The Well-Meaning Words That Hurt Women Who Have Lost Their Baby

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Karel Marquez, Nikka Garcia, Rica Peralejo-Bonifacio, Regine Velasquez have shared the heartache, pain, and lessons of suffering a miscarriage. A woman who has experienced prenatal loss—a miscarriage, stillbirth, or similar occurrences—often ask themselves what went wrong and what they could have done to avoid it from happening. They beat themselves up from the unavoidable guilt, and unfortunately, well-meaning family and friends add to the devastation they feel by making unhelpful comments.

To help people become more sensitive to the feelings of people who have gone through such a loss, the Miscarriage Association in the U.K launched a campaign called #SimplySay. It encourages parents to share what people should or shouldn't say to those who have lost a child. (Find more posts here).

Many women who have suffered prenatal loss almost always feel like a failure. American actress Melissa Rauch (Big Bang Theory) wrote an essay for Glamour about her ordeal. She spoke about the "constant assualt of emotions" and intense grief and reflected how no one seemed to talk about it. 

"What I realized, though, is that because this kind of loss is not openly talked about nearly as much as it should be, there really is no template for how to process these emotions. You’re not necessarily going to a funeral or taking time off from work to mourn, but that doesn’t change the fact that something precious has been unexpectedly taken from your life."

Melissa, who is expecting her rainbow baby this fall, encouraged women to speak out and help fight the feelings of guilt and shame many women feel after losing a child. Along with other actresses, she appeared in a powerful public service ad (PSA) on prenatal loss.

"It was from this beautiful outpouring of openness, candor and courage offered by all of these kindred spirits that I began to heal a part of me that I didn’t know was still in need of repair," she wrote on Glamour. "The part that still blamed myself. The part that was still holding on to shame. The part that still felt like I was alone."