. If I knew, maybe I wouldn’t have freaked out.”
“Once a woman knows that she is pregnant the chance of miscarriage is around 10-15 per cent,” says Dubai-based Dr. Ruhil Badiani, a family medicine physician at Cornerstone Clinic. She notes that a pregnancy loss before 20 weeks gestation is known as a miscarriage and that after this time it is known as a stillbirth. “But it can happen unnoticed, often because it occurs within days of conception, so the number is likely to be significantly higher.” She states that most miscarriages – about 80 per cent – occur in the first trimester, and that “after this time the risk is far less.”
“Once a fetal heartbeat is detected, around 6 weeks, and viability is confirmed the risk of miscarriage drops to 10 per cent,” she says, noting that March of Dimes reports miscarriage rates of only 1-5 per cent in the second trimester. According to Dr. Ruhil, a UNICEF analysis from August 2021 states that, globally, 13.9 per 1,000 pregnancies end in stillbirth. “The rates vary widely across regions, but this number is decreasing every year,” she says.
And while Dr. Ruhil does state that “most women recover physically from a miscarriage within a few weeks or months,” emotionally recovering from the mental trauma of a miscarriage or stillbirth can take much longer.
“Reactions to miscarriage vary greatly and are incredibly unique. Some women may have a response immediately following the miscarriage and may process this relatively quickly,” says Dr. Ottilia. “This type of grief is often viewed as disenfranchised grief, because the cultural norms and rituals that are typically enacted when we lose a loved one are not followed. Often the grief is not publicly recognised.”
So, how can we best support women who are grieving, be it from a miscarriage or stillbirth, whether they choose to share it online or not? Dr. Ottilia recommends reaching out, avoiding the comparison of grieving processes, offering practical assistance and creating a space where the mother feels comfortable to freely express her emotions. “Suspend your own ideas regarding how long the mother should be grieving,” she says, adding that it’s normal for supportive individuals (i.e. partners and family members) to feel a sense of helplessness throughout the process. “Each person’s journey through grief is their unique experience of dealing with the loss they have suffered.”
“I feel like people are more comfortable to talk about it after,” Alaa says, sharing insight into when she felt comfortable discussing her loss with her inner circle. “Like after you get pregnant… After you ‘succeed’… you can talk about how you failed the first time – and it isn’t really a failure. Your body just decided to make this decision.”
“The minute I started talking about this on social media, all these women from offline, women I go for coffee with, women I know… in the real world, popped up and shared their stories with me too,” says Danae. “These are people I’ve known for quite a long time and I never knew they had miscarriages, because it’s just something we tucked down. And for some women, that might be the best solution for them. But for those who do find comfort in sharing, I want them to know that they can.”
Photography courtesy of Anitastudio, Shutterstock
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s July/August 2022 issue.
