Girls Know Nothing - S2 Ep47: Miscarriage Association | Support & Guidance

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

GKN is a female-focused podcast hosted by  @SharonNJGaffka GKN Social Channels: Https://linktr.ee/girlsknownothing  Instagram: @girlsknownothingpod  Tiktok: @girlsknownothingpod TikTok: @girlsknownothing

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Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. W-A-T-E-R to 64,000. By texting 64,000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pockethose.com slash terms. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites.

With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. And I think that a lot, because I'm one of those people, and it's to my own detriment, I'm so independent independent I don't ask for help from any for anyone and I think it was probably that moment that I probably should have put my pride to one side you are who you are

welcome back to another episode of girls are nothing this episode is slightly different to the normal girls are nothing episodes you guys are used to seeing that's because last year I decided that I wanted to share probably one of the most personal experiences I've ever put online and it had a hugely overwhelming response from not just women that follow me on socials, but their partners and family members sharing their experiences or somebody they know is experiences of miscarriage. You know, I'm only one person and I tried my hardest to get back to everyone, but I thought that it would actually be more beneficial to speak to somebody whose job

it is to talk about these kinds of topics on a day-to-day basis so the Miscarriage Association reached out to me after I shared my story and ever since I've been in contact with the National Director Ruth who is honestly the most wholesome cutest person I've ever met. This episode has been a real pleasure to record and I hope that it helps somebody out there that may be feeling or has felt the mixed emotions that I went through. So it's going to be a difficult episode to watch or listen to, but I hope you enjoy it. So welcome to the studio, Ruth. Yeah, I think just because this is obviously quite a sensitive subject and it's a subject that I've spoken about

very briefly on my socials, but a subject that I've had like 500 messages from people, not just like people that have experienced it, but like partners of people that have experienced it as well. And even to this day, like months later, I'm still getting messages of people that are like asking me to talk about it so I haven't like overly planned and prepped for like for this episode because I want

it to be very natural conversation um and I think that also because this isn't something that people openly talk about there's just I feel like there's still a lot of stigma around it yeah I think you're right yeah and I think that one of the reasons why I think it took me so long to just come out and say it's happened to me is because when you're in the public eye, people feel like they're automatically entitled to comment on your life.

And there's always this, I always had this thing in the back of my head being like, it's your fault or because I wasn't publicly known to be with a partner. Are people going to call me horrible names because I got pregnant outside of a relationship or outside of marriage or all of these other things. And obviously there's cultural aspects.

So I come from an Asian family and like my dad's Polish. They're both from very strict religious countries. So I had all of these issues to contend with. And I think that stopped me from like fully recovering or accepting what happened because I was trying to control public perception of me more than caring about my own recovery and my own emotional and mental healing from and physical healing as well um so I think like you know when I press post I literally turned off my phone and was like whatever happens will happen

but like it's out there now and I don't have to worry about other people's opinions of me but it's still so many unanswered questions that people go looking for like i read books and i just didn't think any of it helped or like answered people's questions i guess that's probably why i still get so many messages from people i think it's sometimes i mean sometimes it's to do with self-preservation that you have to be careful what you read but it's also because some of what you read you know even if you put the medical stuff the information stuff to one side and you and you're talking about feelings you can you can sometimes find that you've got these extremes you've got people who say well it wasn't a big

deal get over it um and on the other hand you've also got people saying you know this isn't this is this is grief this is bereavement you should grieve and generally speaking people are more complicated than that yeah and you can get a mixture of feelings so you can feel really upset about a miscarriage but also quite positive about trying again and moving on and feeling okay about next time or you might feel absolutely terrified of trying again because you can't bear to go through it again well you might be relieved that you had a miscarriage because actually this was a pregnancy that you didn't want and you were thinking about terminating yeah I think for me I was definitely in that latter category children isn't something that I necessarily envision for my

future it's not something that I've definitely written off because it entirely depends on like you know the partner I end up with and stuff but at that moment in time that's not a pregnancy I wanted it wasn't a person I wanted to have a child with. And I felt this really weird conflicting emotion consistently that I was like, I feel guilty for being happy, but I'm also sad that this has happened to me because it's really experienced. It's a really traumatic thing to have to like experience and witness whether you are, whether it's something you would have wanted to do or not. And obviously it was that element of choice being removed from me.

