One of the most common things we heard from friends after suffering our miscarriage was this: ‘It’s really common, it happens to lots of people’.
Our well-meaning comforters were of course right. Miscarriage is very common1. Research suggests that at least 20% of confirmed pregnancies end in miscarriage, roughly 200,000 pregnancies each year in the UK.2
Other friends offered these words: ‘not one day of that precious life was wasted’. Two very different assumptions lay behind these contrasting approaches. ‘It’s really common’ suggested that our loss was not something to get too concerned about. Our loss was small and our grief should be expressed in proportion to that. In contrast, the latter approach suggested that we had suffered the death of an unborn child.
