Feeling the pain; not fixing it: men and miscarriage part 2

"She's just sat there, staring at the wall."

Those are the exact words I wrote in a text to a mutual friend, and it probably sums up the biggest problem I faced in weeks and months following our miscarriage. How do I deal with my wife?

A bit of context for you. We had what they call a “failed miscarriage”, which is a terrible name because not only did we feel like we had failed to carry a baby to term, we also felt like we'd even failed at having a miscarriage. On Wednesday we attended our scan with great excitement, only to find our baby had no heartbeat. On Thursday we were back in hospital attending a pre-op assessment and on Friday my wife had an operation to remove our dead child. Within the space of three days we had gone from excitement, to devastation and then grief.

I know a number of people whose relationships came to an end following the trauma of a miscarriage. Maybe you can’t imagine that happening to you. The thing is, even if you don’t leave your wife physically, there is a genuine danger you leave her emotionally. It is so easy to shut up shop and shut down emotionally to protect yourself.

The challenge is, no matter how difficult, to invest your time and effort into your relationship. To that end, here are several emotions your wife—or indeed, any woman you know who’s recently had a miscarriage—might be feeling.

She feels like a failure


During the “recovery weeks” following her surgery, my wife and I would tend to sit and watch TV in silence. One evening as the programme ended my wife broke the silence:

“I fail at everything. I even failed to look after our baby, which I am designed to do.”

I didn’t really understand. It took me a few moments and a few more brief, frustrating nuggets of conversation to grasp exactly what she was saying. Carrying our baby was her 9-month role and the baby had died 11 weeks and 4 days into it. As far as she was concerned, she had failed in her fundamental role as a mother.

This was heart-breaking for me to hear. I didn’t blame her for the death of our child, in fact, the thought had never even crossed my mind.

She feels frustrated at the lack of answers

Having a miscarriage leaves more questions than there are answers. We didn’t even know the sex of our baby. We will never know what caused our miscarriage. But even if we did, it still wouldn’t answer the biggest question of: Why?

We have several ideas of what might have caused the miscarriage, but when we’ve raised these theories with multiple healthcare professionals they have always shrugged their shoulders and said, “Yeah… maybe, you just never know. 40% of first pregnancies end in miscarriage.” You just never know? Never? This might be a frustration you or your partner recognise.

 Sometimes as men we’re very keen to fix problems, but through our miscarriage I learnt that sometimes all you can do is feel the feeling with someone, rather than resolve the feeling for someone.

She feels like a mother with no child

In the weeks leading up to the miscarriage people would ask me if I had any children and I would reply, “Yes, we’re expecting this October.” In the weeks and months following the miscarriage people would ask the same question (not knowing what had happened) and I would have to politely answer, “No, not yet.”

I always felt hollow as I said the words. I didn’t have any children but I felt like a father. My wife was feeling the same way. She felt like a mother with no child. I believe that life begins at conception, and therefore our child's life ended. This is a great tragedy, and parents should never feel guilty for grieving deeply.

She continues to feel symptoms

In our case, my wife was being sick for two weeks after we lost the baby. We had always thought of the sickness as a sign of a growing, healthy baby, but in now it was a sign of hormone levels taking a couple of weeks to go back to normal.

This sickness served as a painful reminder to my wife of what we had lost. It was so difficult going through middle-of-the-night vomiting and knowing that it was all for nothing. I remember my wife saying, “I would happily be sick every day for 9 months if I could have our baby at the end of it.”

She doesn't want to talk about it

You might find that your wife frankly doesn’t want to talk at all. For my wife and I, there would be times when we’d chat and then there’d be times when she’d sit in silence.

I remember one car journey when I started talking about the child we lost. For me, talking was a very helpful way of processing emotion—I wanted to express what I had been thinking. My wife shut the conversation down very quickly. She didn’t want to talk about the loss.

Not ever talking is unhealthy, but not wanting to talk about it during a certain stage is not always a bad thing. When I tried to force my wife to talk about it I ended up causing more upset in the process.

So wait for your opportunities, and make sure the focus is on the quality of the conversation, not the quantity of conversations. And remember your wife is an individual. You know her, and if you get it wrong, you can learn not to get it wrong again! There are no perfect husbands, but there are good intentions.

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Your wife may be experiencing all, some or none of the above, and probably many more besides. There are no real answers, no quick fix solutions, but the aim is to support your wife through everything she is feeling. You’ve just got to ride through this storm.


But neither of you need to ride through this storm alone. I don’t think I’ve ever said anything profound enough to speak to my wife’s heart, or wise enough to answer all her questions, and—try as I must—I will never fully understand her feelings. Oftentimes I didn’t even understand my own feelings!

I can trust God with my wife’s heart—that is so important to remember when I feel my own inadequacies.

But God does. The human heart “lies open” before the Lord (Proverbs 15 v 11). “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind” (Jeremiah 17 v 10). “Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely” (Psalm 139 v 4). I can trust God with my wife’s heart—that is so important to remember when I feel my own inadequacies.

My wife and I have struggled through our miscarriage, but we’ve struggled through together. And God has been walking alongside us both.

This is part two of a series of blogs on the topic of men and miscarriage:

• It’s your tragedy too: men and miscarriage part 1.
• In the next blog, we look at some practical strategies to help with the grieving process.