Welcome to the club. You're not in it until you're in it. The only club no one ever wants to join, the only club no one ever imagines themselves in. The miscarriage club.
I won't tell you to hang in there. I don't expect you to cheer up just because people keep saying encouraging things to you. I actually will say the opposite: you are allowed to be sad, frustrated and even angry. Embrace your emotions, allow yourself to feel however you want to feel. If you need to express it, do it, because if you keep it bottled up you will sooner or later explode and it will be worse. So save yourself some time and energy and don't fight it, just feel it.
I know that hearing things like "It happens to 1 out of every 4 women", "You are now stronger and better" (Please someone explain to me what that means!) or "Everything happens for a reason" sometimes has the opposite effect and only makes you feel worse. For some reason, society expects us to grieve in a certain way (if at all) and only for a short period of time. People will say things like "Well at least now you know it all works down there" or "It happened to my aunt and she ended up having a ton of kids" or my least favorite, "Good thing you weren't that far along". I don't know how that is supposed to help. Whether you miscarry at 8 weeks or 24 weeks, should not set a starting point as to how much you are allowed to grieve. Granted, the further along, the more attached you've grown with your baby and the harder it will be, but outsiders shouldn't be the judge of that. Everyone should be allowed to mourn their own way and at their own pace.
For me, it's been a roller coaster ride. I dealt with it in the beginning the only way I knew how. I've tried to see every angle; the good, the bad, the positive side effects on my cycles, the not so great changes in my body even after only a few weeks of pregnancy, the possible causes, etc. There's days I am grateful I had even a tiny amount of time with my baby, other days I'm in denial, and other days it is extremely hard to deal with the whole thing even after a couple of months. So I totally get it and I sincerely apologize to every friend who had a miscarriage before me and to whom I had no idea what to say and ended up saying one of those "uplifting" comments. I should have picked up the phone and given them the option of picking up or not. Let them know that they could say whatever was on their mind and, even if at that time I had no understanding of what they were going through, there would be no judgement on my part. I should have just asked "How are you?, I'm here to listen". I should have just let them feel comfortable expressing how they felt, God knows that's the best help anyone could have given me when I miscarried.
If you are interested in learning about miscarriage and recurrent miscarriages, I highly recommend the book Preventing Miscarriages: The Good News by Dr. Jonathan Scher.
This post is a modified version of one originally posted at ovatemp.com