Miscarriage as Shameful: The Real Reason There's a Culture of Secrecy Surrounding the First Trimester

Two years ago, as I was bleeding out what remained of my miscarried baby, one of my clients asked me when Jeff and I were going to have kids. He then proceeded to guilt me for being selfish; had I been a better person, you see, I would have already inflicted my spawn on the world. Our society's insistence that women keep their pregnancies secret during the first trimester creates some really painful, strange, and awkward situations.

Popular wisdom holds that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage (though, as with most pregnancy-related factoids, it turns out to be a lot more complicated than that, and you really don't need to spend your entire first trimester in a state of panic). Most miscarriages are early in pregnancy, which is why most couples opt not to widely publicize the pregnancy until the first trimester ends.

No one wants to construct a cute Facebook announcement and then have to retract it. And it's no fun to tell everyone at the office that, nope, there won't be a baby after all. Or to return early baby gifts. It's also not fun to lose a child and be unable to tell anyone.

With this pregnancy, I started telling close friends and family I was pregnant as soon as I got the positive pregnancy test. Many were surprised that I didn't wait till the 12-week mark to tell them. A few even told me that I should have. To me, this sounds a lot like "If you had a miscarriage, I wouldn't want to know." Because what else could it mean?

Most embryos become fetuses and most fetuses become babies, but there is no "safe" time in pregnancy during which a baby can't or won't die. One of my friends lost her baby at 20 weeks. Another gave birth to a preemie who lived a few hours, then died. Would they really have been better off if no one knew of their suffering? I doubt it.

Yet we continue to instruct women that they absolutely must not tell anyone until the end of the first trimester, because God forbid their disclosure force other humans to show some fucking compassion. In a society that has largely abandoned its communal roots in favor of disconnected and digitized existences, putting someone in a position where they might, might be required to show some compassion is rude.

But grabbing pregnant women's stomachs and telling them to smile and calling them fat and cutting them against their will and telling them that whether they work or not, they're failures? Those things are all fine.

We also continue to shame women about their miscarriages. If you have any doubt, witness the many legislatures trying to force criminal investigations of women who had miscarriages. Because if a woman does something that might have contributed to the loss of her baby, she should suffer. And if it's not her fault? Well then. It's just nature's way of culling the herd, and getting upset about it is foolish and unscientific. A family member actually told me this after my miscarriage.

I'm not saying that women need to broadcast the news of their pregnancies the moment they get two lines on a pee stick. That's a decision that needs to be left up to every woman. I just wish that we as a society were more willing to acknowledge that a lot of women have miscarriages. If you know enough women, probably one of them is grieving a miscarriage right now. If you knew who it was, wouldn't you treat her better? If people knew how many women were grieving miscarriages, maybe we would be inspired to treat all women better.

I'm at the end of my first trimester now. I'm supposedly out of the "danger zone." It is now socially acceptable for me to share my pregnancy. I remain acutely aware that pregnancies are not always permanent gifts. I could spend every day of my life with this baby until I drop him or her off at college and then have a nervous breakdown. I could lose the baby tomorrow. I could have a stillbirth. I cannot control or predict these things. I think I should get to enjoy basking in my pregnancy with the people I love, and I think I should be able to lean on those people should something go horribly awry.

Today I told my neighbor--a woman with whom I've always been friendly, but to whom I am not close--that I'm pregnant, that I had a miscarriage, and that we tried for three years. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked. "I could have helped." Then she shared a secret of her own with me, and we both stood there for a minute, radiating compassion. I reflected on the burden of the many secrets womanhood requires us to carry: sexual assaults, post-partum depression, miscarriage, lost pregnancy dreams, disabled children, domestic violence, abortions.

I want more moments like the one I had with my neighbor.