成人论坛

When journalist Rebecca Reid discovered she was pregnant, she didn’t want to wait until her 12 week scan to share her news. But having told friends, family and colleagues early on, at 10 weeks Rebecca then discovered she had miscarried.

Where does the convention to wait 12 weeks before announcing a pregnancy come from? And why does it exist?

Rebecca told her story to 成人论坛 Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

I told my sister and her ex-boyfriend and my husband that I was pregnant, all in one go during Sunday lunch. I very much loved sharing the exciting news and tended to tell the people I cared about, whenever I saw them. I told the majority of the people I know and love that I was pregnant before I was about six or seven weeks.

There were a mixture of reasons: number one is that I smoked and I drank, so it was pretty obvious that something was up. I preferred being honest about it to lying. I know you can sort of say that you’re on antibiotics or whatever but it felt weird to tell lies consistently to everybody I liked.

Also I was excited! It was a really big life stage and so I was absolutely terrified and I wanted the love and the support of the people who loved me and I wanted to be able to ask people questions.

All in all, it seemed like a strange experience to try and isolate myself from. It seemed really natural to be really honest with pretty much everyone.

"I thought I was 10 weeks pregnant but I was told that the pregnancy had stopped developing at six weeks and one day."

I miscarried at six weeks and one day – but I had what’s called a "missed miscarriage" or a "silent miscarriage". Effectively I had a very small amount of bleeding, and went to the hospital and was given a scan the next day.

I thought I was 10 weeks pregnant but I was told that the pregnancy had stopped developing at six weeks and one day. They said that there was basically nothing that could be done, that I was normal, it happens to one in four women, can’t be avoided, nothing I did, nothing anybody could have done, but I’m not pregnant anymore.

Telling family and friends about the miscarriage wasn’t exactly a fun phone call to make. It wasn’t something I particularly enjoyed, but all I had to do was send one WhatsApp message to each friend from each friendship group. I let them know that I wanted other people to know and the message went round. My family were the same, I told a couple of family members and they told the rest of the family.

I think you find a lot of people who say that if you tell people, you have to untell people. Actually when you’re in that place, first of all you feel pretty horrific, so telling people doesn’t really make that much of a difference and people are very willing to do that for you, to spare you that pain. Also for me, an element of saying it over and over again made it feel more real because I’d spent 10 weeks trying to get used to the idea that I was going to have a baby and then I had to get used to the idea that I wasn’t going to have a baby. Saying it out loud sort of helped with that.

"A handful of people said to me ‘oh I expect you’ll probably wait to tell people next time’."

People were almost unwaveringly sympathetic and kind and even people who said the wrong things said the wrong things through trying to say the right things. Quite a lot of people tend to say, "well at least you know you can get pregnant", which is a strange one. I think it’s well-intentioned but it sort of comes across like telling you not to complain.

A handful of people said to me "oh I expect you’ll probably wait to tell people next time", which felt very much like a little curse. It seemed like a strange thing to say and it almost seemed to imply that I brought it upon myself by telling people.

"If you do feel able to talk about pregnancy and pregnancy loss, then if you can, it’s a good thing to do because women feel less alone."

I don’t think there’s any reason why any woman should feel she has to wait to say that she’s pregnant. I think that you should feel free to tell people the day you get a positive pregnancy test and I think you should feel free to "do a Kylie Jenner" and keep it a secret until the baby is born. It is completely your choice who you tell and when you tell them.

My only caveat to that is that I think some of the stigma around miscarriage is created by the fact that we don’t talk about pregnancy until three months because we know that around one in four women will have a miscarriage in her lifetime. But most of us don’t realise that our friends or our loved ones were experiencing that because we didn’t know that in the first place.

I think if you do feel able to talk about pregnancy and pregnancy loss, then if you can, it’s a good thing to do because women feel less alone. I can say from experience that miscarriage, despite being common, is an astonishingly lonely experience.

If more women felt able to announce their pregnancies earlier and towards the beginning of the pregnancy I think we would perceive that there are more miscarriages. But in reality there would be the exact same number but we would be aware of them.

I think that we could really change the way that we talk about pregnancies and miscarriage and most of all we could elevate the bulk of the stigma that still seems to endure around miscarriage if we could talk about it more openly. But it’s a hard thing to talk about and I don’t think that any woman who wants to stay silent and secret should feel even the tiniest hint of guilt about doing so.

At the end of the day, all you can do is look after yourself, especially when you’re going through something like a miscarriage. The last thing you should be worrying about is whether you’re towing the party line and fighting the cause of feminism.

As told to Olivia Bolton

Why do many women only reveal their pregnancy at 12 weeks?

"The ‘three-month-rule’ seems to have a lot to do with the advent of ultrasound, and the fact that most women have their first ‘dating scan’ or ‘booking scan’ around this point", according to NHS midwife Leah Hazard.

"The 12-week scan has become a modern rite of passage; seeing the fetal heartbeat and the beginnings of something that looks like a baby can be hugely reassuring for women and their partners, and women seem to feel more confident in sharing their news on or after this day.

"There’s also some science behind the 12-week mark. We know that the risk of miscarriage drops dramatically after the first trimester, when organogenesis (the formation of organs) is complete, and the placenta is functioning well."

Should women hold back from announcing a pregnancy until three months?

"This is a completely personal preference, just like any other decision in a woman’s sexual and reproductive life", says Leah Hazard.

"There’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ time to share the news of a pregnancy. The important thing is that we’re able to have this conversation with knowledge and sensitivity at any time. Women should be able to seek support from early pregnancy onwards, and everyone (friends, family, employers and healthcare providers) should be able to offer support whenever the woman needs it.

"If the pregnancy doesn’t continue, it shouldn’t be taboo to discuss that. Rebecca says that miscarriage is such an awkward topic for Brits because it combines the twin horrors of vaginas and death – she’s right in many ways, but in this day and age, we should be able to move beyond that kind of shame and fear."

Leah Hazard is also the author of Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story.

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