Content note: this article contains discussions of miscarriage and baby loss that readers may find upsetting.

After four miscarriages, I got my rainbow baby. I don’t think that I would have been able to even have a discussion about miscarriage if I hadn’t had my son, because it was very, very raw; traumatic, even.

I was approached to make a documentary about miscarriage (the Bafta-nominated Myleene Klass; Miscarriage And Me). It included my friends, family, partner, children and my auntie, who I didn’t realise had had a miscarriage over 40 years ago until I told her about what I was making. She admitted she sees me every day and wonders what her own daughter would be doing now. I say ‘admit’ as it’s been a secret she’s carried until we filmed, such is the level of her trauma.

What I soon realised is that this affects everybody. One in four pregnancies miscarry – that’s thousands of women every single month affected by this dark secret. And the ripple effect of it, the implications that it has on the family, on your partner, on your everyday at work… it’s just so far-reaching, and nothing has been done about it, until now. I assure you, you will all know someone who has been through it.

When I suffered my first miscarriage, I was heartbreakingly told I would have to endure two more before I could receive any medical intervention. Three consecutive miscarriages? Can you imagine being told to hold out for two further heart attacks before receiving actual assistance? Two months ago, I finally helped to pass a bill that is now changing all of this and more, under a policy called The Pregnancy Loss Review. 

Originally, I didn’t know where change could really come from: I assumed that doctors could help me, or others from the medical profession. It turns out real change has to come from the top; Westminster has our wombs!

It’s been an extremely frustrating time. I’ve had doors closed in my face and people have paid lip service in meetings where the attendees had no intention of taking me seriously. I was constantly informed by people in power that “it’s just one of those things”. It’s passed off as ‘God’s will’ or an inconvenience that women quietly suffer and as we’ve all been getting on with it… why not just let it continue? It’s taken a lot of determination to fight, to be acknowledged and to be heard.

I certainly didn’t do this alone. I first met the indomitable MP Olivia Blake when she appeared on my documentary. She showed real courage when she stood up in parliament to talk about the lack of care and support she herself received when she miscarried, and called for change at a government level. We joined forces as fervent campaigners together with the addition of Tommy’s, the largest UK pregnancy and baby loss charity, which gave us extensive guidance as to how we could practically and emotionally support women through this nightmare. Together, we have successfully managed to change government policy on miscarriage. 

We had an opportunity four years ago to do all this sooner with something called The Women’s Health Strategy, which is essentially a list of promises that the government has to adhere to over a 10-year period. However, miscarriage wasn’t included in any part of the health strategy. It was actively ignored, and considering how many people are affected and to what degree, this is just criminal.

It was something at the time that Maria Caulfield, the current minister for mental health and women’s health strategy, and many members of parliament had shockingly said no to, so I decided to try to meet with her and her team. I needed to understand why we couldn’t push it through, and yet nobody could come up with a justifiable answer. I started working with Tommy’s and Olivia Blake to understand what women needed to be able to change their experience of miscarriage, and among the many points, three main changes were recognised as essential.

Ultimately, first and foremost, why should anybody have to wait for three consecutive miscarriages before receiving help? You wouldn’t wait for three heart attacks; you wouldn’t wait for three broken fingers. This had to change. There’s no logical or medical reason why women have to ‘wait’ for any, let alone three, and I couldn’t understand why no one had ever questioned it. When it comes to women’s health, no one really wants to put themselves out there or tackle the issues. Up to this point, it hadn’t been at the top of anyone’s agenda. The change we have helped to implement now ensures you will receive medical intervention after your first miscarriage. 

Secondly, there was no 24/7 care. Working with Tommy’s, we’ve been able to put together something called a ‘graded model of care’. It now gives an avenue, a direction, a pathway for women and medical practitioners to follow.

Previously, women weren’t sure whether to head to their GP or A&E, where they would have to be triaged. Where should A&E position miscarriage among the broken noses and cardiac arrests? This blatant mismanagement alone has been costing the NHS £471 million a year.

