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Miscarriage can lead to 'long-term post-traumatic stress'

224 points by adrian_mrd 7y ago

gwbas1c 7y ago
Don't forget that miscarriages effect the spouse too.
- anunamoose 7y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted. As the partner of someone who had a miscarriage I was happy to see someone thought of me as well. I definitely also have PTSD from it. I remember my partner being in pain and bleeding and experiencing the sadness of loss on top of all of it. I was scared and lonely and I feel and felt helpless.
  - bregma 7y ago
    Sorry for your loss.
  - russnewcomer 7y ago
    I hope you and your partner have found help and support for recovery.
  - p1necone 7y ago
    They're probably being downvoted because, despite being reasonable sentiment assuming they're commenting in good faith, it's exactly the kind of "plausible deniability" that MRAs/redpillers/alt-righters use to derail discussion of issues they don't agree with without outright stating their real opinions.
  - gwbas1c 7y ago
    OP: > Not sure why you're being downvoted I find that people on Hacker News tend to downvote any kind of short comments. When I came across this thread, it was empty and I didn't like seeing an empty thread, so I wanted to say something to break the ice. (At this point, the post has 18 points, so clearly cooler heads prevailed.) My wife tells stories about seeing her father suddenly start sobbing when she came across items that her parents bought for their first pregnancy. Later, when we had a miscarriage, (fortunately very early,) my boss told me about his. Even though we were on the phone, I could tell he was holding back tears. Thankfully we haven't had serious fertility problems. What helped in our case was, throughout my life, hearing about my parents' miscarriage, sister's miscarriage, cousin's miscarriage. I knew it was normal.
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  A husband friend of mine has told me he often feels sad when he sees our baby boy because the baby is the same age his son would have been had they not miscarried. A good rule of thumb is to treat people with compassion and support, because you don’t know what they are going through.
- samsa 7y ago
  My wife has lost her last three pregnancies (the first two around 20 weeks, the third around 16 weeks). She is a very strong woman, and I wouldn't have thought to use the phrase PTSD, but looking back, it fits. Women obviously bear the majority of the stress (carrying the baby, unavoidable thoughts of 'what did I do to cause this?', etc.), but as the spouse in this situation it was always nice - though relatively rare - when friends/coworkers/etc. would check in on me and ask how I'm doing. I don't have PTSD, but I'm definitely not the same as I was before my wife's first loss.
  - russnewcomer 7y ago
    Those losses are rough. I hope you and your wife are getting the support you need.
- hhas01 7y ago
  “ Don't forget that miscarriages effect [sic] the spouse too.” Of course close family [that know about it] will also feel grief; that’s only natural. I think the point being made is that it is far worse for the individual doing the actual miscarrying. On top of the grief there can also be powerful feelings of guilt, anger, personal responsibility; plus they’ve a bloody great biochemical hurricane going down too. (e.g. Compare and contrast the effects of postpartum depression following a successful pregnancy.)
  - whiddershins 7y ago
    It’s not a worse for whom competition.
    - hhas01 7y ago
      Oh, please. Miscarrying is worse for the person miscarrying. I’m male, single, childless, dumb as a stump, and even I can work that one out. It’s not just emotional; it’s biochemical too. Look, no-one says grieving spouses don’t require support too (of course they do!), but it’s entirely reasonable to suggest that women who miscarry suffer more severe trauma requiring significantly higher and more specialized professional support. Terms like “PTSD” and “medication“ do not get bandied around for fun, you know. Particularly by a medical profession that has a less-than-perfect history of taking “female problems” seriously. So try starting from the assumption that however bad it may make you feel, the other person feels a whole shit-ton worse, and show some flipping grace as you work your way from there.
      - qmmmur 7y ago
        I think it's fair to say that the death of anyone's baby, in circumstances where they can blame themselves (I didn't do enough to make the baby healthy, I didn't support my wife, I could have done x for her) might have significant mental detriment on a non gestating spouse just as it might the one who gestates. Instead, you've made this about how smart you can seem rather than listening to the other person.
      - taneq 7y ago
- Vaslo 7y ago
  While that comment makes sense, I felt much less upset than my wife, and just had to be there for her. I had convinced myself that a “blighted ovum” was not a “real baby”, but had a harder time convincing my wife of that. She had everything that was like pregnancy, including awful contractions to try and eliminate that empty egg, which I could never possibly understand.
  - touisteur 7y ago
    Well... Everyone is different, right? My wife took a hard hit, and it took her most of a year to recover, and then we tried again for 3 years, with no chance, and it was excruciating to see her down every fucking month. Then, when we got pregnant again, and it sticked, she felt better, and it passed for her for good. Meanwhile I was holding my breath for years. I'm still trying to recover from this loss, 7 years on. We have 2 beautiful, perfect, healthy twin girls. They're baby 2 and 3. We're so lucky with them... And they're quite the handful !... But I still think almost daily of the little one we lost. It's still very, very painful to me. Therapy and EMDR help, but man...
- p1necone 7y ago
  What's the point in mentioning this here? Of course they do, but this study wasn't about that.
myrryr 7y ago
Would anything which is traumatic, be able to lead to long term post-traumatic stress? And miscarriages are certainly traumatic.
- pacala 7y ago
  The A-word springs to mind. And yet the taboos are strong, not even a reference, either in the article or the HN comments.
  - i_haz_rabies 7y ago
    The long term emotional impact of abortion seems like it depends a lot more on the person and context than miscarriage, which is universally awful.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      Plus, its not a taboo at all; its been intensely studied, and there's no evidence that having an abortion increases post-traumatic stress compared to being pregnant and not having one, while miscarriage does increase it. Now, there are people who very much want that not to be true for political reasons, but wanting something to be true for political reasons doesn't make it true.
      - pacala 7y ago
        That's a good point. I forgot how highly politicized this topic is, which means there is a high likelihood for a flamewar, which means people would rather avoid touching it, which creates a conversation vacuum easily mistaken for a taboo.
        scarejunba 7y ago
        Well, there's also a lot of other parallels to draw, right? For instance, rape can cause PTSD but consensual sex usually does not so prima facie I wouldn't jump to the spontaneous abortion carrying the same results as one induced at the request of the carrier.
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
I’m really glad we decided to have kids when we did and didn’t wait longer. I was completely unaware of miscarriage rates when we started. Even for healthy age groups it’s more than 10%. It’s much higher than I would have thought, and rises quickly after 32, just when many people are hitting their professional stride, which is extremely unfortunate.
- xupybd 7y ago
  You raise a good point. Many are not aware how common miscarriages are. I don't know if it would make it any easier to know they happen often to many couples but it might make it easier to prepare.
- ranDOMscripts 7y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of women who have tried to get pregnant have had at least 1 miscarriage in their lifetime. Fertile or not, it appears to be part of the child-bearing process given sufficient attempts to reproduce.
  - cs02rm0 7y ago
    1 in 4 pregnancies was the figure I was quoted, when my wife had a miscarriage.
    - astura 7y ago
      1 in 4 known pregnancies. Most miscarriages occur before pregnancy hormones able to be detected. Probably around 40-60% of fertilized eggs die. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  It's far higher than that, but most miscarriages occur so early that in the past, or today if not actively checking if you are pregnant, a woman wouldn't have known it happened. This is obviously difficult to study, but current thought is that miscarriages occur in 30-50% of fertilizations, and with more and more tracking, people are more and more likely to know about it.