Because when you decide to terminate, you've mentally prepared yourself. And sometimes through BPAS, you're offered support to be able to go through it. But when it's literally taken from underneath you, there's not necessarily the same amount of support offered and available to you. So for me, when the midwife

had confirmed that the fetus was no longer viable it was kind of like go home have a hot water bottle and see how you feel as opposed to like going through a termination a b-pass employee was like you know we can provide you with it's like we wish you could provide you with more but we can only provide you with one counseling session but at least that one was offered um but i guess that's why your organization exists right to try and bridge that gap it is to bridge the gap but it's you know part of what we do is also about um trying to raise awareness in general, about how everyone is individual and everyone's feelings and reactions are individual. But for most people, even if they didn't want this pregnancy,

there is probably something pretty unpleasant about it, physically and possibly emotionally, because it may cause all sorts of anxieties about the future. So part of what we do is about raising awareness. Part of what we do is encouraging health professionals to provide supportive care. So it's not only the clinical care um it's it's also saying you know i'm sorry for your loss and if somebody isn't feeling that bad about their loss it's never going to hurt saying i'm sorry for your loss yeah of course it's um kind of blows my mind that there needs to be an organization to raise awareness about this considering quite a heavy amount of the population can experience this well actually everyone can experience it at some point

even if they don't physically experience it their partners might experience it and they still have to go through the emotional trauma of having to deal with it themselves so it's like it's I find it weird that we need to raise awareness about it. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because when you think about it, I don't think people are all that great at talking about death in general. So, you know, think about when a grandparent dies. You might feel enormous sense of grief and loss and, you know, tears because you're thinking about them and

you're missing them at the you know at the table and all sorts of things and people say things like well he was a good age wasn't he yeah is it this sort of cheering you up thing and this is with a person whom you knew of whom you have memories when you're talking about miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, another kind of pregnancy loss, people sort of assume that, you know, it isn't a big deal and you wouldn't be feeling anything in particular. And actually, you don't have any memories except possibly a positive pregnancy test.

So it's a hidden kind of sadness. And we seem to have, I hesitate to call it a taboo, but there is something about miscarriage which makes people feel uncomfortable. And that might be because you think it might happen to you, but you don't want to think about it you might know that around one in four or five pregnancies ends in miscarriage but you kind of assume it won't be you yeah um it's just uncomfortable and people will often make it clear that they're uncomfortable if you talk about it i was i think from from my point of view I think the only reason I ever felt uncomfortable talking about it is because the person you're you might be talking about it too hasn't told you they've experienced it and you don't want to re-upset

them I think that's just how I when I really struggled with it because when I turned around to my friends said this has happened to me I'd actually realized that some of my closest friends have also experienced it but just never told anyone so like it really rehashed a lot of old feelings that they'd kind of just put into a box and put into a cupboard and hoped it would never come back out that might be true, but it also might be a relief that they actually can talk about it and can allow themselves to feel sad if that's what they still feel. I think there is a sort of expectation that, you know, you got to however many days or weeks or months after your loss, that it all should be over by now. You just move on. And people do move on, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they forget.

It doesn't necessarily mean that they wouldn't, I don't know, walk past a shop with baby clothes and think, oh, that could have been me, that should have been me. There are triggers that can exist even when you feel absolutely recovered. Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here, and it's a total game changer. Old-fashioned hoses get kinks and

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visibility at Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. And for some people, that can happen when they're pregnant after a loss and when they have their baby. So if they have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby, they can feel hugely relieved and joyful,

but sometimes think about the baby that might have been so how do you as an association help provide people with the resources that they need to be able to be even be comfortable talking about it or feel like they're able to it's hard to word it because I don't want to say cope with the memory of what happened or get over it because you like you said I know you'll never get over it but what how do you help and support people to live with what's happened yeah the expression that we very often use is helping people through okay so there isn't a sort of finite timeline. Yeah. But it's helping people get through that minute, that hour, that day, that week,

whatever that period of time is with its inevitable ups and downs. And we do that on an individual basis through our helpline service. So you can phone up and talk to someone, a support worker, and just talk through your feelings. You can also get in touch through live chat or through email or direct messaging. There are all sorts of different ways that you can get to have a conversation with someone who will always listen and offer some comfort and will never say all the wrong things, which, you know, you can write a book about all the wrong things that people say and and they they just are there for people and and that in itself allowing somebody to talk through what it is without feeling that that there's something wrong with them or you know because people often say well everyone around me thinks i should be over it by now and you say and when was it your your miscarriage and they say it was two weeks ago

