Speaker 1: High Heart podcasts, he More Kiss podcast playlist and listen
Speaker 1: live on the free iHeart app. Now, something we were
Speaker 1: talking about recently, and I think it's because my whole
Speaker 1: algorithm at the moment is pregnancies, babies. It's like the
Speaker 1: social media knows I'm pregnant and it's feeding me every
Speaker 1: single article or Instagram post that has to do with pregnancy.
Speaker 2: But the way it works, it does, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Well, Look, this is something that we've spoken about on
Speaker 1: Life Uncut before, but I really do think that the
Speaker 1: conversation around this is changing, and that is that there
Speaker 1: is a bit of a silence that surrounds the first
Speaker 1: twelve weeks of pregnancy. Now for most women, and I
Speaker 1: won't speak for everyone. I'm certainly not the oracle of pregnancy,
Speaker 1: but for a lot of women, we are told to
Speaker 1: keep your pregnancy or your good news quite private for
Speaker 1: the first twelve weeks. Now, the reasoning around that is
Speaker 1: because during that first twelve weeks is when most miscarriages happen.
Speaker 1: It's when the rate of which you can lose your
Speaker 1: baby is quite high. And for anyone who doesn't know
Speaker 1: the stats, one in four pregnancies does end in miscarriage.
Speaker 1: Usually it's early miscarriage. And I myself have had two miscarriages.
Speaker 1: I had one before my first daughter, Maley, and I
Speaker 1: had one before my second daughter, Lola, and I always
Speaker 1: found it quite a I guess, quite an interesting thing
Speaker 1: that you're told to keep it to yourself for the
Speaker 1: first twelve weeks, because the problem is is if you
Speaker 1: haven't told anyone that you're pregnant, you also don't get
Speaker 1: to share with anyone or explain to anyone why you
Speaker 1: might be feeling really sad.
Speaker 2: If something does go wrong.
Speaker 1: And there's been quite a movement in a recent article
Speaker 1: that's come out around really starting to shift the perception
Speaker 1: around this secrecy of twelve weeks.
Speaker 2: And the question is is who does it benefit?
Speaker 1: Does it actually benefit new expectant mothers, or is it
Speaker 1: something that just adds more shame around the whole feeling
Speaker 1: of like, well, my body wasn't able to carry a
Speaker 1: pregnancy to full term. If you are someone who unfortunately
Speaker 1: joins that awful club of having a miscarriage, look it's.
Speaker 3: A hard one. I've not been pregnant and I've not
Speaker 3: had a miscarriage, so I can't speak to it like that.
Speaker 3: But I do think it's interesting because I understand where
Speaker 3: it comes from.
Speaker 2: Like I understand why it's always been like, hey.
Speaker 3: Don't tell anyone until you're quote unquote safe or in
Speaker 3: the clear.
Speaker 2: And I guess that is.
Speaker 3: Because for a lot of people, if you tell a
Speaker 3: mass amount of people, it does mean you have to
Speaker 3: deal with it on a mass level as well. I
Speaker 3: don't believe in keeping it a secret for the twelve weeks,
Speaker 3: but I understand why. It's like, you know, maybe don't
Speaker 3: go crazy with who you tell, but you definitely need
Speaker 3: that support system. You need someone to be there with
Speaker 3: you if you're going through it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you don't have to tell everyone. It's it
Speaker 2: on Instagram.
Speaker 1: But I mean you can tell your people at work,
Speaker 1: you can tell your support systems. Actually, Samantha Payne, so
Speaker 1: she's the co founder and CEO of Pink Elephant, and
Speaker 1: she puts it so perfectly. She said this, the twelve
Speaker 1: week rule tells us to stay quiet just in case.
Speaker 1: But if the worst does happen, then you're suddenly grieving
Speaker 1: in silence. You haven't told anyone, so there's no support.
Speaker 1: And I do think that this is very relevant for women,
Speaker 1: especially in a work environment, Like if you are suddenly
Speaker 1: grieving and going through, you know, struggling with a miscarriage,
Speaker 1: you've never spoken about the fact that you are or
Speaker 1: might be pregnant or any of these.
Speaker 2: Sorts of things.
Speaker 1: But the first conversation you're having to have in a
Speaker 1: workplace environment could potentially be, oh, I'm actually having a miscarriage.
Speaker 1: I just think it adds to the stigma around it.
Speaker 1: I definitely think it adds to the shame. And I
Speaker 1: do think that as a society we're moving beyond that
Speaker 1: a little bit. But I think that it should be
Speaker 1: a case where if people want to talk about early pregnancy,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't have this like, oh, you don't speak about it,
Speaker 1: you might have a you know, it might not end well,
Speaker 1: and it should be like, Okay, well, that's great knowing
Speaker 1: that it is a possibility, but still holding so much
Speaker 1: space for like the excitement and the joy. And I
Speaker 1: say this because I remember when my sister told me
Speaker 1: she was pregnant, and she told me really early. I
Speaker 1: think she was only like maybe four or five weeks,
Speaker 1: just found out like literally, you know, Pete on the
Speaker 1: stick double lines, which you're so excited, And she called
Speaker 1: me and my first reaction was a bit like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're not meant to tell me.
Speaker 2: I was quite young, and I don't think I had realized.
Speaker 1: I think I was so conditioned by this twelve week
Speaker 1: rule thing that I was like worried for her if
Speaker 1: she had to tell me that something went wrong.
Speaker 3: Because it almost is a rule without it being a rule.
Speaker 2: That's how we grow up.
Speaker 3: You can grow up knowing that when you hit the
Speaker 3: twelve week mark, you're to talk about it. Even when
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think about right now, I'm like, why
Speaker 3: do we have that rule?
Speaker 2: What are the repercussions of it? And it is shame.
Speaker 2: That's the default, right.
Speaker 3: It shamed you from saying, hey, my body wasn't able
Speaker 3: to hold on to that, or maybe there's something wrong
Speaker 3: with me, and that's absolutely not the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think for me, I didn't realize how
Speaker 1: common it was because it's so rarely spoken about, especially publicly,
Speaker 1: and so when it did happen to me, I thought
Speaker 1: that there was something wrong with me.
Speaker 2: That's the only place.
Speaker 1: That's the first place your brain goes to, especially when
Speaker 1: it's happened twice, You're like, Okay, there's something wrong with
Speaker 1: my body and how it works. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: doing more research and having more conversations with family and
Speaker 1: friends that I was like, oh, my good, people who
Speaker 1: I'd never even suspected, family members I never even suspected
Speaker 1: who had gone through miss carriage all kind of stepped
Speaker 1: forward to was like, oh me too, like me too,
Speaker 1: Like this happened to me. And I think it's only
Speaker 1: when you are someone who's been through it do you
Speaker 1: realize the volume of women who also experience the same thing,
Speaker 1: which is why I think if you're pregnant, well, firstly, congratulations,
Speaker 1: but if you are pregnant in that early twelve weeks
Speaker 1: and you want to tell the people who you love
Speaker 1: and who are in your surrounding networks, like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that that's something that you should feel as though
Speaker 1: you have to keep to yourself. Because the more we
Speaker 1: talk about it, the more we normalize it, and it
Speaker 1: just means that something does go wrong. It makes talking
Speaker 1: about that okay as well. Absolutely