russnewcomer 7y ago
My wife and I struggle with infertility, I have family members with a history of miscarriage, and my wife leads a women’s infertility support group. American culture does not know what to do about natal issues. (Arguably, no culture ever has) We need to recognize that reproductive health goes far beyond binary abortion debates, and can affect women permanently, to say nothing of the rest of the family. I can say, knowing people that suffer from PTSD for natal issues and long term war trauma, the degrees of suffering may be different, but the unhealthy coping mechanisms can do equal amount of damage. If you or your family is dealing with miscarriage or infertility, there is help and support out there specifically for you. I would be happy to help point anyone toward the resources that I know of, and more than happy to talk to any husbands who want help knowing how to support their wives.
- akxkcd 7y ago
  Can you point to the resources you are mentioning?
  - russnewcomer 7y ago
    Sure. Email me (address in profile, or hn username at gmail)
    - akxkcd 7y ago
      Sent an email. Let me know if you did not get it.
      - russnewcomer 7y ago
        Responded. Sorry for delay.
  - S_AU 7y ago
    In Australia we have Sands https://www.sands.org.au/miscarriage https://www.sands.org.au/miscarriage
- deleted 7y ago
colechristensen 7y ago
Things like this lead me to wonder: how is the experience of trauma affected by cultural practice, myth, ideas, etc. Certainly similar experiences can lead to different outcomes from ignorance to indifference to trauma in different individuals. Why is that and how could traumatic outcomes be changed? Should they be? It is a touchy subject because it is easy to interpret as invalidating deep personal feelings, but that isn't the goal at all. Would, say, young people drafted for war from a modern Spartan society experience the same trauma in war as young people drafted from Berkeley? I am sure that individuals from both sides would have experiences across the spectrum, but would the distribution differ? I do think that modern Western society goes to extremes to prevent children from experiencing or even knowing about the harsh realities of the world and it's not hard to conclude that when the sheltered youth are dumped into reality (considerably more) serious mental illness follows as the world they were prepared for and the world they live in are very different.
- marktangotango 7y ago
  Why would anyone wonder that? Just because the majority perspective is of a life a relative plenty, open-ness, and stability of the rule of law, they might perceive people in general to be sheltered or soft, but that’s certainly not true for many. There are plenty of stories about famine, starvation, neglect, and abuse in many parts of the world (and at home!) to dissuade anyone of this entire notion. Question for any of us who romanticize more austere, brutish times is; why? There are many ways to test ourselves, doing so helps with perspective I believe.
  - RHSeeger 7y ago
    Why wouldn't they? 1. Thing X happens in our world 2. We shelter people / avoid discussing the realities of thing X 3. People that experience thing X are severely, negatively emotionally impacted Wondering if talking about thing X more openly in our society would help avoid/temper/mitigate that impact seems... like a reasonable line of thought to me.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  > Would, say, young people drafted for war from a modern Spartan society experience the same trauma in war as young people drafted from Berkeley? Most of Sparta was slaves, and the upper class participated in murder of slaves as a rite of passage, so I doubt there is a lot in common.
balls187 7y ago
I remember it was a week after the miscarriage, I was targeted and terminated from my company, as part of a coverup. Double whammy that lead to the worst ~3 years of my life.
- xupybd 7y ago
  Really sorry to hear that. That sux so much. I hope things are better now.
  - balls187 7y ago
    Thanks. They are. Luckily I had some real good people around me to help me through it all.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  Wow, that's horrible. I'm curious to hear more details if you feel comfortable sharing.
  - balls187 7y ago
    I notified senior leadership that engineering was misreporting it's uptime statistics. In effect breaching contracts with pretty much every major customer, including state governments. Leadership fixed the glitch.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
cm2012 7y ago
My wife and sister both had ectopic pregnancies, which really sucked. My wife was really hit by it emotionally.
- jammygit 7y ago
  I know somebody who had an ectopic. She had to more or less abort it, which made her feel unbelievable bad. For years afterwards. I’m sorry to hear it happened to people close to you twice
  - MandieD 7y ago
    I hope no one suggested that there was any sort of decision, other than by which method she preferred for it to be ended. Anyone who even implies that waiting it out is a more moral option is either stupid or cruel.
- MandieD 7y ago
  I had one, and it was scary, but it was early enough that I hadn't really perceived myself as pregnant - I had managed to Google myself into that being the best possibility for what was wrong with me (ovarian cancer was also a match for the symptoms!) I'm grateful that I was able to get to my regular gyno quickly and have her show me what was going on, go to the hospital of my choosing after getting ready to be there for a few days, and then have doctors who respected my agency while making it clear that this was something that needed to be ended right away (Germany).
bcrosby95 7y ago
Miscarriages are pretty common too. Anywhere from 10-25% of "recognized" pregnancies end in miscarriage. Among our close friends and family with kids (N=16), we're the only ones that has 2 or more kids and had no miscarriages. If you have married friends or friends with kids, its probably best not to joke about when they're going to pop one out. Fertility can be long, expensive, and not very fun.
- davrosthedalek 7y ago
  While jokes are not good, it's important to talk about it. A good friend of mine had to go through multiple miscarriages, and almost lost her life in the process. She hurt a lot from the feeling of being imperfect and somehow at fault. She was actually surprised how common an occurrence a miscarriage is, and if we manage to make it more normal to talk about it, and more normal to expect that it can happen, I think we would make an important step in reducing the pain.
  - hhas01 7y ago
    “She was actually surprised how common an occurrence a miscarriage is” Answer: very†. But it often isn’t talked about. And, I strongly agree, not talking about it is very Bad indeed. Ironically, I think developed nations’ success in all but eliminating premature deaths from once-ubiquitous infectious diseases has left recent generations without the highly-practised coping skills, social support systems, and painfully resigned stoicism that helped get our great-great-grandparents through the horrible inevitable process of burying half their kids before the poor little bleeders could even make it to adulthood. We’re all now such strangers to death we’re shit-scared by even the thought of talking about it, never mind directly facing up to it ourselves. -- † Even assuming the hosting part works perfectly, the whole DNA splicing and replication process is always an absolute crapshoot‡. ‡ And, to be fair, if it weren’t for all those accidental copy errors none of us would be here now to argue the issue, for life on Earth would never have advanced beyond the single cell. So yay for an imperfect process, but—bloody hell—is it one harsh SOB.
  - sambe 7y ago
    I find quite a lot of people do not agree that it's important to talk about it, for whatever reason. My guess is that overcoming the social stigma around showing your emotions/sharing problems is mostly to blame. Perhaps most people in my social group actually have had such problems and don't even feel comfortable in the meta-conversation. I often say things like "people should talk about this kind of stuff more because it would help them through it". I obviously mean it in a general sense (very much not trying to get specific people to talk about specific problems). Responses vary from an insincere "yeah..." to the rather odd "you can't tell people what to do".
cs02rm0 7y ago
My wife had one miscarriage, we're pretty robust but it was quite brutal, friends have certainly had many more. We had to wait a bit before trying again but not too long later had twins and in an odd sort of way it seemed like that gave some balance to the situation.