most people aren't over it yeah after two weeks and some people are so it's so that's i guess that's a really really important part of what we do is just being there for people we also have lots and lots of information to help answer the questions that you might have wanted to ask, but at the time, you know, you don't think of asking the questions. Or you ask the question, you get an answer, and you've forgotten it because you were too distressed, actually, to be able to kind of digest it. I think those are the things that we do from our office, if you like. And we also have support volunteers who are people who've been through miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy or molar pregnancy, which is another kind of pregnancy loss. They've been through that themselves, and they can offer support from that perspective, somebody who's been there. And they do this on the phone, but quite often they do it through running a support group. And that might be a face-to-face

support group or a Zoom group. And it's interesting because when you go to a group, you don't necessarily have to say anything. Sometimes just being in a room when other people are talking about their experiences can make you think, you know, actually people are feeling what I feel. What I'm feeling is perfectly reasonable. And I think that a lot of the time it's about it's about people finding out that whatever their feelings are they are completely understandable given what they've gone through so it's it's it it gives i

guess validity it validates what people are feeling that matters a lot yeah i think um for me it was like receiving all those messages and comments it was it was a weird mixture of emotions because I was mortified to know that it was so common and to like even people that I'd known for years to say like yeah it's happened to me too and like talk about it but like it was nice to know that you like I wasn't the only person that was going through it and I wasn't on my own. And I think that a lot, because I'm one of those people and it's to my own detriment that I'm so independent. I don't ask for help from any, for anyone.

And I think it was probably that moment that I probably should have put my pride to one side. You are who you are. Sorry. I'm so used to making other people cry on my podcast. It's really weird that I'm the one that's crying. I think I have that effect on people too. So together we can do a great job here. Yeah, I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing that we're like that good at making people cry it's I don't know I think it's

obviously we've spoken on zoom before and I cried then too so I knew it was gonna happen and I should have a waterproof mascara so it's my own fault but um no I think it's it's it's an entirely different emotion when you like speak to people and feel like someone actually is listening because there are other services out there that are more generic and general mental health support services and I think when I was like really struggling with it I would turn to them because I'd guess I didn't know you guys existed and because they're not equipped to deal with how specific this type of grief is or was they gave the worst advice I think I'd ever received from anyone um so like it was I think people just don't know

what to say and like you know I've said this to people like when partners of people that have experienced it or quite a lot of I've actually had a lot of messages from men that like you know I've not experienced it but I want to know how to help a partner if, you know, touch wood, it never happens. But if it ever did happen to their partner, how did they support that person? And I don't, I think, I mean, in my experience, it's not always trying to find the right thing to say, but it's like, you know, I always found that people were there very much in the beginning when it was fresh, but like down the line, people tend to drop off because they think you're over it. But actually, it's later down the line.

It's probably when you need somebody more. Because at that moment in time, I was just surviving and not actually dealing with what it was. And I probably needed those people then more than I did in the beginning part but maybe that's just me I don't know I think it varies a lot I mean that makes a great deal of sense at the time you're just dealing with just somehow getting through the you know the hours and the days and the physicality of of miscarriage which nobody talks about they don't talk about bleeding and clots and pain and mess and fear that you might miscarry when you're on the bus or in the supermarket they don't

they don't know how many you know acres of pads you've had to use when you haven't used pads for years and you think they're revolting it's all of that sort of stuff and all of the emotions that go along with that. So at the beginning, you're sort of consumed with that and you may not have the bandwidth to kind of talk about your feelings or even consider your feelings. And sometimes as time moves on, you do get these triggers or you or you're kind of more open

to talk about it or maybe somebody tells you about their miscarriage and you know that that's an opportunity possibly to say what you might have liked someone to say to you at the time yeah and and very often you know you talked before about about um what people not knowing what to say less is more yeah if you say to somebody i'm really sorry sorry if you're lost i'm sorry to hear your news. And then listen. I mean, really listen. I think that tends to be what we're really bad at. We kind of want to charge in there and make them feel so much better. So let's cheer you up. This is the great British way, by the way. If you have a brisk walk, some strong tea with three sugars and cheer up because because you know i know somebody who had five miscarriages and then went on to have a perfectly healthy baby

