Its great that this forum has been created, I think its purpose is so good and I really wish that there had been something like this when we experienced our losses. Honestly when trying to process things it was really hard and my experience in particular I sort of felt a combination of being helpless and a failure and obvious sadness and feeling like I had to "be strong".
We lost 3 babies, all before 12 weeks and over the course of 2 years, no reason for this given but the experience is really similar to those outlined by others. The first time was over Easter and it was awful, because our dr wasn't open we were directed to a sort of accident and emergency place where obviously there were a whole raft of people in for various issues and lots seemed to be alcohol related. They didn't have scan facilities and the dr we eventually saw was unsympathetic, its weird how things stay with you, his words were "sometimes the fetus is put together in such a grotesque way that the body needs to get rid of it, its perfectly normal". We had a scan a few days later which was so cold and almost hostile, they said there had been no growth for 4 weeks and we were offered a DC or to let nature take its course, wife chose the latter and over the next few weeks I saw her in so much physical and emotional pain.
2nd loss we knew about before we had even managed to engage any medical advice which was again painful but sort of easier to deal with.
3rd loss broke me if I'm being honest, we got to a slightly later stage and were nervous but expecting things to be ok because by this time we had things a portable solar scan which picked up a heartbeat. The scan person was silent and confirmed bad news, we were taken to a side room to discuss options again and a nurse came in to check on my wife. I was used by now to being the other party in the room that never got interacted with other than to check understanding but this nurse turned to me and asked how I was feeling. I was not expecting any interaction and I couldn't answer but I just welled up and cried. She was great and to be honest she didn't tell us any different information than we had received before but because it was not done as clinically it did feel different. I suppose she normalised the situation but didn't dismiss our grief or from my perspective she didn't sideline me.
I've never shared my individual thoughts and experience with anyone else like this but found peoples reactions ranged from insensitivity to actually sharing a similar unspoken experience. I think the lack of outlet made me actually deal with things so badly and as a result my work was poor and I made mistakes eventually having to leave a relatively decent job to preserve my sanity. I didn't tell them what was going on and so they in fairness couldn't help me either by reducing my workload or giving support in other ways, perhaps they should have been able to see my mental wellbeing was not there but ultimately I am certain that not talking did me no favours. I prioritised my wife then my work but ignored myself and reflecting on this realise that actually I was no use to either of my priorities in my malfunctioning state.
Hi Machine, Thank you for sharing your heartbreaking story. Firstly, let me say how sorry I am that you have had to deal with the above, I created this page for this exact reason, for men to be able to open up and share stories that they have never done before, because they didn’t know where to. I’m sure as the website grows you will see more and more people will open up and share a similar story to yours. It’s frightening how common miscarriage is, but how little it is talked about. It’s almost like the stigma is too much. We feel that if we open up, we burden our partners, we burden our friends, so we decide to keep quiet and be ‘men’ - the strong, stable one, that nothing can phase us. I really commend you opening up, can’t have been easy writing that. I was the same as you, just battling through, disregarding my own mental health and what I was doing, my wife was checking in with me and I was telling her not to worry and focus on her. Thanks again for sharing, machine. Chris.