aaron695 7y ago
"1 in 13 children in sub-Saharan Africa died before reaching her or his fifth birthday" (2018) You can say that's Whataboutism, but for most of history losing a child was what happened to most people. So calling the sadness and awful experience from a miscarriage 'long-term post-traumatic stress' might be technically true one in six times if physiologists say so (not sure they have, the BBC has), to me that just further stigmatizes what is a sad but common occurrence no one talks about and implies we all live with trauma which can't be healthy to keep shoving down our throats.
- sparker72678 7y ago
  > for most of history losing a child was what happened to most people Even if true, that doesn't mean it wasn't heartbreaking and didn't have long-term effects on the family.
  - aaron695 7y ago
    Trauma and PTSD like suicide is contagious. Giving it to women and their partners who have a miscarriage or the loss of a child is also heartbreaking. I'm not saying don't talk about, I'm just saying calling it trauma and PTSD will irrevocably harm some people and possibly hurt more than it will help. I don't think the media should lie even if it harms people. But equally I don't think the story here is a story that justifies the harm it might cause, they still can tell the truth responsibly if the BBC just took care and didn't chase clicks.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      This is a deeply silly analysis. PTSD is a fairly specific and in many ways physical set of reactions to trauma; if you've had no personal exposure to it, you'd be unlikely to describe it convincingly to a professional, let alone somehow incubate it in your own mind simply by a suggested association. It's been suggested that PSTD can be "contagious", but the connection between "PTSD" and a specific trauma (ie: the belief that some specific trauma "is supposed to" cause PTSD) isn't the vector. If something causes PTSD, it causes PTSD. Pretending otherwise doesn't prevent it.
gigatexal 7y ago
I’ve a buddy whose wife just had her second miscarriage and it has rocked them. I try to be supportive but I have no idea what it is like. I feel terrible for them
- nikkikayauthor 7y ago
  Check in on them and see how they’re doing, or just offer an ear if they want to talk. If they’re anything like My husband and me they don’t have many people to talk to about it - and many won’t bring it up because they feel awkward or uncomfortable. Knowing someone is there, aware, and thinking about them can make the difference.
  - gigatexal 7y ago
    Thank you — I will.
vvvnnnnvvv 7y ago
I had a miscarriage at 10w (baby measuring 6w). For many months, I was haunted by things like going in for my first doctor's appointment and seeing my empty uterus on the screen. I thought about all those people, like the receptionist in the waiting room, who said "congrats" even though there was nothing to congratulate me for. I opted for medical management but didn't take the drugs until the pain was unbearable. Although that was the single worst 45m of my life, I don't think about it as much. I am pregnant again, but I am not the same. I am not excited, I am not making plans. We waited to tell our parents until 13 weeks. Even though I'm showing, I've told the people who absolutely need to know because I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to have a baby shower because I don't want to have to look all the stuff if the baby ends up dying. I participate in /r/Miscarriage, /r/ttcafterloss, and /r/pregnancyafterloss. People there are sad about losses that happened months, years, sometimes even 10 years ago. They - we! - are triggered by pregnant women, our original due dates (next week for me), the idea of getting pregnant again. It's a surprise to me that we're able to call this a discovery. I feel like a Native American talking to Christopher Columbus.
- turk73 7y ago
  I know you don't want to celebrate, but you should. My wife had two in a row while trying for our 2nd child. It was really rough going for us circa 2007-2009. One of them required a DNC, which was just a miserable experience due to the "abortion" connotations. We made it through together. When you have children you have to accept that you may lose them and must be prepared to handle it. Still in all, several years got eaten up there with worry, doubts, and fears. We had a 100% healthy "Double-Rainbow" son in 2010, he's just about 10 years old now. Keep your head up, be kind to yourself, and be aware that LOTS more people than you imagine have gone through this.
  - stallmanite 7y ago
    Sorry for what you’ve been through and congratulations on the happy ending. Can I ask what “double-rainbow” means in this context? Googling got me literal double rainbows.
Empact 7y ago
In some cultures it's common to provide funerals for stillborn babies. Perhaps this part of the reason why. https://americanpregnancy.org/pregnancy-loss/stillborn-surviving-emotionally/ https://americanpregnancy.org/pregnancy-loss/stillborn-survi...
microcolonel 7y ago
Where is the study itself? They link to the "earlier, smaller study" from 2016, but not the one they're writing about.
scarejunba 7y ago
Considering the infant mortality rate in the 1800s, did practically every family have PTSD?
- tathougies 7y ago
  Unlikely except in extreme situations. People were more comfortable with death in the past.
  - jariel 7y ago
    My grandparents were born way back in time, the turn of the last century when something like 10% of kids didn't make it past the age of 1. I don't believe that they were 'more comfortable' with death. More rugged from having to deal with it, but I think the trauma is still there. Plus the fact that people didn't necessarily talk about it, I suggest this was a huge cause of emotional turmoil everywhere.
- jcims 7y ago
  Look at columns 10 and 11 https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/1910_questionnaire.pdf https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/1910_questionnaire.pdf
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
  I believe you assume the answer to be "no". But I'd say it's "yes", and that may be part of the reason for the prevalence of war at the time (causing even more trauma).
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    No, it wasn't rhetorical. I think the answer may just be 'yes'. Wonder if we'll look at historical figures with different eyes if most are likely to be PTSD victims. And we could see what the effects were on societies living like that.
tanr54ok 7y ago
The only appropriate way to respond to this: Fuck you!
quickthrower2 7y ago
Can the same happen for planned abortions? Is it connected to the desire to have the baby or a physiological thing that happens even if you aborted?
acjohnson55 7y ago
As someone who has two kids and hasn't experienced miscarriage, this thread is a reminder of what a privilege that is. Even though miscarriage is surprisingly prevalent (at least surprising in a culture where it's not spoken of), I suspect the trauma isn't even carried. Thanks to everyone for sharing difficult stories. Hopefully the rest of us can do our parts to not stigmatize or be insensitive.
- acjohnson55 7y ago
  (Edit: I meant to say, "evenly carried", as in evenly distributed.)
nickthemagicman 7y ago
I think it's fascinating how disconnected we are from death in modern times. The average life span in the 1700s was 35 years old. 1 out of 100 MOTHERS died during childbirth centuries ago. You could get an infection and be dead in a week because there were no antibiotics. Spanish flu killed 10 percent of the worlds population, the black plagues death rate was far far higher than that. Cholera, red fever, polio, there were so many and such variety of different ways to die. Death was a constant specter and I imagine life was considered a little cheaper? I don't know. I don't know if people had constant endless PTSD back then or if PTSD is our natural state, or if PTSD is contextual, and nowdays we live in extremely pro mental health times. Either way its testament to how amazing modern medicine has become and how valuable everyones lives are nowdays.
- _pmf_ 7y ago
  One take would be that nowadays, you're more likely to survive stuff that nature did not prepare you to survive.
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    That's a hot take as medicine has also made us healthier!
nikkikayauthor 7y ago
