The silence around miscarriage hurts health care and bereaved parents

We need to talk about miscarriage, to provide sensitive, patient‐centred, evidence‐based continuity of care

After years of trying to conceive, my husband and I were ecstatic to see the double lines on our home pregnancy test — overjoyed to be parents, relieved that the hardest part of that journey was over. Even the nausea seemed a gift. Months later, he put his head next to mine as I lay on a hospital bed waiting for a dilation and curettage procedure to remove “the products of conception”. We had a missed miscarriage, and for two blissful months we started dreaming about and planning for our family of three. In the days, weeks and now years after our loss, I feel the silence of miscarriage reverberating through my life. This silence limits our ability as family, friends, colleagues, and health professionals to support women and their partners to reconfigure their lives after early pregnancy loss.