I think regardless of how far along you are when you miscarry, the fact is that once you find out you are pregnant, your life, thoghts, actions become 99% baby, and 1% everything else. You are constantly and totally aware of being pregnant and becoming a mother, and within a day or two you have virtually reimagined your entire life, but with this extra being in it and as the centre of your world. When you miscarry, you not only grieve the loss of what has been, but the loss of what would and could have been, not just in the immediate future, but through to this childs adulthood and beyod. And losing that is hard. Its hard to grieve for someone that is so tangible to you, when to most others around you that baby was only ever a future possibility that they were aware of in the back of their minds.

I think that the amount of time you have known you were pregnant may be ONE factor among many that affects how you feel. But, it does not make you less entitled to grieve as everyone is different and everyone's experience is different.

I think (having not been there) that there would still be a type of grief for a failed IVF round - you may not actually get pregnant but you still lose a baby and all your hopes and dreams for that baby.

You may have been TTC for years and just got a BFP only to lose it days later.

Some people will feel differently for multiple m/c - some learn to "switch off" out of fear, some may pin their hopes on this finally being the one that will stick.

All my loses have been about 6 - 7 weeks, but I have grieved for them. My experience was coloured by the fact that my first loss was an ectopic, which was hard for me, because it could have been a perfect baby that just got stuck in the wrong place.

I think also that many women kind of "see" their child the moment that they get their BFP. They become real, a part of you. You start thinking of names (whether you want to or not), wonder whether it is a boy or girl.

I guess what I am trying to say, is that just because someone hasn't been pregnant for as long doesn't mean that they haven't had a loss and they should be entitled to grieve. No one should be judged for that, as every experience is so different. Regardless of everything, everyone here has lost a dream.

I have often come across people that feel that they shouldn't grieve with a blighted ovum, because there "wasn't even a baby there", but they still felt the same when they were pregnant as anyone else, so the sense of loss would be the same. I've always thought that I would really struggle with an ectopic pregnancy, as it could have been a perfectly healthy baby, just in the wrong place, and you have to make that decision to 'terminate' that pregnancy, which would be so terribly difficult, even though you don't have a choice. And I HATE the term chemical pregnancy.

My second m/c was at 5 1/2 weeks and for some reason I do feel like for some reason I didn't have as much right to grieve for that one, than my 10 week one. I feel like others looked at me like, why are you so sad, you only just found out you were pregnant. I felt like since I didn't have as long to day dream about the future, and make *as many* plans, I shouldn't feel as sad. But the minute I saw those two lines, the plans were there, the date was set when I would meet my baby. I was a Mum when I saw those two lines.

I remember expressing to my dr a few weeks afterwards that I felt so much like a fraud, and that I felt I had been deceiving people in saying that I was pregnant, and he put it into perspective for me. He said that I was definitely pregnant during that entire 16 weeks, the difference being that it was an unviable pregnancy. For some reason that helped. It might be a clinical approach and expression of the situation, but for me having that clarity about my situation helped.

I think you do need to separate out the different aspects if at all possible, because there is such a mixture of emotions and thoughts. It is a different grief to that of someone that has lived a long life because it is so utterly and totally personal.

I have the BFP to prove I was pregnant this time but my arms are empty but my heart will always have the love I held for my little baby who was with us in thought for only a little while and is now safe in the hands of God where one day I will meet him/her.

I miscarried twice, once at 6w and once at 11w...........

Some people commented on my first one that it was not really a miscarriage, just a late period.....but for us it was actually devestating as it happened after nearly 3 years of infertility, so the blow was kind of two-fold. The baby was very real in our minds.

Our second one was after our DD, and peoples comments where 'at least you have one healthy child to be thankful for"........but the loss was equally as devestating event though the circumstances were different, we had been trying for a while and I was devestated that I had not realised my baby was gone and wondered what I had done 'wrong'.

So I guess what I have 'learnt' is that every persons experience is unique and that people handle it differently depending on their upbringing, history and personality.

I have also learnt that it costs nothing to be compassionate and sensitive to someones loss, no matter at what stage it happens.

I would not wish this to happen to anybody and to those who are going through this and dealing with it I hope your dreams come true soon.

I believe there is no such thing as "a little bit pregnant".
You either are or you are not.
Physical pregnancy is only a small part of the bigger picture of the rest of your life nurturing a life while it is a defenseless babe, and encouraging and supporting an individual life to bloom under your guidance and advice for the rest of your life. Waiting in anticipation of when your baby becomes a parent too and finally understands why you nagged them so much lol.

We invest so much, all of ourselves really, into our future, including that wee life, that adjusting to carrying on without it being part of us, is sometimes too much to bear.

But grief is grief.

Lost dreams, empty arms, a broken heart...we are all individuals and as such that needs to be acknowleged and embraced. As individuals we should be pooling our resources and strengths, leaning on each other and allowing each other to express our individual grief however we need to so we can heal.

Grief doesn't have a time limit.

When you get that BFP, your life changes. You plan changes in your work, figure how the baby will fit in with your life, look forward to your children becoming a big brother/sister, your mum becoming a grandparent, you change the way you look at everything... the impact is huge. The baby is there in practically every thought you have from then on, in some way.