For my first miscarriage - no heartbeat, no detectable embryo - the idea of a “failed pregnancy” somehow made the loss more manageable, like something that never got off the ground. My next miscarriage, which occurred after seeing a heartbeat, was devastating for both me and my husband. A year later I found myself in the emergency room with my daughter, two days after I’d found out I was pregnant a third time, and almost had a panic attack right then and there. It was completely unexpected and really shone a light on how traumatic the loss and the D&E afterward had been. https://medium.com/messy-mind/emergency-room-flashbacks-871ee88d02a?source=friends_link&sk=8c35735fdf0144e79d8c9efa89c6a79d https://medium.com/messy-mind/emergency-room-flashbacks-871e...
217363 7y ago
I had to go through this with my wife 2 years ago. I’ll never be the same. It changed me. I was an exuberant person. When we first came to know about the pregnancy we were so happy but it totally changed my outlook on life after the loss. I did not know how to cope, I developed a deep interest in philosophy and spirituality, spent next 1 year reading and thinking which helped but it changed me as a person. We now have a 10 month old but we did not tell even the close friends ( we live in a different country) until the day of delivery. My blood pressure was 150/90 through the last trimester. I love my son and I know it is supposed to be fun and exciting but but I live in fear.
throwawaybbb 7y ago
Working on an artificial womb because my wife went through the same. Pregnancy is barbaric the sooner we stop forcing half the world to do it the better for everyone.
- rblatz 7y ago
  I know my wife would not opt for an artificial womb. We are expecting next month and had some difficulties conceiving. We talked about potentially doing a surrogate, an option that she shot down unless it was the very last resort. She wanted to carry our child, and experience everything that pregnancy has to offer. Not every day is easy, but she truly enjoys this phase of her and our daughter’s life.
  - throwawaybbb 7y ago
    And no one will stop her. Just how today some women elect to give birth without anesthetics. And others do it at home.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  I nominate this as the "Most HN" comment of January!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ezoe 7y ago
Miscarriage probability is higher than people who never see the statistics guessed, even for the people with the best age and other conditions(>10%). Also it is said early occult miscarriage rate is 40%. It's early because less than 1 week, it's occult because we don't realize it, no sign of pregnancy, so we can't observe it most of the time. The book I'm currently reading(The Vital Question) said that miscarriage rate is high because zygote dies in case of inefficient mitonuclear match, filtering the bad fits.
irrational 7y ago
One thing I didn't see in the article was how a woman might be affected differently if she already had multiple children. My wife miscarried at about 12 weeks, but we already had a bunch of kids so she was basically like, "Oh well" and was fine the next day. But I imagine if it had been our first, or maybe second, that she would have been affected much differently.
- growlist 7y ago
  I think it depends on the lateness as well though. Sometimes the baby dies in the womb and this is discovered before birth, yet the mother still has to go through a full labour, all the while knowing it's for nothing. Pretty horrible.
teekert 7y ago
Please, forgive me if I come across as harsh or insulting. I cannot imagine what you went through and I wish you never had to. Some time ago I talked to my neighbor (76 y/o woman), while my wife was pregnant, she happily told me that she had 6 kids and 2 miscarriages. Like it was a very normal thing. I asked and she said it was just part of it, the fetuses were probably not healthy to begin with. She seemed of the opinion that it was just part of life and it didn't seem to affect her. I didn't ask further but I do notice myself that once you start taking about miscarriages or, in our case, difficulties getting pregnant, many people went through the same experiences. And certain experiences seem commonplace. On me that has a consoling effect. Do you think it would have helped if you would have known about the possibility in advance? Or had friends go through the same and society in general being much more open about these things? My mother in law told me about her miscarriage only when our son was 2. I think it would have (hypothetically) helped us be more open and accepting if we would have known in advance. Thank you for being so open about this on the jungle that is the internet. It takes a lot of courage to come back and read replies.
- onion2k 7y ago
  I think older people accept bad things as "normal" because they were more common. Having something bad that happens to 1 in 5 people is awful, but having something that affects 1 in 50 people feels worse. As tech and medicine improves this problem will probably become more prevalent.
  - tomp 7y ago
    To what extent is that "happens 1 in 50" and to what extent is it "happens 1 in 5 but only 10% of people are vocal about it"?
  - gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
    Miscarriage affects more like 1 in 3 pregnancies. That number won't change. The main cause of miscarriage is that the embryo/foetus has a massive problem and can't ever develop. There is nothing medical science can do. In fact many more miscarriages are known about today - 50 years ago most women wouldn't even have known they were pregnant they would have thought they had a late heavy period.
marbm 7y ago
I read this as "Marriage can lead to 'long-term post-traumatic stress'"
mac_was 7y ago
I wonder if women after having an abortion might feel the same? Are there any women who can deny or share thoughts? BTW, it seems weird that the article is treated as discovery...
circlefavshape 7y ago
FWIW not everyone is traumatised. We had a couple of misses (one very early, one around 11 weeks iirc) before our first, and another between first and second. It was sad at the time, but that was all
growlist 7y ago
I'd venture that the overly systematised, euphemism-happy coldness of the medical establishment is part of the problem. PTSD actually means being upset for a very long time. A clump of cells actually means a baby (but we can't say that because...). Organised support services are probably inferior to support from a strong network of loving family, friends and community (but latter doesn't exist because of social disintegration). A holistic approach would support the family as one, rather than treating the mother as a separate specimen to be processed.
mattlondon 7y ago
In case it helps any others in a similar situation: My partner and I suffered from a miscarriage and then a seeming inability to fall pregnant again. All of the tests we did came back fine - everyone just said "keep trying" but eventually we started to see "unexplained infertility" appearing in the medical notes which was crushing and terrifying. To cut a long, emotionally painful, and expensive story short, we almost accidentally found out my partner has some quirk in their immune system: NK cells (CD16+, CD56+). This does not appear to be something that is routinely checked for. A quick consultation at a specialist consultant, a small number of some very benign tablets along with 1 home injection (very cheap - perhaps £80/month) and two months later - after literally years - we were naturally pregnant. 37 weeks so far and everything is completely ordinary and normal - a huge relief compared to where we were several years ago. If you are in a similar situation, please know that there may be a way out. It is a very dark road, but there can be light at the end of the tunnel. Talk about the NK cells with your doctor and see what they say - the NHS in the UK pooh-poohed it (despite being prepared to give us IVF at significant expense), but it worked for us when going privately, and the consultant's waiting room was full of pregnant women so we're not just a fluke I guess. I just hope that oen day this enters the mainstream so that people can try it before IVF and other invasive treatments. If anyone wants to know the clinic we used in London, please email any user at e43.xyz (catchall will pick it up) or reply here
kgwgk 7y ago
For sale: baby shoes, never worn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_worn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_...
mindfulgeek 7y ago
ive tried several times and cannot seem to comment. I think that speaks more to the impact of miscarriage than my words could. I’ve had 5. They’ve all been different. You are a mother the moment you are pregnant regardless of how long. There is an unspeakable, unbreakable connection between a mother and her children. That connections dies slowly over time, not the moment of loss. For me, every miscarriage is something I still process and heal from. They are all my children though they’ve never had names nor did I ever meet them. I felt them and hosted them and would have given anything for them as I do my other children.