now that isn't enormously helpful yeah because you think well i need to have another four miscarriages then before yeah i have a baby or they say well you know you're young you can always try again I've had that said to me so many times or you know it was quite early wasn't it so it wasn't really a baby think of it more as a heavy period yeah or anything that begins with at least yeah I think it's you can't everyone feels things differently and it shouldn't be down to somebody else to tell you how they would deal with something because they're not you I think I do you know what I think if I was to go back one of the things that I selfishly or selfish is probably the wrong word is that sometimes we don't think about the other partner

and how they're impacted by it. And I know that said partner for me also didn't want child, but I really didn't take into consideration their emotions or their recovery or their feelings. And you know that I know this person, they probably didn't deal with it at all and probably still haven't but I don't know if people ever considered that person and do you guys like what support do you can you guys offer to that person or do people just not at all that person

is just as important as the person who's had the physical loss, you know, whether they're your... You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and

support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here, and it's a total game changer. Old-fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's Pocket Pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust-proof anti-burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus, your super light and ultra durable pocket hose copperhead is backed with a 10-year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what, an exciting exclusive offer just for you. For a limited limited time you can get a free pocket pivot

and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size copperhead hose just text water to 64 000 that's water to 64 000 for your two free gifts with purchase w-a-t-e-r to 64 000 by texting 64 000 you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from pocket hose message and data rates may apply no purchase required terms Available at pockethost.com slash terms. Your male or your female or whatever partner, it makes no difference. Their feelings are their feelings. And they're very often not considered by anybody. And I think also partners, and not just men, can feel that their role, because they haven't had the physical loss, is to be the sort of strong, silent, supportive one. Yeah.

And that doesn't really leave any room for them to consider what their own feelings are. And their feelings might be similar, or they might be quite different, or they might feel similarly at a different stage maybe they have to help you through it and then they can kind of get in touch with sounds so american doesn't it get in touch with their feelings um yeah it's it's tough and we absolutely are there for partners and it's nice when you you run a um a support group so there's one group that i run from time to time and and you see couples coming to that because it's they're supporting each other they're there for each other and we know it doesn't always work like that if you've got a difficulty in your relationship already, something like miscarriage, you know, for some people brings them closer together, but for others it can really make matters worse. It can kind of maybe help each of you think, do you know what, this isn't the person for me or this isn't the future I want yeah I think that's what it was

for me like a massive realization that what I thought I wanted actually isn't but I think it's I think sometimes I think about it a lot like I didn't take that other person into consideration and how they feel about the whole situation because in that moment in time I was really selfish and only thought of myself so I think that's probably one of my regrets. And I don't think the other person's perspective is talked about enough. And that's one of the few things I've seen is that people come to me and say, like, how do I support my partner that's gone through a miscarriage? But I've never had anyone message me saying I've gone through a miscarriage,

but how do I support my partner as well? Which is why I wanted to bring it up but I think I've noticed I think I actually didn't realize how bad quite a lot of maternity services are in this in the UK until I had to use them when I was going through a miscarriage because I was made to sit in a baby ward with um new mums as I was waiting for my scans and blood tests and I think that for me was actually the most traumatic part of what I had to go through because even if I didn't want said fetus like I had to sit and look at women who were who or people who had carried to full-time and had their child and I like is there do you do people like do governments even ask you guys what they think what you guys think about how they can improve these services for people that are experiencing

loss or do they just completely forget about that part of society there is something that the government published called the women's health strategy which you might have heard of and and that encompasses absolutely loads of stuff around women's health and there is also they've also recently published um something called the pregnancy loss review which is very specific and looks particularly a pre-24 week yeah loss and within that there are something like 79 recommendations yeah i've read that and and there's a top 20 and some of those top 20 which the government is committed to doing something about, some of those are going to take ages. So, for example, if you have, I mean, the situation you described is awful.

There is no two ways about it. It just is awful. You shouldn't have to be with new mums with tiny babies. It's difficult enough for people to be in a waiting room with people who are visibly pregnant or women coming out of their scan room looking at their photograph, their scan photo. You know, there are all sorts of things

that are very difficult, but if it's a matter of there is only one room, there is a limited number of of time in the day when we have to put people together in the same space a government can't do everything about that i'm assuming unless they pour lots and lots lots more money into enlarging the estate the physical estate of the building so there is more space but sometimes staff can help and and very often they do and i think of the early pregnancy unit staff that that i've come across who do things like saying to people who who've had a nice scan with you know a positive result and they have their photo, and they say, please don't look at the photo when you're going back out through the waiting room

