‘The Big Bang Theory’ actress, Melissa Rauch took her recent public pregnancy announcement as an opportunity to shed light on the fears faced by mums-to-be who have previously suffered a miscarriage.
Baby loss is a topic many people find difficult to talk about publicly, but Rauch is one of a growing number who are sharing their experiences and hopefully making the experience a less lonely one for others.
Rauch said that the only way she could share her pregnancy news with the world would be to tell the whole story or risk feeling like a “complete fraud” because of her mixed feelings.
She wrote, in a blog for Glamour: “Melissa is expecting her first child. She is extremely overjoyed, but if she’s being honest, due to the fact that she had a miscarriage the last time she was pregnant, she’s pretty much terrified at the moment that it will happen again.
“It felt a bit disingenuous to not also share the struggle it took for me to get here.”
After the loss of her first child, Rauch said she was launched into a “primal depression” that lingered, because she had “no template” for processing what she was going through, much like many other women.
“You’re not necessarily going to a funeral or taking time off from work to mourn, but that doesn’t change the fact that something precious has been unexpectedly taken from your life,” she said.
She wanted to encourage other women to not hide their miscarriages and to raise awareness that she feels the term ‘miscarriage’ implies that women are to blame for the medical issue, and this should be addressed to help women in the future.
Rauch joins a growing number of women sharing their feelings about getting pregnant after losing a baby.
Back in January, mum Allie Boss, from Utah, opened up on Facebook about the struggles of carrying a child after having lost two babies.
″Pregnancy after miscarriage(s) can be a hard/weird thing,” she said. “There’s emotions that come along with it that you never expected.
“It’s hard being pregnant after loss. It’s hard being pregnant normally. I think it’s common to questions symptoms. But it is hundreds times worse after loss.”
Despite that, she was determined to share her pregnancy journey with the world “from day one” because she said the life deserves to be celebrated.
Mum Lucy Howard, blogged for HuffPost UK, about getting through the first trimester when you have miscarriage-related-anxiety hanging over your pregnancy.
H “It was a tough time,” she explained.
“I was worried and anxious every second of every day. I had bad dreams, cried lots and generally didn’t want to do much more than sit on the sofa or sleep.”
Howard agreed with Rauch and Boss that it was important not to feel a need to hide your baby away through fear.
″We decided that there wasn’t any reason why we should hide this pregnancy,” she wrote.
“Everyone knew that we wanted another baby, that I’ve had many miscarriages and that another miscarriage was a possibility.”