224 points by adrian_mrd 7y ago

gwbas1c 7y ago

Don't forget that miscarriages effect the spouse too.

anunamoose 7y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted. As the partner of someone who had a miscarriage I was happy to see someone thought of me as well. I definitely also have PTSD from it. I remember my partner being in pain and bleeding and experiencing the sadness of loss on top of all of it. I was scared and lonely and I feel and felt helpless.
- bregma 7y ago
  Sorry for your loss.
- russnewcomer 7y ago
  I hope you and your partner have found help and support for recovery.
- p1necone 7y ago
  They're probably being downvoted because, despite being reasonable sentiment assuming they're commenting in good faith, it's exactly the kind of "plausible deniability" that MRAs/redpillers/alt-righters use to derail discussion of issues they don't agree with without outright stating their real opinions.
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  OP: > Not sure why you're being downvoted I find that people on Hacker News tend to downvote any kind of short comments. When I came across this thread, it was empty and I didn't like seeing an empty thread, so I wanted to say something to break the ice. (At this point, the post has 18 points, so clearly cooler heads prevailed.) My wife tells stories about seeing her father suddenly start sobbing when she came across items that her parents bought for their first pregnancy. Later, when we had a miscarriage, (fortunately very early,) my boss told me about his. Even though we were on the phone, I could tell he was holding back tears. Thankfully we haven't had serious fertility problems. What helped in our case was, throughout my life, hearing about my parents' miscarriage, sister's miscarriage, cousin's miscarriage. I knew it was normal.
mensetmanusman 7y ago
A husband friend of mine has told me he often feels sad when he sees our baby boy because the baby is the same age his son would have been had they not miscarried. A good rule of thumb is to treat people with compassion and support, because you don’t know what they are going through.
samsa 7y ago
My wife has lost her last three pregnancies (the first two around 20 weeks, the third around 16 weeks). She is a very strong woman, and I wouldn't have thought to use the phrase PTSD, but looking back, it fits. Women obviously bear the majority of the stress (carrying the baby, unavoidable thoughts of 'what did I do to cause this?', etc.), but as the spouse in this situation it was always nice - though relatively rare - when friends/coworkers/etc. would check in on me and ask how I'm doing. I don't have PTSD, but I'm definitely not the same as I was before my wife's first loss.
- russnewcomer 7y ago
  Those losses are rough. I hope you and your wife are getting the support you need.
hhas01 7y ago
“ Don't forget that miscarriages effect [sic] the spouse too.” Of course close family [that know about it] will also feel grief; that’s only natural. I think the point being made is that it is far worse for the individual doing the actual miscarrying. On top of the grief there can also be powerful feelings of guilt, anger, personal responsibility; plus they’ve a bloody great biochemical hurricane going down too. (e.g. Compare and contrast the effects of postpartum depression following a successful pregnancy.)
- whiddershins 7y ago
  It’s not a worse for whom competition.
  - hhas01 7y ago
    Oh, please. Miscarrying is worse for the person miscarrying. I’m male, single, childless, dumb as a stump, and even I can work that one out. It’s not just emotional; it’s biochemical too. Look, no-one says grieving spouses don’t require support too (of course they do!), but it’s entirely reasonable to suggest that women who miscarry suffer more severe trauma requiring significantly higher and more specialized professional support. Terms like “PTSD” and “medication“ do not get bandied around for fun, you know. Particularly by a medical profession that has a less-than-perfect history of taking “female problems” seriously. So try starting from the assumption that however bad it may make you feel, the other person feels a whole shit-ton worse, and show some flipping grace as you work your way from there.
    - qmmmur 7y ago
      I think it's fair to say that the death of anyone's baby, in circumstances where they can blame themselves (I didn't do enough to make the baby healthy, I didn't support my wife, I could have done x for her) might have significant mental detriment on a non gestating spouse just as it might the one who gestates. Instead, you've made this about how smart you can seem rather than listening to the other person.
    - taneq 7y ago
Vaslo 7y ago
While that comment makes sense, I felt much less upset than my wife, and just had to be there for her. I had convinced myself that a “blighted ovum” was not a “real baby”, but had a harder time convincing my wife of that. She had everything that was like pregnancy, including awful contractions to try and eliminate that empty egg, which I could never possibly understand.
- touisteur 7y ago
  Well... Everyone is different, right? My wife took a hard hit, and it took her most of a year to recover, and then we tried again for 3 years, with no chance, and it was excruciating to see her down every fucking month. Then, when we got pregnant again, and it sticked, she felt better, and it passed for her for good. Meanwhile I was holding my breath for years. I'm still trying to recover from this loss, 7 years on. We have 2 beautiful, perfect, healthy twin girls. They're baby 2 and 3. We're so lucky with them... And they're quite the handful !... But I still think almost daily of the little one we lost. It's still very, very painful to me. Therapy and EMDR help, but man...
p1necone 7y ago
What's the point in mentioning this here? Of course they do, but this study wasn't about that.

myrryr 7y ago

Would anything which is traumatic, be able to lead to long term post-traumatic stress? And miscarriages are certainly traumatic.

pacala 7y ago
The A-word springs to mind. And yet the taboos are strong, not even a reference, either in the article or the HN comments.
- i_haz_rabies 7y ago
  The long term emotional impact of abortion seems like it depends a lot more on the person and context than miscarriage, which is universally awful.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Plus, its not a taboo at all; its been intensely studied, and there's no evidence that having an abortion increases post-traumatic stress compared to being pregnant and not having one, while miscarriage does increase it. Now, there are people who very much want that not to be true for political reasons, but wanting something to be true for political reasons doesn't make it true.
    - pacala 7y ago
      That's a good point. I forgot how highly politicized this topic is, which means there is a high likelihood for a flamewar, which means people would rather avoid touching it, which creates a conversation vacuum easily mistaken for a taboo.
      - scarejunba 7y ago
        Well, there's also a lot of other parallels to draw, right? For instance, rape can cause PTSD but consensual sex usually does not so prima facie I wouldn't jump to the spontaneous abortion carrying the same results as one induced at the request of the carrier.