because there might be somebody in there who's feeling upset. Or if they've had a really difficult result, unexpected news or expected news of a miscarriage, they may offer them a different way out if they want it, if they don't want to go through the waiting room. And I've had women talk about that, about being in tears and going out through the waiting room. And not only was it difficult for them, but they felt guilty

at possibly upsetting other people who were waiting. So I think there are lots of elements to this that are going to be much longer term improvements which is to do with you know the actual buildings but it's also to do with the number of staff and if there are insufficient staff and in insufficient facilities that's a real problem yeah because there's less space and there's less time and there's more strain and stress on the people who are doing the job and want to do it well so that's a very long answer to a fairly short question no i think it's a it's a good answer and i think it's really important you know like

to have a pregnancy loss review with over 70 recommendations just goes to show that the state of maternity services is quite bad i think not you know what let's let's let's let's argue that one okay what the pregnancy loss review could do is just to say crikey this is rubbish yeah and actually actually, it was put together. I mean, there were two co-chairs who put it together. There was also a group of people who were involved from the start, a sort of expert group, feeding in information. And they talked to lots and lots of health professionals. And they recognized that there is a lot of good practice and there is a lot of good care and we hear that from people too who talk about the kindness that they had and the thoughtfulness that they had um and that's important too so when we're

working with health professionals we we don't need to be in in a sort of adversarial relationship yeah we can say this must be this must be tricky for you how do you manage this situation yeah and there is also something called the national bereavement care pathway which is a piece of it's not a piece of work it's a project that's been led by another charity called sans which is a stillbirth and neonatal death charity. And one of the parts of that is for pre-24 week, so miscarriage ectopic and molar pregnancy. And there's a lot in there about what matters to patients beyond the clinical care.

And it's all the things that you're talking about. It's the kindness and compassion, the ability to listen, to be able to communicate and explain, thinking of the words you use and the impact it might have. And just really being thoughtful and recognizing that even though you've probably seen, I don don't know 10 or even 15 people that day and some of them will be okay and some of them won't yeah which is a big emotional burden for you too you have to address each one as an individual yeah of course and what their

experiences and what their feelings are and they may not be able to express it themselves all that well it's it's a horrible thing for people to have to go through but i know from talking to staff and you could argue that they maybe they're self-selected because the ones who we talk to are the ones that are really keen to get it right. And I do think that 99% of them are. You know, it's difficult for them too. Actually, I have mentioned to you that I did ask people on social media to send questions and they had. I mean, quite a common question was that,

and I didn't know this was a thing that you had to have three miscarriages in order to be able to get genetic tests I mean I don't actually know what that genetic test is um but I don't know why it has to be why do they choose three like there's so many things I don't know about that to put to you as a question okay that's um another of those questions that's hugely important and will take probably an hour and a half to answer so we won't we won't um i think what's important here is to is to take it sort of bit by bit i think this whole issue around three miscarriages, first of all, it's something that's being looked at. Okay. And it's, but it's, it inevitably has been talked about for a very, very, very long time, because when you go through a miscarriage, it's difficult enough. And you're worrying about what's going to be next time and thinking, you know, is this going to be

what's always going to be? Am I going to have another miscarriage? And then if you do have another miscarriage, then that's multiplied by, you know, 100 plus, because you're constantly anxious. And if somebody says, well, we can do some investigations, but you have to have another miscarriage first, it's very difficult to contemplate going through another pregnancy thinking that actually either you have a baby or you'll qualify, as it were, the test.

So it's a horrible, horrible situation to be in. The reason that it was three and has been three for all this time was really to do with a combination of statistics and money. Okay. I mean, I would know the money. Okay. So that's to do with, well, it's to do with the cost of testing. Yeah. And I suppose you could rather crudely call it cost benefit. And the reason for that is the statistics. So for a long time, it's been thought that if you have one miscarriage we know

it's hugely common horribly common around one in four or five pregnancies will end in miscarriage if you have two it's less common but it's not that uncommon but once you've had three particularly three in a row that's way less common okay if. If you take all of those people, the people who've had three consecutive miscarriages, and you do tests, and you mentioned the word genetic and genetic tests, it's more than that. It's looking for particular issues that the woman might have. Okay. For the most part, it might be things like blood clotting problems or hormonal problems or some physical problems, particularly for a late miscarriage. And in some cases, they might look at the woman's chromosomes, her chromosome balance

