Most of us will be familiar with the “12-week” rule – the longstanding social convention that dictates that women mustn’t tell anyone they’re pregnant before the 12-week mark, “in case something happens”. It’s time to talk about the insidious effect it has on women who suffer a miscarriage early in their pregnancy.
An estimated 650 babies are miscarried every day in the UK, with the vast majority occurring during the first trimester. Most of these losses will be suffered in silence, because it’s considered so socially unacceptable to reveal that you’re pregnant before 12 weeks – let alone that you were pregnant, but now you’re not. It’s baffling that in 2019 we seem so wedded to an anachronistic superstition about tempting fate that shames women into keeping quiet and heaps blame on the woman who dares to “tell” and subsequently loses her baby – as though we were still in a bygone era where the stigma of miscarrying could mark you out as cursed. Social mores around the 12-week rule are brimming with contradictions: it’s fine to broadcast the minutiae of our daily lives on Instagram, yet disclosing that we’re pregnant, even just to close friends and family, is somehow transgressive.
Related: How a pioneering study of child health has influenced a generation of parents | Juliet Rix
The 12-week rule perpetuates the notion that early pregnancy loss is something to hide and we shouldn’t make a fuss.
Continue reading...from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IsjZUY
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