Her husband had already taken the ultrasound image from the refrigerator door and was about to throw it away, but Anna protested.

“That's our child!” Even if the thoughts hurt, even if there was nothing physically left to bury - at least she didn't want to just throw away the memories.

Anna had miscarried in the eleventh week and called me to tell me about it.

“Maybe you want to write about it,” she says, who just doesn't want to read her real name in the newspaper.

“I didn't even know you were pregnant again,” I say.

- "Of course not.

You shouldn't tell anyone in the first three months either. "

Johanna Dürrholz

Editor in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin

  • Follow I follow

Now Anna wants to talk in order to process and digest, she wants to understand the pain of losing a baby that was not yet fully developed, after all, in her dreams and thoughts the child was much bigger and older, it was once a boy, once been a girl. I want to help her and I listen. But I also think: Why did I not know anything about the pregnancy?

The first few weeks of pregnancy are tricky.

Some don't even know: Quite a few women who become pregnant lose their child, mostly because the embryo would not have been able to survive.

About every sixth pregnant woman goes through this.

That is why doctors advise you to tell only the closest people about your pregnancy during the first twelve weeks.

The idea behind this is that a miscarriage is painful enough, or at least it can be.

If the pregnancy was never known, the woman does not have to torment herself through possibly retraumatising conversations.

That is good and right.

As if nothing had ever happened

But there is another thought behind this, and the more women around me tell me about miscarriages, sometimes loudly and confidently and desperately like Anna, sometimes ashamed or casual or just sad, the stronger my feeling that this thought prevails: women , do not annoy us with your kids, no frills! A child who was never born is not worth mourning, you can continue to function and not bother anyone with your depressing stories of loss. Please make that out between yourselves!

This is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but whenever I talk to people in my environment who are not involved in family planning themselves about the topic of miscarriages or star children, they look completely dumbfounded and clueless.

Men in particular are astonishingly uninformed about the loss experiences many women carry around with them.

And just keep coming to work or sports or to meet up, of course.

The twelve weeks of silence mean that women who lose a child can simply return to the status quo afterwards - just as if nothing had ever happened.

Just as if they hadn't bled and prayed and cried.

Just as if her life hasn't changed forever.

Miscarriage is still a taboo subject

The twelve weeks of silence also mean that women have to come up with many, many excuses and lies. The famous morning sickness, for example, occurs mainly in the first three months of pregnancy and makes everyday life difficult. Pregnant women are often tired at the beginning, and in many cases also confused because they don't know: How am I supposed to manage all of this? Who should I take into my trust? When do I tell who? And how will my life change now?

It is of course up to you to decide when to break the silence, many need these first weeks to sort themselves out, to make a plan, like a grace period.

But ordering twelve weeks of silence so that women don't bother society with dead babies - that is simply wrong.

Women should be fertile and have children.

Nobody wants to have anything to do with the grief of women (and men!) After a miscarriage.

There is only one thing that can help: Get rid of the silence!