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago

I’m really glad we decided to have kids when we did and didn’t wait longer. I was completely unaware of miscarriage rates when we started. Even for healthy age groups it’s more than 10%. It’s much higher than I would have thought, and rises quickly after 32, just when many people are hitting their professional stride, which is extremely unfortunate.

xupybd 7y ago
You raise a good point. Many are not aware how common miscarriages are. I don't know if it would make it any easier to know they happen often to many couples but it might make it easier to prepare.
ranDOMscripts 7y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of women who have tried to get pregnant have had at least 1 miscarriage in their lifetime. Fertile or not, it appears to be part of the child-bearing process given sufficient attempts to reproduce.
- cs02rm0 7y ago
  1 in 4 pregnancies was the figure I was quoted, when my wife had a miscarriage.
  - astura 7y ago
    1 in 4 known pregnancies. Most miscarriages occur before pregnancy hormones able to be detected. Probably around 40-60% of fertilized eggs die. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/
lazyasciiart 7y ago
It's far higher than that, but most miscarriages occur so early that in the past, or today if not actively checking if you are pregnant, a woman wouldn't have known it happened. This is obviously difficult to study, but current thought is that miscarriages occur in 30-50% of fertilizations, and with more and more tracking, people are more and more likely to know about it.

russnewcomer 7y ago

My wife and I struggle with infertility, I have family members with a history of miscarriage, and my wife leads a women’s infertility support group. American culture does not know what to do about natal issues. (Arguably, no culture ever has) We need to recognize that reproductive health goes far beyond binary abortion debates, and can affect women permanently, to say nothing of the rest of the family. I can say, knowing people that suffer from PTSD for natal issues and long term war trauma, the degrees of suffering may be different, but the unhealthy coping mechanisms can do equal amount of damage. If you or your family is dealing with miscarriage or infertility, there is help and support out there specifically for you. I would be happy to help point anyone toward the resources that I know of, and more than happy to talk to any husbands who want help knowing how to support their wives.

akxkcd 7y ago
Can you point to the resources you are mentioning?
- russnewcomer 7y ago
  Sure. Email me (address in profile, or hn username at gmail)
  - akxkcd 7y ago
    Sent an email. Let me know if you did not get it.
    - russnewcomer 7y ago
      Responded. Sorry for delay.
- S_AU 7y ago
  In Australia we have Sands https://www.sands.org.au/miscarriage https://www.sands.org.au/miscarriage
deleted 7y ago

colechristensen 7y ago

Things like this lead me to wonder: how is the experience of trauma affected by cultural practice, myth, ideas, etc. Certainly similar experiences can lead to different outcomes from ignorance to indifference to trauma in different individuals. Why is that and how could traumatic outcomes be changed? Should they be? It is a touchy subject because it is easy to interpret as invalidating deep personal feelings, but that isn't the goal at all. Would, say, young people drafted for war from a modern Spartan society experience the same trauma in war as young people drafted from Berkeley? I am sure that individuals from both sides would have experiences across the spectrum, but would the distribution differ? I do think that modern Western society goes to extremes to prevent children from experiencing or even knowing about the harsh realities of the world and it's not hard to conclude that when the sheltered youth are dumped into reality (considerably more) serious mental illness follows as the world they were prepared for and the world they live in are very different.

marktangotango 7y ago
Why would anyone wonder that? Just because the majority perspective is of a life a relative plenty, open-ness, and stability of the rule of law, they might perceive people in general to be sheltered or soft, but that’s certainly not true for many. There are plenty of stories about famine, starvation, neglect, and abuse in many parts of the world (and at home!) to dissuade anyone of this entire notion. Question for any of us who romanticize more austere, brutish times is; why? There are many ways to test ourselves, doing so helps with perspective I believe.
- RHSeeger 7y ago
  Why wouldn't they? 1. Thing X happens in our world 2. We shelter people / avoid discussing the realities of thing X 3. People that experience thing X are severely, negatively emotionally impacted Wondering if talking about thing X more openly in our society would help avoid/temper/mitigate that impact seems... like a reasonable line of thought to me.
humanrebar 7y ago
> Would, say, young people drafted for war from a modern Spartan society experience the same trauma in war as young people drafted from Berkeley? Most of Sparta was slaves, and the upper class participated in murder of slaves as a rite of passage, so I doubt there is a lot in common.

balls187 7y ago

I remember it was a week after the miscarriage, I was targeted and terminated from my company, as part of a coverup. Double whammy that lead to the worst ~3 years of my life.

xupybd 7y ago
Really sorry to hear that. That sux so much. I hope things are better now.
- balls187 7y ago
  Thanks. They are. Luckily I had some real good people around me to help me through it all.
pmiller2 7y ago
Wow, that's horrible. I'm curious to hear more details if you feel comfortable sharing.
- balls187 7y ago
  I notified senior leadership that engineering was misreporting it's uptime statistics. In effect breaching contracts with pretty much every major customer, including state governments. Leadership fixed the glitch.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

cm2012 7y ago

My wife and sister both had ectopic pregnancies, which really sucked. My wife was really hit by it emotionally.

jammygit 7y ago
I know somebody who had an ectopic. She had to more or less abort it, which made her feel unbelievable bad. For years afterwards. I’m sorry to hear it happened to people close to you twice
- MandieD 7y ago
  I hope no one suggested that there was any sort of decision, other than by which method she preferred for it to be ended. Anyone who even implies that waiting it out is a more moral option is either stupid or cruel.
MandieD 7y ago
I had one, and it was scary, but it was early enough that I hadn't really perceived myself as pregnant - I had managed to Google myself into that being the best possibility for what was wrong with me (ovarian cancer was also a match for the symptoms!) I'm grateful that I was able to get to my regular gyno quickly and have her show me what was going on, go to the hospital of my choosing after getting ready to be there for a few days, and then have doctors who respected my agency while making it clear that this was something that needed to be ended right away (Germany).

bcrosby95 7y ago

Miscarriages are pretty common too. Anywhere from 10-25% of "recognized" pregnancies end in miscarriage. Among our close friends and family with kids (N=16), we're the only ones that has 2 or more kids and had no miscarriages. If you have married friends or friends with kids, its probably best not to joke about when they're going to pop one out. Fertility can be long, expensive, and not very fun.

davrosthedalek 7y ago
While jokes are not good, it's important to talk about it. A good friend of mine had to go through multiple miscarriages, and almost lost her life in the process. She hurt a lot from the feeling of being imperfect and somehow at fault. She was actually surprised how common an occurrence a miscarriage is, and if we manage to make it more normal to talk about it, and more normal to expect that it can happen, I think we would make an important step in reducing the pain.
- hhas01 7y ago
  “She was actually surprised how common an occurrence a miscarriage is” Answer: very†. But it often isn’t talked about. And, I strongly agree, not talking about it is very Bad indeed. Ironically, I think developed nations’ success in all but eliminating premature deaths from once-ubiquitous infectious diseases has left recent generations without the highly-practised coping skills, social support systems, and painfully resigned stoicism that helped get our great-great-grandparents through the horrible inevitable process of burying half their kids before the poor little bleeders could even make it to adulthood. We’re all now such strangers to death we’re shit-scared by even the thought of talking about it, never mind directly facing up to it ourselves. -- † Even assuming the hosting part works perfectly, the whole DNA splicing and replication process is always an absolute crapshoot‡. ‡ And, to be fair, if it weren’t for all those accidental copy errors none of us would be here now to argue the issue, for life on Earth would never have advanced beyond the single cell. So yay for an imperfect process, but—bloody hell—is it one harsh SOB.
- sambe 7y ago
  I find quite a lot of people do not agree that it's important to talk about it, for whatever reason. My guess is that overcoming the social stigma around showing your emotions/sharing problems is mostly to blame. Perhaps most people in my social group actually have had such problems and don't even feel comfortable in the meta-conversation. I often say things like "people should talk about this kind of stuff more because it would help them through it". I obviously mean it in a general sense (very much not trying to get specific people to talk about specific problems). Responses vary from an insincere "yeah..." to the rather odd "you can't tell people what to do".

