<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I walked into my doctor’s clinic with questions about my pregnancy, and I walked out knowing that my fetus had died weeks earlier.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t know how the news of a fetus’s death could ever sound ordinary in a single sentence; there is no easy way to hear words like these, especially when you walk into the doctor’s clinic thinking about your pregnancy, and then within minutes discover that you have to choose how you will terminate it \u2014 through medication pills or a surgical procedure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I went into my appointment carrying questions I had prepared in advance \u2014 the common questions every mother asks. I wanted to know how my pregnancy was developing, and to be reassured about my fetus’s wellbeing. I was treating the appointment as just another stop in a pregnancy moving forward, and then the doctor looked at the imaging screen and told me that the pregnancy was no longer developing, and that she could not see a heartbeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first, I did not absorb the sentence. I was still in the very place I had entered minutes earlier, but everything had changed. I was no longer thinking about the questions I had come with, nor about the coming weeks; I was only trying to understand what the doctor’s words meant: my fetus had died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I discovered this, I had reached the twelfth week, while its heartbeat had stopped since the sixth week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then came the crueler piece of information: it had not died that day, but had stopped growing about six weeks earlier. I could not absorb the news immediately, and I felt shocked and confused, as if within minutes I had moved from awaiting the rest of my pregnancy to trying to understand how everything had ended so quickly. I did not know what to say or do, and all I wanted in that moment was to absorb what I had heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was not ready for this pregnancy, but I accepted it<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The pregnancy was not planned, and it came at a time when I was not ready to start over, in addition to the feeling of confusion and fear of the new responsibilities awaiting me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But over time I accepted the idea; the pregnancy was no longer a surprising piece of news to me, but a life growing inside me and a responsibility for which I had begun to make room in my heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The future came to mean a life I imagined with it, a home in which I would cradle it, share its first details, and learn from it as I taught it; it became an existence I grew attached to, and a future I began to hold on to before I even saw it \u2014 I loved it before I carried it in my arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is why it is hard for me to say that I lost a pregnancy I did not want. This is not the way my story ended; I lost a fetus I had begun to grow attached to, even if I had not planned for its existence at the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When medicine says “pregnancy loss,” what does the woman hear?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Medically, what happened to me is known as a “missed miscarriage,” a condition in which the pregnancy stops developing without our necessarily realizing it. Clear symptoms may not appear, which is why it is sometimes discovered during an ultrasound examination. Early pregnancy loss is relatively common; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists<\/a> indicates that it occurs in about 10% of clinically recognized pregnancies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when I heard the words “pregnancy loss,” I did not think of the statistics; I thought of the six weeks during which I did not know that my fetus had died, and that I had been living, planning, and getting used to the idea of its existence while my body carried a fetus that was no longer alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a difference between a doctor reading a result off a screen, and a woman realizing that this result means that the fetus she was talking about minutes earlier is no longer part of the future she had imagined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today I had the procedure<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The procedure was done, and the matter ended medically within a short time: an examination, a diagnosis, a hospital, then a procedure after which I return home. But absorbing what happened does not end at the same speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists<\/a> indicates that pregnancy loss may be a traumatic experience, that feelings of grief, anxiety, and psychological distress may be severe, and that emotional recovery may take longer than physical recovery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That sums up how I feel now; I am sad, and I have no answer about how long I need until I am okay. All I know is that the procedure ended the pregnancy medically, but it did not end my feelings toward it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Miscarriage is not always a story that can be told easily<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A woman may go through this experience without knowing how to describe what is happening inside her. She may be ashamed to speak about the miscarriage because she may feel she has to justify her grief, or she may fear that others will see the matter as “just a pregnancy in its beginning” that does not deserve all this pain. She may also feel guilt, and wonder whether she did something