and that of her partner, or they might check if can, the baby to see if there is a chromosome problem there. Okay. When you do that, if you look at all of those, you know, this group of people who've had three consecutive losses, very, very few of them come out with any identifiable cause or obvious cause because we know that most early miscarriages most miscarriages before 14 15 weeks are caused by random chromosome errors so you know chromosomes are the kind of building blocks that we've that we've got um and if you i i dread saying this because i never listened in biology lessons but if you go back to your biology lessons and you did listen you'd wonder how anybody ever had a baby

because there's so many hoops to jump through on the way i mean sperm have to jump and eggs have to be there and they have to meet and they have to like each other and you have to get through all of the rest of it in order to have a baby probably all probably of all conceptions probably half don't make it yeah hi i'm richard karn and you may have seen me on tv talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose well the brand new pocket hose copperhead with pocket pivot is here and it's a total game changer old-fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spig Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here, and it's a total game changer. Old-fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's Pocket Pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust-proof anti-burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage.

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Not things that we can do anything about really apart from generally healthy living. But there are lots of reasons why things go wrong. And for the most part, they're random. So the reason that we want testing, let's go back to the three, why do we have to wait till three? So the logic tells us that even if we only take the women with three consecutive losses we'll still only have a small number of people so it doesn't make sense to spend lots of money on doing lost lots of testing when the chances are much higher that they'll have an okay pregnancy next time so that's the logic if you're the person involved that logic doesn't wash at all yeah because you just want the investigations and the reason that you want the investigations is twofold first of all you

want to know why it happened because if you know why it happened maybe there's something you can do about it and the second of all is the what can you do about it because the assumption is that once you've got the answer what caused my miscarriage then you've got a treatment you've got something that you can do to make it different next time and the awful truth is there is very rarely anything you can do next time you know that it's not that it isn't possible because it is there are some conditions like a blood clotting problem which is also known as i think people call it sticky blood syndrome but it's also called antiphospholipid syndrome or aps and it seems uh probably 12% to 15% of people with three consecutive losses have that. And if they're treated in their next pregnancy with a combination of low-dose aspirin and heparin,

then they have a much lower risk of a repetition. It absolutely wouldn't necessarily, I mean, you can't say that if you take this treatment, you definitely won't have a miscarriage next time because the treatment might not work. Or it might be that this pregnancy went wrong because it was chromosome abnormality. So the treatment for the blood clotting issue isn't going to work. So having said all of that, which is terribly lengthy, there is recognition now that we might still call recurrent miscarriage, that's what we call three miscarriages.

We might still say that's three miscarriages. They don't necessarily have to be three in a row. Okay. And there is definitely a call for what's called a graded model of care. And that's also part of the pregnancy loss review. And it's been published in The Lancet, which is a pretty serious medical journal. is that you can, even after one loss, begin to give some general advice to people about things that they can do that might help, and possibly to do more of a history taking and see if there are any significant issues that might need looking at more closely at that point. after two a bit more of that and you may even only have the more i don't know sophisticated or in-depth examinations or tests of you or your baby's chromosomes after three losses

but it will mean that more people might know a little more earlier on in the in in you know in this journey no that makes sense um is the thing is you're saying they're lengthy answers that unfortunately with something like this you can't give a short answer to something that's so complicated and it's true we have a leaflet about it though so you don't have to listen to it all in one go yeah I mean yeah there is that but it's it's one of those things it's it's very sensitive to talk about and I think that you know one of the questions that people ask me is that when do you know when you're ready to go back to work and for me I never stopped and I think that was probably an issue that I should have and I should have put my physical and my mental health

first because the only people that knew about it were the people that sit in the room across the hall and nobody else and I didn't want anyone else to know about it and you know they were trying to get me to not work I was like I'm self-employed I can't risk not working because I don't want people to think there's something wrong with me I don't want people to think there's something wrong with me. I don't want people to know. So, you know, I would take, I would not do as I do basically. Like I would, I would take, if I could do it again, I would have taken some time off. I don't know how long that would have been or how long I would have needed. But even if I took a day to myself, cause I was, I remember working, I remember taking my laptop to the hospital and that's not a healthy thing to do either um so I mean I I would be the worst person to give a piece of advice on that

