How to Support Someone Who Has a Miscarriage Explained by Reddit Members
By some estimates, about 30 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage . And yet so many moms and dads still suffer in silence. How do you support a bereaved friend or family member? October is Pregnancy and Baby Loss Awareness Month, and on a powerful Reddit thread, people have shared how you can really help.
Declare
You can be sincere when you say, “Please let me know if I can help you,” but your suggestion places the responsibility on the suffering person. Let’smakeart writes instead , just get up and help.
The best piece of advice I’ve received in helping a friend or family member get through a difficult time, such as a loss, is not to ask them what they need, but simply to do it. It can be very difficult for some people to accept help or even recognize / remember what they need help with. Don’t ask her if she needs anything, just be there and do it. Bring her groceries or food, go up and offer to clean up while she naps or watches a movie or something. If she has other children — especially young ones who may not fully understand what’s going on — come and take them somewhere for a few hours. If they participate in activities such as soccer or piano lessons, come and drive them. There isn’t really anything that can ease her pain, but you can ease the burden of daily life as she copes with pain.
Feed them
How divided YtrapEhtNioj, the pain is both emotional and physical in nature .
I never really thought about the physical aspect of losing a pregnancy until it happened to me. I was bleeding, I was weak and in pain. Add to that the emotional damage. It was so hard. People are brought in soups and easy-to-digest meals. I didn’t want anything special. The best thing was when someone brought in homemade chicken noodles with soda crackers and cookies. It was so comforting. At the time, I could barely take care of myself. I wasn’t really hungry, but I knew I had to. I would definitely not prepare such food for myself. It was nice to have it there when I was ready to eat.
Stop trying to help them figure it all out
When you don’t know what to say, you can start asking questions or try to improve their mood. It’s useless. If they are in a dark place, the only thing you can do is sit with them in that place. 357Magnum writes:
And there is nothing that can really help anyone feel better. Everything everyone says doesn’t help. … No one wants to be told that this is part of a grand plan. Nobody wants to be told that it could be worse. Nobody wants to be told that next time everything will be fine. Nobody wants to be asked what the plan is. Nobody wants to be asked if we’ve considered implementation (we’ve done and read literally everything anyone can think of). Nobody is going to tell us anything new or useful, so they just need to stop trying. The only thing we’ve ever enjoyed hearing is that people just say “this sucks.” Just to admit it’s awful and it’s okay to feel awful about it. Because it just sucks.
Be aware that some well-intentioned comments are not only useless but also harmful.
Ff-fuckit explains why comments like “It shouldn’t have been” are dismissive and defiant.
Our family also suffered from many miscarriages, and the nonsense that people say, trying to console and console, never ceases to deafen me. “It shouldn’t have happened”, “at this stage it’s not really a loss, rather a disappointment”, “at least you have it” – these are the words that I remember.
“It shouldn’t have been” is so offensive (to me) because it rejects the mental pain you feel and doesn’t offer anything even remotely constructive. It is not like a doctor would come up to me and tell me that pregnancy is not viable because of X y and z. It’s about as empathetic as the phrase “shit happens,” and when you talk about a much-wanted child, if that’s the best you can say, you shouldn’t have said anything. When someone says that my emotional gut reaction is like “oh, am I not meant to be happy?”
If the child had a name, say it out loud
Or at least write it on a card or in the text. It shows them that you understand that the child really matters. Kallynn1215 writes:
For me, the most important thing, especially at the beginning, was: how can I survive? Well, it still hurts me. I am still unhappy. But there were times when I laughed. Where I thought about my child and smiled. They loved her. It mattered. … IT IS IMPORTANT. She was here and she was real and she was important.
Encourage people (if you can handle it) to use her name. To talk about her. Don’t let people pretend they didn’t. They don’t need to be afraid to talk about her. She is your daughter. She will always be.
Remember how you talk about pregnancy and children in front of them.
They don’t need to hear about how difficult it is to avoid sushi for nine months, or how your baby’s noisy grumbling keeps you awake at night. RancidLemons explains:
My colleague has two or three miscarriages. Shortly after the latter, her daughter-in-law became pregnant. Throughout her pregnancy, her daughter-in-law missed how unhappy she was, how bad she felt, how she wanted it all to end …
Do not do this. This doesn’t mean “don’t complain,” but remember who you are complaining to. There are people who are willing to give everything to feel morning sickness.
It’s the same with your own pregnancy news.
Don’t let them find out about it on social media, because it’s “easier”. Byakuyabankai writes:
If you can, talk to her face to face. Explain that you are pregnant and wanted to tell her face-to-face instead of accidentally letting her know on Facebook.
Explain that you empathize with her feelings and do not want to hurt her, so you feel you should tell her.
Don’t forget about dads
They need space to talk, cry, and get angry. As Byakuyabankai explains:
I do tend to find that during the entire process of losing children, the father is often forgotten. People will always ask how my wife is doing when anniversaries are approaching, and they will not ask how I am either.
I would like to tell you about some of the comments I have, but I don’t think that is appropriate as they were not very good, lol. But they all act differently.
I think that as men we have to soak it up and go about our business, we have to take care of our partners while they grieve and we grieve in silence. I am lucky that my partner made sure that this does not happen, she is still my support when I have a hard time, as I am her too. We both lost a child, not just one of us.
You cannot decide how much pain they should feel or how long they should grieve.
The pain may diminish over time, but according to jonnyg112 , the loss will always be real.
… no matter how far away she was, it was her baby. She had all hopes and dreams about it, and now she is in mourning. This is a loss that she can never forget or experience.
The best way to support her is to treat it like a deceased family member. She needs a shoulder to cry on, someone who doesn’t judge her, how she blames herself, and, most importantly, someone who just listens and understands as best she can.