It isn’t called a miscarriage, it’s called a stillbirth. They lost a child for goodness sake.
This is a very interesting statement and it implies that a woman experiencing a miscarriage, did not lose a child. If she didn’t lose a child, what DID she lose?
For me, the moment I discovered I was pregnant, I believed I was pregnant with a baby. Some do not believe this and that may be the right choice for them but if anyone called my baby an embryo or fetus, that was offensive to me. Because of this, when my baby died, I felt I had lost a child. There was so much our family lost when both Ruby and Gus died.
I recently attended a workgroup in Houston, Texas where we discussed how to effectively manage miscarriage in the emergency department. This is an area I am working hard to change because many women are sent away from the emergency department with little to no support or options.
While at the workshop, important leaders within the medical community met with leaders in perinatal loss which included members of PLIDA. We talked for four hours about what we can do to best assist families through miscarriage and we came up with some great ideas, but I left sad. The reason was because one major thing needed to change or none of what was presented would change either. That was the language that was used.
Spontaneous abortion/miscarriage, products of conception, embryo/fetus, baby/child, etc. While these words were used, I watch the faces of the medical professionals when someone referred to their “products of conception” as a baby. They cringed. And one woman called her baby a fetus but when a doctor heard the gestation of the baby, she became upset that fetus was used because the term embryo should have been used instead.
Even though we discussed language was a big factor in how miscarriage should be managed within an emergency department, if the medical professionals don’t want to change their language to what the family is using, our efforts will be fruitless. This will certainly be a challenge.
So let’s talk about the comments in the thread of the picture above. This was in response to a woman whose baby had passed away near term. I remember the story and the person is a celebrity. The news reported the loss as a miscarriage; however, the term was incorrect and in fact, the baby was near full-term which is a stillbirth.
But that first comment is one of the stigma’s surrounding miscarriage and can make women confused about whether or not they have a right to grieve. If society does not accept that a miscarried embryo/fetus is not a child/baby, then what it is and is it acceptable for a woman to grieve that loss?
The thoughts and prayers are certainly wonderful but the responses above are really trying to compare miscarriage and stillbirth. Comparing loss serves no one.