"They were only cells": the miscarriage still too often minimized, they say

In France, one in 10 women will have suffered a miscarriage in her lifetime. A drama still largely taboo and poorly supported by health professionals. Three women tell us what they experienced and the reactions they faced.

Hélène, 41, Camille, 29 and Audrey, 25, suffered a miscarriage. They agreed to tell NEON what they experienced, in order to break the taboo on this phenomenon, which is still too minimized, as pointed out by a study published in The Lancet on April 26.

The moment they learned

Hélène, 41 years old: “As a couple for a while, I work, my partner is nearing the end of his studies. We want a child, I stop the pill and get pregnant right away. Dating ultrasound and heartbeats, a lot of emotion. A few weeks later, stomach pains, we go straight to the emergency room. The person who sees us redo an ultrasound and seems embarrassed. She calls a doctor. We no longer hear the heart, it's a miscarriage. Time stands still, we do not really understand what is happening.

Camille, 29 years old: During the first confinement, at the beginning of April, following a delay in my period, I took a test and discovered that I was pregnant. At the beginning of May, we announce it to our close friends, they are very enthusiastic. At the beginning of June, I have an appointment for the first trimester ultrasound: I remember having received a call from the maternity ward who told me that my boyfriend could not attend. At the time of the ultrasound, there is a very awkward silence and I see that the embryo has not evolved much since the last time, and there is no cardiac activity. I am told that there is no more life. I ask to call my boyfriend in the parking lot and I'm not allowed. I'm in shock, I had continued to grow. I feel a sense of betrayal from my body, which didn't show me that I was carrying a lifeless baby.

Audrey, 25: We've been trying to have a baby for 5-6 months, so he's really wanted and expected. When I find out I'm pregnant, there's a lot of excitement. Over the first three weeks, I see my gynecologist 4-5 times to check that everything is fine, until the day when we had to hear the heart. When she does the ultrasound, I understand immediately when I see that the pocket is empty. I collapse, the gynecologist has no words, she begins to caress my knee, my companion tells me to stop stressing. The emotional lift is very hard: if the day before I had had cramps, blood loss, at the limit… but this is absolutely not the case.

Curettage

When a pregnancy ends, it is sometimes necessary to completely expel the embryo. This can be done during surgery or by drug intervention.

Hélène: I still have the symptoms of pregnancy, nausea and tight breasts. Hard to realize that inside, this little shrimp no longer lives in me. The anesthetist sees me a few days later. I explain to him my distress and the fact that I can't accept this miscarriage, knowing that my body is sending me opposite signals. She reassures me, tells me that it's normal and that I can do an ultrasound before the curettage to make sure that this little heart is no longer beating. D-Day arrives, when I am taken to the operating room, an anesthetist arrives and tells me that she is going to put me to sleep. I refuse and tell him that I must first have an ultrasound. She leaves and comes back with the doctor. The latter answers me that she does not need to do an ultrasound, it is a miscarriage, “it happens regularly”. For her, maybe, not for me, 1st pregnancy, 1st miscarriage, a mourning to do… I ask her again and explain to her that for me it is necessary. She refuses… and asks the anesthesiologist to give me a shot. She tries but I struggle. I fall asleep crying… And wake up a few hours later without having had the assurance that this little being was really dead. Even if reason tells me that I could trust the words of the doctors, I remain with this question in me: what if it was a mistake? what if our little shrimp was alive at the time of the curettage?

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Camille: I asked the gynecologist about the kind of pain I was going to feel, she told me that I was going to lose a lot of blood, but I don't know what to expect. It's very painful, and I lose an amount of blood that makes me hallucinate. I'm told to go to the emergency room if I really lose too much, but it's hard to know when it's a lot. With my boyfriend, we both feel very alone, without any information. I just found on google a notice from a Canadian site.

