Even with an increasing number of celebrities and other public figures opening up about their miscarriages, there remains a curious silence around it. It's curious because of the sheer number of women it affects – one in four pregnancies result in miscarriage.
But one woman, a psychologist specialising in women's reproductive and maternal mental health, who has been through the painful experience herself, has started an Instagram account to challenge the stigma. Jessica Zucker, from Los Angeles, created @IHadAMiscarriage after experiencing a miscarriage at 16 weeks with her second child in 2012. She wants to help women speak openly about losing their pregnancies with the hashtag #IHadAMiscarriage and create a support network for others who have also been through it.
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Many women have shared their powerful accounts of the often traumatic experience, which can lead to feelings of guilt, shame and isolation, and the account has nearly 13k followers at the time of writing.
“My personal experience was a way to model for other women around the world that there is absolutely no shame in loss,” Zucker told Self. “As a psychologist, you don’t typically share the details of your life. But [pregnancy loss] doesn’t mean anything about who you are, or your body being a failure,” she added.
Zucker has also created t-shirts featuring the word "Mama" and a rainbow – a reference to the term "rainbow baby", which is often used by parents who have become pregnant after pregnancy loss.
Zucker's ultimate aim is to encourage women to not feel guilt or shame and to instead take pride in the journey they've been through. “By putting it out there in the world and sharing it with women globally, people then feel this sense of recognition and a robust community,” she told Self.
“I don't have to know you, because it's social media, but I know those feelings so well. In so many of comments or messages people say, 'I could have written this myself.' Part of the point is to really show that we're more similar than we think.”