So there is no such thing as a little bit pregnant IMO, you are or you aren't.

I was friends with a woman for a few months before I mc the first time, and had to tell her the awful news I had mc'd a few days before. She then told me that she had lost four babies, all at varying stages. I was in awe of the enormity of her terrible loss. I said to her that I wasn't far along, so was lucky compared to others who had lost further along, that I was lucky to have 2 kids already (trying to keep it together and look on the bright side....)

She very kindly told me that it really made no difference how far along you were, that she grieved just as hard for the baby she lost at 9wks as she did for the one she lost at 29wks. They were all her babies and she loved them equally regardless of how formed the were.

And she was right. She allowed me to acknowledge that my baby was important to me, was REAL, and I did have a right to grieve for however long and hard as I had to. Whether or not I mc because there was something wrong with the baby or not was of no consequence - a baby with an illness that dies is still just as much of a tragedy as a healthy baby dying for an unknown reason.

I have just had the 5yr (and 4yr) anniversaries of my mc, and altho I am in a great place now of peace without pain, these babies are still part of me,were loved and will always be missed.

I felt like I couldnt grieve my forst mc at about 7 weeks as it was my first and I had gotten a lot of the "its natures way" "arent you glad you mc instead of having a handicapped child" comments. I was naive and when I had my 2nd MC at 6.5 weeks I was devastated.

For some people the road to getting pg is very strenuous and difficult and then for some holding onto it is hard and for others neither of these are an issue but imo when you get those 2 lines your mind over runs everything and this baby has a future mapped out and you count down the days until you can tell people whether you will decorate the nursery now or later will you take 12 months off.......

then your world gets shattered and its hard to believe there are people who think they dont deserve to grieve their loss/es grieving the one thing that lets us move forward.

A loss is a loss no matter the gestation.

For me, the moment I knew I was pregnant, my world was rocked and life changed forever. Suddenly, my future was different. No longer was it all about DH and I, but suddenly our family life had started. We began to make plans. From x month, I couldn't fly. From y month, I didn't want to go any further than half an hour from home. So we would need to do xyz beforehand. We would have a 3 month old at the family reunion. We would have a newborn, or I would be about to have a baby, at Christmas. I started buying a few things, and was filled at first with a mixture of trepidation, disbelief, and excitement. Thoughts about everything baby occupied my mind, and it was like I had started a completely new life.

Everything was shattered at the 12 week scan.

And again my life changed forever. I was a different person. I felt a lot of guilt, as I wasn't certain that I had wanted to have children, even though my pregnancy was planned and our baby was already much loved. I suddenly realised that bad things didn't just happen to other people. I realised how fragile a newly growing life was.

TTC became an obsession, filled with disappointments, until I got those 2 lines again. I couldn't help but become excited. The trepidation was different this time to last time. There was no trepidation about having a baby, but plenty about losing my baby.

When my hCG levels told a story I didn't want to hear, I was in disbelief. But there was no question that we had to try again.

Again the TTC nightmare started. Yet again, I conceived quite quickly (each of the 3 times had been within 5 months of trying, so I was very lucky). When those 2 lines appeared, I had a spark of excitement, which I very quickly tried to suppress, and it became a deep fear. DH wasn't excited either. We were trying to protect ourselves. We were in another country, and had seen the HB regularly. At 9 weeks, I saw the HB and booked the 12 week scan. At the scan, yet again, I saw the awful news.

It took 13 cycles, 5 of which were on clom, to fall pregnant the 4th time. DH and I were pretty blase. Again I tried to self protect (not that it worked AT ALL the last time). We tried not to think ahead. I tried to keep living life normally. I tried not to include a baby in our future plans. We saw a heartbeat at 12 weeks. That was a first. I felt movement at 16 weeks. That was a first. I got through a car accident, being shocked by our toaster, getting 2nd degree burns on both of my legs. I got through the shock at my 20 week scan when we were told that our baby had a cleft. I began to feel just a little excited that my baby might be born alive. And finally, my healthy bundle of joy was born.

The moment he was in my arms, the fear, paranoia, churning guts, and doubt that I would ever see this day, melted away. I no longer had to trust my body to keep my baby safe.

I lost my first at 5 weeks, after trying for 18 months. I went through the whole "it was really early, not so much to lose" thing, but it just didn't add up. In researching online, I found some information [which] pointed out that all the stuff that matters happens at conception - that's when the blueprint is created: when hair, eye colour, gender, facial features, personality traits etc etc are laid down. From there, it's just a matter of flesh, bone, muscle - all the mechanical stuff we grow, lose and regenerate right throughout our lives.
So the things that make each of us unique and special happen in the first seconds of our lives.

Thinking of it like that made me feel entitled to grieve, and I was better able to cope once I acknowledged my own loss to myself.

To any lurkers out there - it doesn't matter if you've known about her/him for 1 week or 10 weeks, your baby is your baby and you are allowed to grieve. No one would tell you to hurry up and get over grieving a parent if they died would they? Your baby was part of your family too. This is a good place to come to talk about it.