cs02rm0 7y ago

My wife had one miscarriage, we're pretty robust but it was quite brutal, friends have certainly had many more. We had to wait a bit before trying again but not too long later had twins and in an odd sort of way it seemed like that gave some balance to the situation.

aaron695 7y ago

"1 in 13 children in sub-Saharan Africa died before reaching her or his fifth birthday" (2018) You can say that's Whataboutism, but for most of history losing a child was what happened to most people. So calling the sadness and awful experience from a miscarriage 'long-term post-traumatic stress' might be technically true one in six times if physiologists say so (not sure they have, the BBC has), to me that just further stigmatizes what is a sad but common occurrence no one talks about and implies we all live with trauma which can't be healthy to keep shoving down our throats.

sparker72678 7y ago
> for most of history losing a child was what happened to most people Even if true, that doesn't mean it wasn't heartbreaking and didn't have long-term effects on the family.
- aaron695 7y ago
  Trauma and PTSD like suicide is contagious. Giving it to women and their partners who have a miscarriage or the loss of a child is also heartbreaking. I'm not saying don't talk about, I'm just saying calling it trauma and PTSD will irrevocably harm some people and possibly hurt more than it will help. I don't think the media should lie even if it harms people. But equally I don't think the story here is a story that justifies the harm it might cause, they still can tell the truth responsibly if the BBC just took care and didn't chase clicks.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    This is a deeply silly analysis. PTSD is a fairly specific and in many ways physical set of reactions to trauma; if you've had no personal exposure to it, you'd be unlikely to describe it convincingly to a professional, let alone somehow incubate it in your own mind simply by a suggested association. It's been suggested that PSTD can be "contagious", but the connection between "PTSD" and a specific trauma (ie: the belief that some specific trauma "is supposed to" cause PTSD) isn't the vector. If something causes PTSD, it causes PTSD. Pretending otherwise doesn't prevent it.

gigatexal 7y ago

I’ve a buddy whose wife just had her second miscarriage and it has rocked them. I try to be supportive but I have no idea what it is like. I feel terrible for them

nikkikayauthor 7y ago
Check in on them and see how they’re doing, or just offer an ear if they want to talk. If they’re anything like My husband and me they don’t have many people to talk to about it - and many won’t bring it up because they feel awkward or uncomfortable. Knowing someone is there, aware, and thinking about them can make the difference.
- gigatexal 7y ago
  Thank you — I will.

vvvnnnnvvv 7y ago

I had a miscarriage at 10w (baby measuring 6w). For many months, I was haunted by things like going in for my first doctor's appointment and seeing my empty uterus on the screen. I thought about all those people, like the receptionist in the waiting room, who said "congrats" even though there was nothing to congratulate me for. I opted for medical management but didn't take the drugs until the pain was unbearable. Although that was the single worst 45m of my life, I don't think about it as much. I am pregnant again, but I am not the same. I am not excited, I am not making plans. We waited to tell our parents until 13 weeks. Even though I'm showing, I've told the people who absolutely need to know because I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to have a baby shower because I don't want to have to look all the stuff if the baby ends up dying. I participate in /r/Miscarriage, /r/ttcafterloss, and /r/pregnancyafterloss. People there are sad about losses that happened months, years, sometimes even 10 years ago. They - we! - are triggered by pregnant women, our original due dates (next week for me), the idea of getting pregnant again. It's a surprise to me that we're able to call this a discovery. I feel like a Native American talking to Christopher Columbus.

turk73 7y ago
I know you don't want to celebrate, but you should. My wife had two in a row while trying for our 2nd child. It was really rough going for us circa 2007-2009. One of them required a DNC, which was just a miserable experience due to the "abortion" connotations. We made it through together. When you have children you have to accept that you may lose them and must be prepared to handle it. Still in all, several years got eaten up there with worry, doubts, and fears. We had a 100% healthy "Double-Rainbow" son in 2010, he's just about 10 years old now. Keep your head up, be kind to yourself, and be aware that LOTS more people than you imagine have gone through this.
- stallmanite 7y ago
  Sorry for what you’ve been through and congratulations on the happy ending. Can I ask what “double-rainbow” means in this context? Googling got me literal double rainbows.

Empact 7y ago

In some cultures it's common to provide funerals for stillborn babies. Perhaps this part of the reason why. https://americanpregnancy.org/pregnancy-loss/stillborn-surviving-emotionally/ https://americanpregnancy.org/pregnancy-loss/stillborn-survi...

microcolonel 7y ago

Where is the study itself? They link to the "earlier, smaller study" from 2016, but not the one they're writing about.

scarejunba 7y ago

Considering the infant mortality rate in the 1800s, did practically every family have PTSD?

tathougies 7y ago
Unlikely except in extreme situations. People were more comfortable with death in the past.
- jariel 7y ago
  My grandparents were born way back in time, the turn of the last century when something like 10% of kids didn't make it past the age of 1. I don't believe that they were 'more comfortable' with death. More rugged from having to deal with it, but I think the trauma is still there. Plus the fact that people didn't necessarily talk about it, I suggest this was a huge cause of emotional turmoil everywhere.
jcims 7y ago
Look at columns 10 and 11 https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/1910_questionnaire.pdf https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/1910_questionnaire.pdf
IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
I believe you assume the answer to be "no". But I'd say it's "yes", and that may be part of the reason for the prevalence of war at the time (causing even more trauma).
- scarejunba 7y ago
  No, it wasn't rhetorical. I think the answer may just be 'yes'. Wonder if we'll look at historical figures with different eyes if most are likely to be PTSD victims. And we could see what the effects were on societies living like that.

tanr54ok 7y ago

The only appropriate way to respond to this: Fuck you!

quickthrower2 7y ago

Can the same happen for planned abortions? Is it connected to the desire to have the baby or a physiological thing that happens even if you aborted?

acjohnson55 7y ago

As someone who has two kids and hasn't experienced miscarriage, this thread is a reminder of what a privilege that is. Even though miscarriage is surprisingly prevalent (at least surprising in a culture where it's not spoken of), I suspect the trauma isn't even carried. Thanks to everyone for sharing difficult stories. Hopefully the rest of us can do our parts to not stigmatize or be insensitive.

acjohnson55 7y ago
(Edit: I meant to say, "evenly carried", as in evenly distributed.)

nickthemagicman 7y ago

I think it's fascinating how disconnected we are from death in modern times. The average life span in the 1700s was 35 years old. 1 out of 100 MOTHERS died during childbirth centuries ago. You could get an infection and be dead in a week because there were no antibiotics. Spanish flu killed 10 percent of the worlds population, the black plagues death rate was far far higher than that. Cholera, red fever, polio, there were so many and such variety of different ways to die. Death was a constant specter and I imagine life was considered a little cheaper? I don't know. I don't know if people had constant endless PTSD back then or if PTSD is our natural state, or if PTSD is contextual, and nowdays we live in extremely pro mental health times. Either way its testament to how amazing modern medicine has become and how valuable everyones lives are nowdays.

