A few months ago, we asked for your stories of miscarriage and baby loss to form the backbone of our Every Loss Counts report. You – our readers – responded in your hundreds. When we started, we had our own anecdotal experience of how difficult it can be to access adequate support on the NHS for miscarriage, but it wasn’t until our readers responded in droves that it became clear just how ubiquitous the failings are. 

We then approached celebrities, advocates and politicians who’d openly spoken about pregnancy loss to see if they too had experiences and thoughts to contribute – and the response was overwhelming. Our research proves that it doesn’t matter what kinds of resources or platform you have; pregnancy loss is a universally devastating experience, and accessible help in this country simply isn’t there. 

Here are just some of the key findings from the Stylist Every Loss Counts report: 

• 46% of women received no follow-up call or letter post-treatment.
• 44% told us that they felt lonely or isolated during their loss.
• 43% had to repeat what had happened to them to multiple people – from A&E receptionists and on-duty nurses, to sonographers, consultants and GPs.
• 43% weren’t offered any kind of mental health support.
• 35% said they were treated with a lack of empathy that made the whole process worse. A further 31% complained about insensitive language being used by medical professionals to discuss their loss.
• 20% had to receive care in the same place as new and expecting mothers and babies. That includes waiting for diagnostic scans and surgery in the same waiting room as couples holding 20-week scan images and celebrating their happy news. 

These stats won’t come as a surprise to many people, and they certainly didn’t when we put them to miscarriage doula Karina Howell, who contributed to the report. In fact, she told us that it was the lack of care shown towards women during maternity and miscarriage that prompted her to leave a long-term career in the NHS. “Miscarriage is often approached purely from a medical standpoint, but for many, it’s a deeply personal and emotional experience. I’ve witnessed situations in which women are provided with minimal information and left to navigate their grief alone,” she shared.

Take Nicole’s story, for example. She experienced her first miscarriage five weeks after a successful IVF implantation. The second happened at 10 weeks, and from there, she had multiple other harrowing miscarriages – yet she never received an explanation for those consecutive losses. “I walked away with no answers, no validation, no support. I was left to drown. My care was abysmal. From the GP and the fertility clinics to the recurrent miscarriage unit, I was never offered support. It’s hard to forgive myself for not having done more, but I didn’t know.”

The coolness with which many have been treated by busy medics was something women brought up again and again. From feeling dismissed as a low-priority patient in A&E to the use of language like ‘retained products of conception’ to describe a much-loved foetus, we read story after story of unsympathetic treatment. Andrea, for example, told us how she was “immediately treated like a robot” on finding out that her baby had no heartbeat. Medics spoke of “getting rid of it [the baby]” via surgery. Fighting to miscarry at home, she was then told “it would be better to ‘discard the remains’ now. I couldn’t believe how cold they were about the baby that I had just lost.”  

These are such obvious, basic things to get right. It’s not rocket science to work out that women need a little compassion when they’re bleeding, cramping and losing what would otherwise be a totally life-changing addition to their lives. It’s not beyond comprehension that perhaps grieving patients might want to be triaged away from the families they thought they’d be. And it’s not too much to ask that women get answers for why this kind of thing keeps happening to them.

As such, we came up with four very simple recommendations for changing the treatment of miscarriage and baby loss in the UK – and presented them to Wes Streeting, the health secretary.  

Recommendation one: empathy training for staff who have direct contact with newly bereaved parents 

We understand that the NHS workforce is stretched, but language and attitude are absolutely crucial in those first few weeks following pregnancy loss. We’ve heard too many women complain of medical staff using incomprehensible jargon, dehumanising language and relying on out-of-date pamphlets to explain an incredibly emotive experience in the driest and most dispassionate way possible.

Compulsory empathy training for everyone who comes into contact with women and parents would make a huge difference. It doesn’t have to be extensive or time-absorbing; simply having the space to remind staff of the fact that they are dealing with people who may be grieving the loss of a future family would go a long way to remedying the situation.

The very first step should be discouraging staff to use the following phrases, all of which were flagged to us as compounding distress:

• Failed pregnancy
• Missed or spontaneous abortion
• Retained products/products of pregnancy
• Pregnancy tissue
• Referring to the foetus as ‘it’ 

Recommendation two: officially record miscarriage and pregnancy loss

Tommy’s has long been campaigning to have every pregnancy loss recorded, and we have joined them in that endeavor. There’s no official record so we have no data on just how common these losses are; women don’t have miscarriage automatically recorded on their medical notes, which means that they’re forced to regurgitate the same painful story again and again – whether that’s to their GP, the ‘booking in’ midwife when they conceive again or to the sonographer when having a pre-referral fertility check.

We want to see all pregnancy loss recorded nationally, at the point of diagnosis. A simple change could also be putting a red sticker on women’s blue pregnancy notes to indicate that a loss has occurred. That saves them from having to tell their story again during that cycle.

Recommendation three: separate spaces to be created for those on the miscarriage pathway within early pregnancy units

Space is at a premium in hospitals, but those going through pregnancy loss need to be seated away from women waiting for dating scans and other procedures. It’s inappropriate to have grieving and expectant parents sharing the same room. We suggest that separate waiting rooms be made available within early pregnancy units so that anyone on the pregnancy loss pathway can avoid any unnecessary distress.

Howell seconds this proposal: “The environment [within hospitals] can sometimes be inadvertently insensitive, with women experiencing loss being placed alongside expectant mothers in waiting rooms. That only amplifies their emotional pain.” 

Recommendation four: all women and bereaved parents to be offered an aftercare plan

Nearly half of the women we spoke to said that they didn’t receive a follow-up call or letter following their pregnancy loss, and 44% said that they felt lonely or isolated during that period. Miscarriage isn’t just a physical trauma; according to a 2018 paper looking into the psychological impact of early pregnancy loss, 41% of women self-report clinically significant levels of anxiety and 36% report depression within one month of losing a pregnancy. Nearly 40% meet the criteria for PTSD after three months.

“After a miscarriage, families should have access to comprehensive aftercare that addresses both physical and emotional healing,” says Howell. “This might include scheduled follow-up appointments to discuss physical recovery, counselling services for grief or support groups that provide a safe space for sharing. It’s also vital to consider cultural and religious context, ensuring that support is inclusive and respectful of diverse backgrounds.”

It’s also important to note that partners are often just as affected by pregnancy loss as the birthing parent. We believe that aftercare is vital for ensuring both parties are able to resume some semblance of normality in the future. At the very least, we want women to be seen by their GP or bereavement nurse a month following their loss.  

Images: Sarah Brick