Losing a pregnancy can be physically and emotionally devastating, yet only about one-fifth of employers give paid leave after miscarriage
- Kat Brown is the editor of No One Talks About This Stuff: 22 Stories of Almost Parenthood
The news that NHS England will offer paid leave to staff who have a miscarriage in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, as part of a wider pregnancy and baby loss policy, made me gasp. It is almost startling in both its compassion and the light it shines on the enormous burden that parents thus far have had to carry alone. The birth parent can take 10 days, a partner five. Staff who miscarry after six months can take paid maternity leave. This is a significant amount of time for something that, up until now, people have had to suffer alone.
Loss is all around us, often suffered in silence. A friend had a miscarriage last weekend. Another friend recently lost her much longed for twins. Another remembers her losses by lighting a candle and posting a photo of it online, as part of the Wave of Light during baby loss awareness week in October: I had no idea she had gone through that until social media gave her the opportunity to grieve. These are just three that I know about off the top of my head. I know that, even walking down the street, I am likely to be passing people going through the mixed feelings of pain, grief and, for some, perhaps, relief, that come with a miscarriage. One in four pregnancies end in baby loss. That is an awful lot of pain being swallowed down.
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