_pmf_ 7y ago
One take would be that nowadays, you're more likely to survive stuff that nature did not prepare you to survive.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  That's a hot take as medicine has also made us healthier!

nikkikayauthor 7y ago

For my first miscarriage - no heartbeat, no detectable embryo - the idea of a “failed pregnancy” somehow made the loss more manageable, like something that never got off the ground. My next miscarriage, which occurred after seeing a heartbeat, was devastating for both me and my husband. A year later I found myself in the emergency room with my daughter, two days after I’d found out I was pregnant a third time, and almost had a panic attack right then and there. It was completely unexpected and really shone a light on how traumatic the loss and the D&E afterward had been. https://medium.com/messy-mind/emergency-room-flashbacks-871ee88d02a?source=friends_link&sk=8c35735fdf0144e79d8c9efa89c6a79d https://medium.com/messy-mind/emergency-room-flashbacks-871e...

217363 7y ago

I had to go through this with my wife 2 years ago. I’ll never be the same. It changed me. I was an exuberant person. When we first came to know about the pregnancy we were so happy but it totally changed my outlook on life after the loss. I did not know how to cope, I developed a deep interest in philosophy and spirituality, spent next 1 year reading and thinking which helped but it changed me as a person. We now have a 10 month old but we did not tell even the close friends ( we live in a different country) until the day of delivery. My blood pressure was 150/90 through the last trimester. I love my son and I know it is supposed to be fun and exciting but but I live in fear.

throwawaybbb 7y ago

Working on an artificial womb because my wife went through the same. Pregnancy is barbaric the sooner we stop forcing half the world to do it the better for everyone.

rblatz 7y ago
I know my wife would not opt for an artificial womb. We are expecting next month and had some difficulties conceiving. We talked about potentially doing a surrogate, an option that she shot down unless it was the very last resort. She wanted to carry our child, and experience everything that pregnancy has to offer. Not every day is easy, but she truly enjoys this phase of her and our daughter’s life.
- throwawaybbb 7y ago
  And no one will stop her. Just how today some women elect to give birth without anesthetics. And others do it at home.
BurningFrog 7y ago
I nominate this as the "Most HN" comment of January!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

ezoe 7y ago

Miscarriage probability is higher than people who never see the statistics guessed, even for the people with the best age and other conditions(>10%). Also it is said early occult miscarriage rate is 40%. It's early because less than 1 week, it's occult because we don't realize it, no sign of pregnancy, so we can't observe it most of the time. The book I'm currently reading(The Vital Question) said that miscarriage rate is high because zygote dies in case of inefficient mitonuclear match, filtering the bad fits.

irrational 7y ago

One thing I didn't see in the article was how a woman might be affected differently if she already had multiple children. My wife miscarried at about 12 weeks, but we already had a bunch of kids so she was basically like, "Oh well" and was fine the next day. But I imagine if it had been our first, or maybe second, that she would have been affected much differently.

growlist 7y ago
I think it depends on the lateness as well though. Sometimes the baby dies in the womb and this is discovered before birth, yet the mother still has to go through a full labour, all the while knowing it's for nothing. Pretty horrible.

teekert 7y ago

Please, forgive me if I come across as harsh or insulting. I cannot imagine what you went through and I wish you never had to. Some time ago I talked to my neighbor (76 y/o woman), while my wife was pregnant, she happily told me that she had 6 kids and 2 miscarriages. Like it was a very normal thing. I asked and she said it was just part of it, the fetuses were probably not healthy to begin with. She seemed of the opinion that it was just part of life and it didn't seem to affect her. I didn't ask further but I do notice myself that once you start taking about miscarriages or, in our case, difficulties getting pregnant, many people went through the same experiences. And certain experiences seem commonplace. On me that has a consoling effect. Do you think it would have helped if you would have known about the possibility in advance? Or had friends go through the same and society in general being much more open about these things? My mother in law told me about her miscarriage only when our son was 2. I think it would have (hypothetically) helped us be more open and accepting if we would have known in advance. Thank you for being so open about this on the jungle that is the internet. It takes a lot of courage to come back and read replies.

onion2k 7y ago
I think older people accept bad things as "normal" because they were more common. Having something bad that happens to 1 in 5 people is awful, but having something that affects 1 in 50 people feels worse. As tech and medicine improves this problem will probably become more prevalent.
- tomp 7y ago
  To what extent is that "happens 1 in 50" and to what extent is it "happens 1 in 5 but only 10% of people are vocal about it"?
- gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
  Miscarriage affects more like 1 in 3 pregnancies. That number won't change. The main cause of miscarriage is that the embryo/foetus has a massive problem and can't ever develop. There is nothing medical science can do. In fact many more miscarriages are known about today - 50 years ago most women wouldn't even have known they were pregnant they would have thought they had a late heavy period.

marbm 7y ago

I read this as "Marriage can lead to 'long-term post-traumatic stress'"

mac_was 7y ago

I wonder if women after having an abortion might feel the same? Are there any women who can deny or share thoughts? BTW, it seems weird that the article is treated as discovery...

circlefavshape 7y ago

FWIW not everyone is traumatised. We had a couple of misses (one very early, one around 11 weeks iirc) before our first, and another between first and second. It was sad at the time, but that was all

growlist 7y ago

I'd venture that the overly systematised, euphemism-happy coldness of the medical establishment is part of the problem. PTSD actually means being upset for a very long time. A clump of cells actually means a baby (but we can't say that because...). Organised support services are probably inferior to support from a strong network of loving family, friends and community (but latter doesn't exist because of social disintegration). A holistic approach would support the family as one, rather than treating the mother as a separate specimen to be processed.

mattlondon 7y ago

In case it helps any others in a similar situation: My partner and I suffered from a miscarriage and then a seeming inability to fall pregnant again. All of the tests we did came back fine - everyone just said "keep trying" but eventually we started to see "unexplained infertility" appearing in the medical notes which was crushing and terrifying. To cut a long, emotionally painful, and expensive story short, we almost accidentally found out my partner has some quirk in their immune system: NK cells (CD16+, CD56+). This does not appear to be something that is routinely checked for. A quick consultation at a specialist consultant, a small number of some very benign tablets along with 1 home injection (very cheap - perhaps £80/month) and two months later - after literally years - we were naturally pregnant. 37 weeks so far and everything is completely ordinary and normal - a huge relief compared to where we were several years ago. If you are in a similar situation, please know that there may be a way out. It is a very dark road, but there can be light at the end of the tunnel. Talk about the NK cells with your doctor and see what they say - the NHS in the UK pooh-poohed it (despite being prepared to give us IVF at significant expense), but it worked for us when going privately, and the consultant's waiting room was full of pregnant women so we're not just a fluke I guess. I just hope that oen day this enters the mainstream so that people can try it before IVF and other invasive treatments. If anyone wants to know the clinic we used in London, please email any user at e43.xyz (catchall will pick it up) or reply here

kgwgk 7y ago

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mindfulgeek 7y ago

ive tried several times and cannot seem to comment. I think that speaks more to the impact of miscarriage than my words could. I’ve had 5. They’ve all been different. You are a mother the moment you are pregnant regardless of how long. There is an unspeakable, unbreakable connection between a mother and her children. That connections dies slowly over time, not the moment of loss. For me, every miscarriage is something I still process and heal from. They are all my children though they’ve never had names nor did I ever meet them. I felt them and hosted them and would have given anything for them as I do my other children.