MOTHERING AND CAREGIVING

On Miscarriage and Challenges in Conception. 

Please note this article contains sensitive content.

The journey to starting a family is a deeply personal, emotional and unique experience. No one person or couple follows the same path, and for many the path can feel rocky, challenging. Life giving inherently dualistic, co-existingly robust and delicate.

The challenges of bringing forth life can arise from the very beginning, with difficulties in conception, and early pregnancy with miscarriage. Deeply felt experiences, that too often are not included in the popular cultural narrative that envelopes reproduction. The realities of conception and pregnancy often sit jarringly against it’s idealisms, one in four pregnancies end in loss, and one in six couples experience difficulties in conceiving. Whilst statistics do not convey the complexity of the felt experiences of this time, the feelings of grief, isolation, guilt, fear, the loss of hope or trauma that these experiences evoke, highlighting their prevalence is a neccessary step towards developing a greater compassion and sensitivity towards the vulnerabilities of reproduction. Where experiences exist outside of our capacity to articulate them.

Bringing forth miscarriage and difficulties in conception into a greater social consciousness, is a necessary transition to enable women, persons and couples to freely grapple and make sense of their personal reproductive story and to create a wider and more inclusive picture that more accurately represents the unique personal reproductive trajectory for all. To honour each and the inherent potentials within it.

24. March. 2025.