Now the signposting is clearer, and there will eventually be more access to EPUs (early pregnancy units). In fact, the government is currently trialling this care, so hopefully, it will be rolled out across the whole country without the need for a postcode lottery (EPUs were only open or available across the country at certain times before, if at all).

The heartbreaking image of women flushing their babies down the toilet or putting them in plastic containers and storing them in the fridge, next to tomorrow’s lunch, is undignified and so inhumane. This too had to change. Compassionate ambulances, advice and care from expert practitioners – all this has been a long time coming. Even the paperwork. Who knew that even in the depths of your despair and grief, before you head down to the operating theatre to have the baby removed from your body through a D&C (dilation and curettage, a procedure to remove tissue from inside the uterus), there’s paperwork to fill in. How do you wish to dispose of the products or pregnancy? ‘Ashes and prayers?’ ‘Science and slides?’ This is the final knife in an already haemorrhaging wound. This too is set to change. Women at their most broken, most vulnerable, cannot and should not be expected to do admin.  

And thirdly, there is no collection of data. That’s something that we weren’t successful in pushing through on this occasion, but we are continuing to campaign for it next.

It happens in Scandinavian countries. We have data and records that confirm if you’ve broken a finger. We know when you were born. We probably even know if your dad had high blood pressure. But we are very much in the dark as to what women are experiencing, let alone when, why and, most importantly, how they’re experiencing it.

Thankfully changes are being made. Maria Caulfield and the department of health and social care are on board and have pressed go on the vast majority of what we have campaigned for, so future generations, my daughters and son included, will know what to do if they have to go through the heartache of a miscarriage. 

Incredibly, Tommy’s has discovered that the level of PTSD women miscarrying can suffer nine months later is equivalent to that which a soldier returning from Afghanistan experiences. It can leave women feeling suicidal. It certainly makes them isolated and can put a huge strain or pressure on relationships and their working life. Practically speaking, if you suffer a miscarriage, what work leave is available to you? Does it fall under bereavement leave? Is it sickness? There’s no clear labelling to protect us. What care is your husband or partner entitled to? What rights or options are available to them in their suffering? It’s apparent that at every single point along the miscarriage route, women and families have been let down.

People find the subject of dead babies hugely uncomfortable and understandably so. But by ignoring women’s needs for all this time and not tackling what is essentially the final taboo, we have been unnecessarily torturing women, both physically and mentally. For decades we’ve been actively ignored at the government level. Even the medical profession hasn’t given miscarriage the gravitas and attention it requires. You’ve been a mother for those fleeting months, and then suddenly you’re left with nothing. And that’s the cruellest part of women’s health and miscarriage: because it’s such a deep, dark, secret, you have nowhere to go. 

The first trimester you keep silent, again, for no reason other than ‘jinxing the pregnancy’ has created a prison of secrecy for expectant mothers. The language around women’s fertility – ‘incompetent cervix, blighted ovum, missed miscarriage’ – most certainly doesn’t help us. We feel like we have constantly failed. Women have been left traumatised over the years, even decades later, from what could have been, and they’ve suffered in silence up until this moment. 

A woman experiences a complex set of emotions in miscarriage. Your world crumbles instantly. You swing from the elation and excitement of being an expectant mum to the devastation of grief and despair that your body has failed you and your baby, to fear that you’ll never ever get to hold your child. We are somehow just expected to just to know how to get on with life. 

One of the hardest things I’ve had to experience is watching a scan and seeing my dead baby on that screen, floating slowly down in the darkness, lifeless every time the sonographer pushed the camera onto my stomach and then somehow having to try to carry on like normal life could just somehow be resumed. 

The fact that the law has been changed now means women and their partners do not have to suffer this in silence. The ripple effect is huge. It’s a really powerful move and a hugely satisfying way to finally give a voice to those who never before had the chance to be heard. Mothers and babies included.

In 2023, we are starting to tackle the last taboo.

Images: Myleene Klass; Getty