Thank you very much for setting up this website, I think this is a great idea and I hope more men benefit from this.
I've personally struggled to talk about my experiences before which eventually caught up with me a few years ago and I had to open up to my wife about it. Our first miscarraige was now 14 years ago and the memory that is seared in my mind to this day is of my wife sitting on the hospital bed crying and asking the doctor what it was that she had done wrong to cause this. I feel her pain right now even thinking about it. This miscarraige came though before we had any children and over the next 7 years we would go on to have 3 healthy children now aged 12, 10 and 6. Going on to have children after this, was the real healer and helped us both get over this.
Then 5 years ago, we found out we were having a 4th baby and even though we hadn't planned it, we were both excited again, we planned how we would change the house set up, what type of car we should get and started planning for our family of 6. Then at 13 weeks we suffered another miscarriage, and it was this one that I struggled to move on from. This time there were no other children coming along to ease the pain. I couldn't get away from this feeling that there was a gaping hole in our family. I was sure the baby we would have been a girl, I'm sure we'd have called her Heidi, I'm sure she would have been blonde like her big sister and brothers and now she was gone. I never talk about things like this, but after 2 years of not saying anything I had to open up and talk to my wife to try and relieve some of the stress I was feeling.
Part of of the reason I was quite excited to see this website was that I still don't feel that this is a topic I could share and discuss with my male friends, which worries me for other males going through this. I would love to hear and support any ideas on how we improve this. I hope sharing these stories we can build a community of men that can help others.....
Kevin,
Thank you for this. My wife had her first miscarriage four years ago and I had my first conversation about it with a friend today. Knowing other people feel like this is very comforting to know.
John
This is my life story! We lost our 4th child a few weeks back at 16 weeks so hard :( we had miscarriages in the past but this one is so much harder as my wife had to deliver the baby and I could see him and hold him.
Kevin, you're absolutely not alone. You might find that there are a lot of us out there who are feeling exactly the same thing.
I won't go into my loss because it has now been almost 12 years. I actually came away from it without scarring, because it was 2 months in and the pregnancy/miscarriage caught my wife and me totally by surprise.
The thing I desperately needed help with was knowing how to be a better partner to my wife. I was a miserable failure there and I still regret that. I wish I had known then how common miscarriages are and that I could have spoken to my parents (who are still kicking) and to my closest brother. Found out later that he and his wife had struggled forever to have a kid and they finally were blessed with a boy.
Evening Kevin, Many thanks for reaching out to the page. I am really sorry to hear that you and your wife have suffered the agony of miscarriage twice. How do you feel now that you have opened up about your feelings and story? For me, opening has been the best thing that I’ve done. I started the page in order to write down my feelings and share my experience and if it helped one person it would be worth it. I’ve only been through it once, this was the first time and it was horrific. It is becoming a regular sign here on the page and the messages that I am receiving via DM, that we don’t feel we can open up to our friends. I think that our friends can be more accommodating than we think, it’s all about how we go about that initial connection with them. I found it hard to reach out to friends also. I know that my 2 best mates would have been there at my beck and call to assist me and talk about it... but I just felt like I was burdening them with it. There is no easy way to open up a conversation with friends as to why you are feeling the way you are or to try and get them to converse with you, and that is due to the stigma attached to miscarriage. People don’t know what to say, Myself included. I’m not a professional therapist but I do like talking and I do like listening, and I’m hoping to use this to help others where I can. On the helpful links page - I’ve shared some charity links, on those pages you will find some helpful topics on communication. I’ve also shared an article on here in the blog section which talks about conversations with our partners. Well done on opening up to your wife, great starter point as we are seen as the ‘rock’ of the family. Look after yourself, your wife and your 3 beautiful children. Chris.