Miscarriage, an ordeal experienced at work in secret
“The ultrasound told me on Monday evening that my pregnancy was terminated and on Tuesday morning I was at work. I still had all the symptoms of pregnancy, sore breasts, nausea. But I was thinking if we don’t not offer me a work stoppage, it’s because I don’t need it +. I didn’t feel legitimate to ask for it”, testifies Sandra Lorenzo, author of the book “A miscarriage like the others”.
“The ultrasound didn’t tell me anything about what was going to happen. I asked her the question four times before she answered me: + big rules +”, which “terribly minimizes what we are going through”, adds- she.
According to a 2021 report in the medical journal The Lancet, 15% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, an ordeal that on average one in 10 women go through in their lifetime. In France, 200,000 women are affected each year, according to estimates.
The situations are very variable: the expulsion process can end naturally or require taking medication at home or surgery. But the bleeding can last a long time.
Every woman experiences it differently. “Some do not want to stop so as not to lose income. Or fear revealing their pregnancy and people saying to themselves + she wants a child, she is not reliable +. Others prefer to stay in the action to think of something else”, observes Mathilde Lemiesle, who has experienced four miscarriages and founded with Sandra Lorenzo the collective “Miscarriage, true experience”.
“We noticed on a Friday that my heart was no longer beating. I felt unable to go to work, I didn’t want to cry in front of my colleagues. I asked if I had sick leave, I was told said + no need, it will happen over the weekend +. On Monday I lost the embryo in the toilet at the office. I was in shock, “says Elsa (first name changed), a 35-year-old executive.
Due to complications, the hospital gives him appointments at imposed times. “A colleague told me + Your medical appointments, can you take them on your personal time? +?.
Shame, sadness, guilt
On the Instagram account “My Almost Nothing” of comic book illustrator Mathilde Lemiesle, which has become a forum for 25,000 women facing this ordeal, many testimonies tell of the same experience: doctors accused of trivializing, the miscarriages they experience sometimes in the toilets next to the open space, in solitude, a grief that lasts.
Women evoke feelings of “shame”, “sadness”, “anger”, “guilt”. “Physically and psychologically, it took me several weeks to recover,” says Sandra Lorenzo.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne at the National Assembly on February 28, 2023AFP/Archives / BERTRAND GUAY.
As part of the new equality plan that Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne will detail on Wednesday on the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day, the government will announce the introduction of paid sick leave, with no waiting day for women affected by these natural terminations of pregnancy during the first five months of gestation.
Currently during a sick leave, the first three days are not paid.
With this measure, already unveiled during an interview with the head of government to Elle magazine, the government will beef up, via an amendment, a bill discussed on Wednesday in the Assembly, specifies the Minister for Equality Men Women Isabelle Rome.
This parliamentary initiative text wants to create a “miscarriage course” to better train health professionals and psychologists and better inform and guide women.
He wants to give women, on prescription from their doctor or a midwife, the right to reimbursed sessions with a certified psychologist. Consultations also offered to the partner.
“If the couple experiences this ordeal badly, there are enormous psychological consequences: depression, anxieties, including for the co-parent”, explains MoDem MP Sandrine Josso, at the origin of the bill.
Maternal attachment can occur very early in pregnancy. Mourning is all the more difficult in this situation, because it is passed over in silence or little taken into account by the entourage“, she explains.