Miscarriage and Your Husband

When I had my first miscarriage, my husband was great for as long as the physical process went on. He watched the kids, picked up supper, urged me to rest, cleaned up the horrible bloody mess in the bathroom, drove me to the midwife's office, and tenderly held my hand while she helped the miscarriage to completion.

But after that, for him it was done. He couldn't understand my grieving at all. "It's over. You can't bring the baby back. You won't feel better staying sad. Why are you still crying? How does that help you?" Yes, he was that close to getting slain by a very angry woman.

He narrowly avoided a painful death because this miscarriage happened after we'd known each other nine years and been married for seven. I knew him well, and in the middle of my outrageous grief, I was (by the grace of God) able to recognize that he was not saying these things because he didn't care. In fact, he risked saying them (knowing that I'm emotionally rather volatile) precisely because he did care about me. He was speaking out of his 36 years of life experience, his cultural background, his childhood, his own learned reactions to troubles and grief. To him, if you can't fix it you set it down, leave it behind, and get on with life. To him, emoting feels like skating on thin ice. It doesn't make him feel better, so he didn't understand how it could possibly benefit me.

In reading about others' experiences with miscarriage, it seems this kind of thing happens a lot. A wife finds herself in a pit of grief, while her husband stands looking down at her baffled and feeling helpless to pull her out of it. He may question her level of grief, not understanding that no matter how tiny the baby in her womb, to her it was a baby. He may not understand the amount of influence a woman's hormones have on her reaction to this kind of loss. He may not realize that for a while she still feels pregnant after a miscarriage, and that's another painful reminder that her baby is gone. Whether she's desperate to get pregnant again, or terrified of the possibility, he may find himself unable to comprehend the extent of her emotions. He may think he needs to "stay strong" so the whole family doesn't fall apart, and then suddenly find himself grieving alone after his wife has already begun to heal.

This can lead to a rift in the relationship. Both come to the point of their loss with a whole lifetime of emotional training, expectations, and beliefs, and may never have known how different they were if it weren't for the loss of their child. When the differences come to light, it is so difficult to extend grace and understanding when one is in the midst of severe emotional pain. It's sometimes easier to presume the worst intentions, to blame or snipe or hate. The emotion wants out. Any person who tries to tell a grieving woman to suck it up and move on with life is liable to find himself under attack, even if he didn't mean to be hurtful.

Thankfully our marriage survived our emotional differences. What kept our relationship from imploding, and what I now encourage others to practice, was calm, loving communication. I sure wanted to bite my husband's head off when I saw his reaction to my grief as uncaring. But that ultimately would not have served me well at all. So I told him: "I know you don't understand. I know this level of mourning for a baby we never even saw looks crazy to you. But this is me. This is how I deal with it. I know it hurts you to see me hurting like this. Please, all I need from you right now is a great big hug. You don't need to fix this, or fix me. Just hold me and let me cry a little." And he did.

As with many other areas of marriage, the miscarriage taught us both a few things about our relationship and our selves. He began to see the benefit of open grieving, of not bottling up emotions. And he learned how to help me when there really seemed to him that there was nothing he could do. On the flip side of that, I learned that stoicism isn't necessarily a bad thing, and that there's some truth to his thoughts that wallowing in pain can lead to getting seriously stuck there. I kept in mind that what he said was out of love and concern for me, and looked for truth in what he said, even if I wouldn't have thought about it the same way.

Even if a husband doesn't "get" his wife's emotional response to loss, that doesn't mean he's uncaring. In all likelihood he's just as hurt and confused and upset as she is, but reacting differently. If you're a woman who's wanting to throw objects at your man's head because of his insensitivity, remember this. Choose to converse with him rather than explode at him. Specify your needs in the moment (a hug, a kind word, chocolate, a back rub...) and give him the opportunity to succeed in his efforts to comfort you. Remember that you fell in love with him, picked him for your life partner, and wanted children with him for good reason. Don't let misunderstanding or personality differences shred your relationship and increase your pain even further.