I WAS pregnant 134 weeks in a little over a decade.
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My husband and I have two daughters. I know that doesn't add up. But neither does miscarriage.
We experienced miscarriage five times in 12 years, three times between the birth of our two daughters, now aged 9 and 5.
There was no medical explanation for our recurrent losses – three of them early in the second trimester. We were young and in perfectly good health. We were told simply to go away and try again before we got too old.
"You can't keep miscarrying; eventually a pregnancy will stick," a medical specialist told us, before following up with a heart-wrenching anecdote.
"Another patient of mine has had 13 recurrent miscarriages and she's still hanging in there! Chin up."
October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.
It recognises the ongoing support for the one in four parents who experience the loss of their baby in Australia.
My husband and I confided in few, knowing we could manage our own disappointment but not that of others.
I went to extraordinary lengths to hide it from our peers; my husband covering my shifts both in hospitality and the newsroom. He poured coffee at our cafe all day before fronting up for an eight-hour night shift. I didn't want work colleagues to know. (I realise I risk having blown that now.)
Despite high-profile cases such as Jacqueline Kennedy, who experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth and the loss of a newborn child as well as two healthy children, the loneliness and stigma of miscarriage persists.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg went some way to outing the culturally taboo topic of pregnancy loss when in August 2015 he told the multi-million followers of his Facebook blog: "We want to share one experience to start. We've been trying to have a child for a couple of years and have had three miscarriages along the way. You feel so hopeful when you learn you're going to have a child. You start imagining who they'll become and dreaming of hopes for their future. You start making plans, and then they're gone.
“It's a lonely experience.
“Most people don’t discuss miscarriages because you worry your problems will distance you or reflect on you – as if you’re defective or did something to cause this. So you struggle on your own.”
For whatever reason I chose not to openly discuss miscarriage in the past decade, I now know it only reinforced the social message that the subject of pregnancy loss was pretty much off limits.
Awareness and empathy will go a long way to normalising what is part of the reproductive story for millions of couples worldwide every year.
When our second daughter was born almost six years ago the on-duty midwife remarked how battered and bruised she came out.
She had failed to appreciate how blessed we felt to have this bruised and beautiful, breathing girl.
American associate professor of psychiatry and researcher at the University of Michigan Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry Monica Starkman believes newspapers and other media need to increase their reporting of scientific and personal stories about miscarriage and infertility to effect any change.
“That can provide the daylight so necessary to help diminish stigma.”