You have had a miscarriage and are thinking "and now?". A miscarriage is a profound event and coping with a miscarriage is very important. This is because a miscarriage can turn your whole sense of what your life is about and how your body is supposed to work upside down. As a result, you have to learn to look at your body anew, which can make you feel like you have to start something all over again.
Causes of miscarriage
About 15 to 20 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. That could be about 1 in 5 pregnancies ending in miscarriage.
If you are searching for the cause of miscarriage and whether you were able to do anything about it, I can reassure you. Most causes of miscarriage are completely beyond your control.
For example, something has gone wrong with the composition of the chromosomes in the embryo causing development to stop and you miscarry. For example, this is often the cause of miscarriages in women over the age of 35.
In addition, the following problems can be cited as causes:
- Thyroid Problems
- Uncontrolled diabetes
- Smoking and/or using drugs
- Living in a city
- Physical Problems
- Problems with blood clots
- Immune system problems (such as autoimmune diseases)[1].
Effects of miscarriage
Multiple studies show that miscarriage can have negative effects on your mental health[2]. These can be minor dips, to major identity problems. For example, Iranian research[3] shows that women who suffer repeated miscarriages experience more anxiety, depressive symptoms and a lower quality of life.
In addition, you may suffer from the following emotions:
- Guilt
- Anger
- Overwhelming grief
- Confusion
- Anxiety about feeling in control
- Shocked
- Senseless
- Drained (you just sleep, or can't catch sleep)
Having a miscarriage can have psychological consequences because it can damage your confidence in your body. If motherhood is very important to you, it can also reduce your self-confidence. This effect is especially great if you did not actually miscarry, but if your baby is stillborn or your baby dies prematurely[4].
Have you had a miscarriage and managed to get pregnant again? If so, you are more likely to develop depressive symptoms in the first month of life of your baby, who came into the world healthy (or at least alive)[5]. After that, those symptoms disappear again. Of course, this can be explained by the fact that you may wonder what it would have been like with the child in whom you had a miscarriage.
Fear of miscarriage
If you have had a miscarriage once, you may become afraid of having another miscarriage. This can cause a lot of stress, which again is not good for your pregnancy, but otherwise does not affect miscarriages as far as I can tell (I am not a doctor).
However, it is common knowledge that stress is not good for your baby's development when you are pregnant.
Hypnosis can be a very good tool to reduce anxiety and associated stress during another pregnancy or before you get pregnant.
Beliefs about your fears are then examined and the hypnosis expert can then use multiple techniques to reduce those fears and regain a sense of control.
In addition, hypnosis also helps to relax during pregnancy which in turn reduces stress levels. This can be done, for example, with a guided visualization where you relax extra and visualize you and your baby becoming calm in a very nice place.
Staying mentally healthy after a miscarriage
When you are religious you actually have an edge in staying healthy after a miscarriage. The first study to which this article refers shows that women who are religious suffer less reduction in mental health after miscarriage than women who are not religious. For example, comfort is found in religion through the idea that a god intended it this way and this just wasn't allowed to happen yet from a higher power.
You may grieve
Even if it wasn't even a human being yet and only a collection of cells, you are allowed to grieve. It is quite normal to go through a similar grieving process as when you lose a loved one[6]. After all, you often end up mourning the loss of potential. With that loved one, for example, you had still wanted to do all sorts of things. You imagined that that loved one might still achieve all kinds of goals that you wished him/her and in which you wanted to participate.
When you have a baby, you get a creature with infinite potential. You don't know where his/her journey will go. But you are already looking forward to the standard things of parenthood and assisting your child in maturing into an adult who makes his/her own choices.
Because grieving is about the loss of potential, it is therefore quite normal to also grieve after a miscarriage.
If you still find it difficult to grieve after a miscarriage, a hypnosis expert can help you do so anyway. This does not mean suddenly crying, although that may happen, this means allowing it to happen.
For example, the hypnosis expert can help you change beliefs if they are blocking you from grieving and taking the time to do so. This is often done with hypnotic suggestions that you accept more quickly when under hypnosis than during a normal conversation.
For example, if you think that because there is nothing physically wrong with you, you should just keep working. That's when hypnotic suggestion can be:
"When someone close to you passes away, it's very normal to take time off so you can grieve. Then your body is also healthy. After a miscarriage you are allowed to grieve and so even if your body is declared healthy by a doctor."
When you correctly believe you should not grieve because the embryo did not yet have a heartbeat, hypnotic suggestion can be:
"You know you were pregnant, so there was a life on the way and even though your baby didn't have a heartbeat yet, he/she already had dna and cells that became more and more cells. Life was being developed and that was stopped for this no heartbeat is needed and so you may mourn."
Keep talking
Your partner will also be going through a grieving process, and everyone experiences it differently. Do try to keep talking and allow each other time to grieve in different ways. Do not immediately blame what someone says if it comes out unhappy, but wait calmly.
Talk to people around you, too. Since miscarriages occur in about 1 in 5 people, you'll see that you're not the only one, and you may even get helpful tips on how to cope.
Take practical steps
Want to get pregnant again after a miscarriage? If so, try this only after you and your partner have grieved enough about the miscarriage and take practical steps to reduce your worries about another miscarriage.
Exercise enough and eat healthy. Pay extra attention to hygiene when preparing food to avoid unnecessary sources of illness. Stop smoking. Engage in meditation if necessary.
By staying practical about the matter, you can at least be sure that you have done everything possible to avoid miscarriage. This can make for a healthy pregnancy in the first place, and should you still miscarry, at least you know it's not your fault.
For taking the practical steps, hypnosis can also help. For example, hypnosis helps you quit smoking, eat healthier and improve your motivation to exercise or move.
Wishing someone strength after a miscarriage
Are you not the person with a miscarriage, but is someone close to you suffering from it? Then you can support her by listening to her, without judgment. This will make her feel free to talk and that will help her with her thought process to give the miscarriage a place from which to move forward.
If you find it difficult to wish someone strength, a hypnosis expert can help you with a guided visualization. That way, you can see in front of you the steps you take when you wish someone strength. For example, you see yourself picking out a sweet card where you write down your wish and give it to the woman who has suffered a miscarriage.
So hypnosis can help for coping with miscarriage and to help you get pregnant during your next pregnancy and have a nice somewhat relaxed pregnancy.
Want to learn more about exactly how hypnosis can do this? Then come to a hypnosis playshop or enroll in one of our training courses at the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands.
[1] https://www.parents.com/pregnancy/complications/miscarriage/top-7-causes-of-miscarriage/
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jssr.12500
[3] https://hqlo.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12955-018-0982-z
[4] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07481187.2016.1261204
[5] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10995-014-1521-0
[6] https://www.babycentre.co.uk/a4006/coping-with-a-miscarriage
