The baby message is sweet on Instagram, but the accompanying text is tough. Boris Johnson’s wife said she had previously suffered a miscarriage. But the topic is still a taboo.
London – The joy of the pregnancy is huge, but when Carrie Johnson announces her second child, there is a hint of sadness. “At the beginning of this year I had a miscarriage that broke my heart,” writes the wife of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Instagram.
The 33-year-old joins an ever larger phalanx of prominent women who publicly report on their personal experiences with miscarriages. There is a real trend towards – “finally”, as the “Sunday Times” writes – to break a social taboo.
Michelle Obama felt lost
Carrie Johnson, Duchess Meghan, US model Chrissy Teigen and Queen’s granddaughter Zara Tindall: Just a few prominent women in the US and UK who recently made their miscarriage public. “I felt lost and alone,” writes Michelle Obama, the former US First Lady, in her memoir. She miscarried before the birth of her daughters Malia and Natasha – and was unsure how to deal with it. “I felt like I had failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were because we didn’t talk about them. We sit in our own pain and think that we are somehow broken. “
Many women feel left alone, they fear stigmatization and are ashamed to talk about their situation and their pain. “Many women feel guilty about believing that they have done something wrong,” says Wolf Lütje, President of the German Society for Psychosomatic Gynecology and Obstetrics, explaining the taboo. Guilt and loss have nothing to do with what week the miscarriage occurs or how many child it is. “It’s always a very personal ordeal,” says Lütje.
Miscarriages are common
Miscarriages are quite common. According to the expert, many women were amazed at how many acquaintances, parents, grandmothers and friends suddenly report comparable experiences. According to the British organization Tommy’s, which researches the subject and also supports those affected, every fourth woman loses a baby in the course of her life. A miscarriage is when the child does not survive the first 23 weeks of pregnancy. Often this happens so early that the person concerned had not even noticed that she was pregnant. Multiple miscarriages in a row are significantly less common, according to the British health service NHS, one in 100 women is affected.
“Losing a child means having to bear an almost unbearable grief, which many experience, but which few talk about,” wrote Duchess Meghan in a sensational article for the “New York Times” last November. Unjustified shame and a “cycle of lonely grief” are the result. That is precisely why, according to more and more celebrities, more attention is necessary. This could ultimately also alleviate the suffering of those affected. “I think the worst thing we women can do to ourselves if we don’t share the truth about our bodies, how they work and how they don’t work,” said Michelle Obama.
Doesn’t fit into the Instagram world
Another obstacle for many nowadays: the staged ideal world in social networks, as Carrie Johnson has also noticed. “Fertility problems can be very difficult for many people, especially when on platforms like Instagram everything looks like everything is going well,” she writes in her post. “I found it very comforting to hear from people who have also suffered a loss, so I hope this communication can help others as well.”
Above all, the message – gynecologists point this out again and again – is important that a miscarriage does not mean that a woman will never become pregnant again or that she has a greater risk of losing more babies. The best proof: Meghan Markle, Michelle Obama, Zara Tindall, singer Beyoncé and numerous other women have had one or more children after a miscarriage. Carrie Johnson is also looking forward to her “rainbow baby”, as babies are called in Great Britain who follow a miscarriage or stillbirth. The rainbow is a symbol of hope after the previous storm of mourning. dpa