I don't even know if you can give people a time frame of how long they should take off work so I guess it's each down to their individual persons it's absolutely down to them and it's it's it's it's down to each individual to figure out what's best for them emotionally and physically but also you know there are there is reality and not everyone can afford to take time off and people who are in the gig economy or who are self-employed or or you know who have to work in order to in order to get income but can't necessarily afford to take the time off that they might feel that they want to need and that's a great sadness and even people who are you know in normal employment i'm not sure what normal employment means but but if you're in full-time employment and you have your sickness policy there are only there may be only so many days that you can have off before you lose your your you know your your sickness pay

um and there are things that can sort of mitigate against that you can you can have pregnancy related leave yeah so that means that your doctor can sign you off for so many weeks and say but it is pregnancy related so when you're pregnant it's a protected status okay in in employment terms and that means that nobody can, for example, say that you've had too many days off sick. They can't. It can't affect your employment. It can't affect your career. It can't affect you negatively in any way. So that's useful, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee that you'll be paid because it depends on your terms and conditions at work.

So that's very difficult. So ideally, I would say to people, the time to go back to work is when you feel ready to go back to work. And if you feel that you need time off, hopefully yourp will offer you pregnancy related leave and possibly a phased return to work so you might feel that you can just about manage mornings but in the afternoon you fall apart you can hold it together for that long yeah um or it might be that you feel that you only want a week off and then you want to go back to work and there are people who want to go back to work as soon as they can because their experience of pregnancy loss has been so difficult and they felt so out of control that it's only when they're at work that they feel like a competent, confident person. They need that kind of framework or structure to help them through. really really wish that we had you know a national employment framework that allowed for

you know some kind of payment whatever your circumstances so but it was automatic for any organization that if people needed sickness leave as they might if they had a heart attack yeah of course you know there would be at least some financial compensation there. Compensation is not the right word, but they wouldn't lose out financially. Yeah. I mean, I honestly feel like I can sit and talk to you all day about this stuff because you're actually one of the very few people

I've spoken to about it that's very calm and reassuring and like you feel comfortable talking to. And actually, do you know, like even the people that sit across the hall were like, Ruth's coming in today and like they're really excited to meet you. So like I think that's just the, you know, how you leave a positive impact on people's lives. Thank you. I'm going to start crying again um i don't want to end on end of episode on crying but no why not do you know what it might be the first time people have actually seen me cry because i think people don't think i'm capable of doing it so goodness me

goodness me what kind of a superhuman are you i just i'm very good at hiding it you're just private I think I'm just very good at hiding it and it's not always healthy so yeah I think it's just a different version of me that people seem but I guess it's you know you're being me today and making me cry instead of me making you cry but it's not on purpose but honestly I really appreciate the long journey you've made to come down here and have this conversation. It's only Leeds. It's not Greenland. On the train.

That's a long train journey, especially with the way that our trains work. Yeah, but do you know what I was reading? I recommend this. This is obviously not for your podcast. So Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. It won a Women's Prize for Fiction. And somebody told me to read it, and I'm halfway through,

and I'm just stopping to savor a sentence. Oh, okay. I'm going to take the recommendation. Anyway, that's beside the point. Going back to being private, and actually many of the things that you've said today have been around what you might do differently were this to happen again, which I sincerely hope it about decisions that you made, actions that you took, because what's past is past. But also, looking at that past, you know, you did the very, very best you possibly could to protect yourself at that time. And for you, that was keeping it inside, and it was keeping it private, and it was presenting your normal professional,

here I am people, face. That's what you needed. Just as actually your body was doing the best it could do under the circumstances it's really important to remember it's so easy for us to feel guilty this miscarriage happened it must be and they and the doctors have done all the tests and they can't find anything so it's obviously my fault it's obviously something i did or i didn't do or it's something i thought or or i doubted or or it's it's you know it's what i ate it's that i did the hoovering it's because i lifted a something or it's all of these things that we think and actually partners can feel that too yeah so men will say things like, well, I've obviously got duff sperm. There's no point here. I can get her pregnant, but it doesn't work.

So it's good to know about the kind of things that you can do to maximize a healthy pregnancy. Most of it is completely outside our control control it is not because of what you thought or because of what you did i mean probably skydiving isn't a great idea at that time yeah but you know paula ratcliffe ran a marathon when she was pregnant yeah i i think she's just superwoman super superhuman. And I won't be doing that. But honestly, I think there are so many people out there that really appreciate this conversation

and be glad to know that an organization like you exists. And now that they know that you exist, they can find their way to you to get the support they need. Because I obviously cannot support everyone as a one single human being that doesn't have all the answers. But yeah, honestly, thank you so much for coming. And I really appreciate it.

You're really welcome.