that caused the loss, so she prefers silence rather than entering into questions or judgments she does not know how to face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n A woman may not have wanted the pregnancy at first, then lose it after she had accepted it; at that point she may feel she is required to justify her grief: does she say she was not ready? Or does she fear that this would make her pain less important in others’ eyes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And because I had not planned this pregnancy, after losing it I found myself facing another kind of confusion: how would I explain my grief to others? I was afraid my story would be reduced to its beginning only, so it would be said that I had not wanted it in the first place, as if that erased what I felt later. But I discovered that a person does not live their feelings in this logical order, and a previous stance cannot cancel what came after it. What hurt me was not my need to prove that I wanted this pregnancy, but my feeling that I was required in the first place to prove that losing it hurts me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Something of a sense of guilt remained inside me \u2014 not because I did something, but because I remembered my initial confusion whenever my grief intensified, as if after the loss I were searching for an old stance to blame for what happened. I needed time to understand that a person is not held accountable for feelings they did not choose, and that fear of a major change does not mean a desire for it to disappear; I had to make peace with the woman I had been at the start of the pregnancy, instead of putting myself on trial today because of the feelings of that period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I did not choose the circumstances in which the pregnancy came, but I chose to deal with its existence and to make room for it in my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A woman has the right to be afraid, to hesitate, to change her mind, and then to grieve when she loses something she had become ready for. These contradictory feelings do not make her evil; they make her human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is what justifies the World Health Organization<\/a> report, which indicates that pregnancy loss is still surrounded by stigma and silence in many societies, and that women may suffer isolation, shame, and guilt, alongside the grief itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What if the woman thinks she is the cause?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n After a pregnancy loss, many questions may begin: What did I do? Should I have been more careful? Did I do something wrong?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I did not plan this pregnancy, but I accepted it, and over time it became part of my life and of my vision of the future, so losing it was not losing something I did not want, but losing something I had begun to want in my own way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feelings may begin with confusion and fear, then turn into a real attachment, and a woman may not realize the extent of this attachment until she is suddenly asked to deal with its end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do not know when I will be okay, but I know that my grief is real, even if I was not ready for the pregnancy from the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In most cases of early pregnancy loss, the woman is not the cause. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists<\/a> explains that ordinary physical activity, work, stress, and arguments do not usually cause miscarriage, and that about half of early pregnancy-loss cases are linked to chromosomal abnormalities in the fetus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This information does not make the loss less painful, but it is important so that grief does not turn into guilt or self-judgment. Sometimes a woman searches for a cause because she wants to believe that there was something she could have controlled, but some events occur beyond our ability to control, no matter how we try to explain them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I walked into my doctor’s clinic with questions about my pregnancy, and I walked out knowing that my fetus had died weeks earlier. I don’t know how the news of a fetus’s death could ever sound ordinary in a single sentence; there is no easy way to hear words like these, especially when you walk into the doctor’s clinic thinking about your pregnancy, and then within minutes discover that you have to choose how you will terminate it \u2014 through medication pills or a surgical procedure. I went into my appointment carrying questions I had prepared in advance \u2014 the common questions every mother asks. I wanted to know how my pregnancy was developing, and to be reassured about my fetus’s wellbeing. I was treating the appointment as just another stop in a pregnancy moving forward, and then the doctor looked at the imaging screen and told me that the pregnancy was no longer developing, and that she could not see a heartbeat. At first, I did not absorb the sentence. I was still in the very place I had entered minutes earlier, but everything had changed. I was no longer thinking about the questions I had come with, nor about the coming weeks; I was only trying to understand what the doctor’s words meant: my fetus had died. When I discovered this, I had reached the twelfth week, while its heartbeat had stopped since the sixth week. Then came the crueler piece of information: it had not died that day, but had stopped growing about six weeks earlier. I could not absorb the news immediately, and I felt shocked and confused, as if within minutes I had moved from awaiting the rest of my