Miscarriage: What Not to Say

I miscarried my only pregnancy when I was 41 and finally pregnant, after five years of humiliating, sometimes painful, questionably dangerous and always expensive infertility treatments. For the IVF that resulted in this pregnancy, my husband and I had flown to a clinic 3000 miles from home, and his sperm were mechanically injected into my eggs to make five viable embryos, each dividing like perfect soap bubbles in a petri dish.

I woke up one morning, some weeks later, with a strange sense of emptiness—death, even. Something, I knew, had gone wrong, although there was no evidence of it, not yet. Only a feeling that the other life within me was no longer there. I had not kept this baby I would never see or hold. The baby I’d already named—girl or boy—the child for whom I had, in my mind, already bought a pony. A boy might like a pony.

I called a friend, frantically sputtering into the phone. “I’ve lost the baby. I know I have. I know I have.”
“You’re fine,” she said. “Stop it.” Well, what else could she say, early on a Sunday morning? Nothing had happened that I could talk about rationally. It was only my certain knowledge of this end.

The weeks that followed were a storm of despair. Yes, my husband and I could try IVF again, but we had already tried so many times, we’d wiped out most of our savings account. No, it wasn’t at all likely the procedure would succeed this time, if we did.

Here is what not to say to a friend who has miscarried, even if she’s 25, and, indeed, has an open window of time and opportunity ahead—these were all said to me by friends and family, well intentioned but unaware:
“You can try again, don’t worry.”
“Just adopt a kid. Your instincts will kick in, and it will be the same thing. Everyone says so.”
“This is God’s way of taking care of imperfect babies,” and “It must not have been God’s will for you.”
“You couldn’t have been far enough along to feel it move yet.”
“Children are expensive. Maybe you two are better off.”
“At least it didn’t die after it was born. That would have been worse. It’s the worst thing in the world to lose a child.” And (almost unbelievably), “At the point you lost it, it was mainly a mass of cells, not a real baby.”

It. It was always ‘it.’ Not a baby. Too early.

When a friend has miscarried, hold her and say I’m so very sorry. Period. No need to say more. Think of speaking with your eyes. Your eyes can sometimes express what words cannot, in the way of empathy. Your friend, if she’s like me, has lost someone she already loved and wanted. So badly. There’s not a list of comforting cliches or rationalizations you can say to her, or to her husband or partner.

Just be there, with your best way of caring, whether it’s comfort food, a night out, coffee, a card with a short, heartfelt note, vegetables from your garden or an invitation to go for a walk. Don’t bring over an orchid, unless you know she can keep it alive. When you can, remind her, or remind him, that you care, that life is still good even when it’s bad, and that the grief of such an awful loss will pass.