Audrey: The day I receive the medicine that causes the expulsion, it's not my usual gynecologist. There, I face a proof of inhumanity: it's robotic, as if it were normal. During the follow-up ultrasound, she looks on without saying a word and then says, “I confirm the diagnosis, there is no heart”. I was barely given any information about the drug, I had to dig to find out what was going to happen to me. It makes the ordeal even more difficult for a doctor to act like that.

The reaction of relatives

Camille: I had a few remarks like "it was only cells", "it wasn't really a baby", "the fact that it was a surprise baby is that you didn't really want it", but I forgot a lot to move on. My friends were very understanding, even if they didn't really know how to behave with us. Some were very touched. We had planned to go to my parents to announce the pregnancy, we went there but to announce the bad news because we were suffering. They understood, were very gentle with me.

I found out that I had aunts who had miscarriages. I said to myself that it was a shame to have waited for this to happen to me to discover all this, but I felt less alone. I realized how taboo it is, and for a long time. On the other hand, in the summer that followed, I have seven girlfriends who told me that they were pregnant. I said that I was very happy but sometimes I tried to explain what had happened and that I could not fully invest myself in their pregnancy. Some understood, others didn't.

Audrey: I feel I was well supported even if there were some trivializing remarks, with sentences like, 'it happens, you'll get pregnant again', 'it wasn't a baby yet, it's only been 7 weeks “. These remarks, it's just not possible for me because it's not trivial. There were lots of projections around this baby that I was going to have. I can't hear anyone telling me it wasn't one yet. We make this act a taboo that nobody talks about, and when it happens we act as if nothing had happened. It is incoherent this way of approaching the miscarriage.

Post-miscarriage follow-up

Hélène: The hospital did not offer me any psychological follow-up. It was I who contacted the gynecologist who followed me, and it was she who followed me up, examined me, and learned that I had had a suture. When I returned to Bordeaux, I saw my doctor's colleague and he was the only person who told me that I might need a psychologist. Me, I was in denial of what had happened and its violence, telling myself that everything was fine, that I was strong. I did this psychological follow-up much later.

Camille: I asked for a psychological consultation at the maternity ward, the gynecologist looked at me like, “Ah, okay? ". I had a big problem of legitimacy: I told myself that women had to live worse than that and that I was taking their place. I almost canceled this appointment ten times. Finally, we talked for an hour and she helped me, especially on how to talk about it to those around me, because there was this huge taboo. A few weeks later, I had to go back to the maternity ward for an ultrasound, and they told me: “it's good, your stomach is empty”. She also explained to me that my body was fine, and that if I wanted to get pregnant again, it was fine to do so in the following months.

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Audrey: At the psychological level, I had no offer of help. However, it is very, very hard. All women who become pregnant can testify to this feeling of fullness and so, overnight, you find yourself completely empty and that is the hardest thing to experience in all of this. I felt a great emptiness and I had the impression that nothing could fill it. Today, a month later, I still have very difficult times.

the after

Audrey: My real therapy was being able to talk about it on a video posted on my Instagram, to read testimonials… it helped me enormously to get my head above water. I am very happy that I was able to find the courage to make this video. I told myself that if I wasn't doing it for myself, I was doing it for others, so that they would feel less alone.

Hélène: In the end, it was the curettage that was more violent than the miscarriage. There is a trivialization in the medical environment, whereas when we live that, it is hard, there is a mourning to do. I allowed myself to have less pain because in the end other women experience it, so why should I experience it less well than the others? Since then, I had a child, I was accompanied and I did a job to overcome this ordeal. And today, I realize that this ordeal has brought me beautiful things, a work on myself, a greater awareness of the violence that women can suffer and a desire to fight it.

Camille: The good news is that I am currently seven months pregnant. The first semester was not easy to live, but I surrounded myself with the right people, I did more consultations than the average. I quickly announced my pregnancy because if it ever happened again, I preferred my entourage to be there. I also did reflexology, for me. I needed to wear a necklace, to put on a symbol to remember what had happened. My companion got a small bandage tattooed in tribute to this first pregnancy. I think I will make one too.