pregnancy to trying to understand how everything had ended so quickly. I did not know what to say or do, and all I wanted in that moment was to absorb what I had heard. I was not ready for this pregnancy, but I accepted it The pregnancy was not planned, and it came at a time when I was not ready to start over, in addition to the feeling of confusion and fear of the new responsibilities awaiting me. But over time I accepted the idea; the pregnancy was no longer a surprising piece of news to me, but a life growing inside me and a responsibility for which I had begun to make room in my heart. A missed miscarriage: a condition in which the pregnancy stops developing without our necessarily realizing it The future came to mean a life I imagined with it, a home in which I would cradle it, share its first details, and learn from it as I taught it; it became an existence I grew attached to, and a future I began to hold on to before I even saw it \u2014 I loved it before I carried it in my arms. That is why it is hard for me to say that I lost a pregnancy I did not want. This is not the way my story ended; I lost a fetus I had begun to grow attached to, even if I had not planned for its existence at the start. When medicine says “pregnancy loss,” what does the woman hear? Medically, what happened to me is known as a “missed miscarriage,” a condition in which the pregnancy stops developing without our necessarily realizing it. Clear symptoms may not appear, which is why it is sometimes discovered during an ultrasound examination. Early pregnancy loss is relatively common; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists indicates that it occurs in about 10% of clinically recognized pregnancies. But when I heard the words “pregnancy loss,” I did not think of the statistics; I thought of the six weeks during which I did not know that my fetus had died, and that I had been living, planning, and getting used to the idea of its existence while my body carried a fetus that was no longer alive. There is a difference between a doctor reading a result off a screen, and a woman realizing that this result means that the fetus she was talking about minutes earlier is no longer part of the future she had imagined. Today I had the procedure The procedure was done, and the matter ended medically within a short time: an examination, a diagnosis, a hospital, then a procedure after which I return home. But absorbing what happened does not end at the same speed. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists indicates that pregnancy loss may be a traumatic experience, that feelings of grief, anxiety, and psychological distress may be severe, and that emotional recovery may take longer than physical recovery. That sums up how I feel now; I am sad, and I have no answer about how long I need until I am okay. All I know is that the procedure ended the pregnancy medically, but it did not end my feelings toward it. Miscarriage is not always a story that can be told easily A woman may go through this experience without knowing how to describe what is happening inside her. She may be ashamed to speak about the miscarriage because she may feel she has to justify her grief, or she may fear that others will see the matter as “just a pregnancy in its beginning” that does not deserve all this pain. She may also feel guilt, and wonder whether she did something that caused the loss, so she prefers silence rather than entering into questions or judgments she does not know how to face. Ordinary physical activity, work, stress, and arguments do not usually cause miscarriage; in fact, about half of early pregnancy-loss cases are linked to chromosomal abnormalities in the fetus A woman may not have wanted the pregnancy at first, then lose it after she had accepted it; at that point she may feel she is required to justify her grief: does she say she was not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":17347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,339],"tags":[343,422,345],"class_list":["post-17383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-opinion","tag-mental_health","tag-silat_wassel-en","tag-women"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/11_Artboard-49.jpg",2048,900,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/11_Artboard-49.jpg",2048,900,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/11_Artboard-49.jpg",2048,900,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/11_Artboard-49-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/11_Artboard-49-300x132.jpg",300,132,true],"large":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/11_Artboard-49-1024x450.jpg",1024,450,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/11_Artboard-49-1536x675.jpg",1536,675,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/11_Artboard-49.jpg",2048,900,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"\u0625\u0633\u0631\u0627\u0621 \u0647\u0627\u062f\u064a","author_link":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/author\/esraa-hady\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Blog<\/a> Opinion<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"I walked into my doctor’s clinic with questions about my pregnancy, and I walked out knowing that my fetus had died weeks earlier. I don’t know how the news of a fetus’s death could ever sound ordinary in a single sentence; there is no easy way to hear words like these, especially when you walk…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A missed miscarriage: a condition in which the pregnancy stops developing without our necessarily realizing it
<\/pre>\n\n\n\n Ordinary physical activity, work, stress, and arguments do not usually cause miscarriage; in fact, about half of early pregnancy-loss cases are linked to chromosomal abnormalities in the fetus<\/pre>\n\n\n\n