Alex Jones Has Started A Vital Conversation About Miscarriage

TV Presenter Alex Jones has revealed that she hosted The One Show an hour after finding out that she had miscarried her second pregnancy at her 14-week scan. Alex’s story has also spurred many women to share their own experience dealing with a loss that is so often stifled in silence.

‘It’s really odd. You’re in that room looking for answers that you’re never going to get,’ she said, ‘You’re thinking, “Have I done something wrong? What did I do differently? Was it because we flew a long way? Was I too stressed? Was I putting too much pressure on myself?”' she told The Telegraph.

Scheduled to present her daily talk show just an hour later, Alex confided in her boss who told her she didn’t need to do the show. ‘I said, “What else am I going to do?” It’s a horrible feeling because it is so empty. There’s nothing to say. It’s done,’ she continued. The feeling of going into autopilot and not coming to terms with the grief, as Alex explained happened to her, is something that resonates with many women.

‘You don't realise until you're crying looking at a pampers ad on the tube,’ Anna Whitehouse, founder of Mother Pukka, toldGrazialast year when discussing the pain of experiencing recurrent miscarriages, ‘with grief it's not there in your face 24/7, it’s in the background waiting to come to the foreground at a moment when you’re not prepared.’

For Anna, it was both the silence that surrounds talking about miscarriage – despite one in four women experiencing it – and the way in which it’s described as ‘common’ without any bereavement counselling offered until multiple miscarriages have occurred. ‘Saying “it’s common” feels like it belittles what you’re going through,’ she continued, ‘that’s supposed to be the answer, but actually what you need is professional care. It helps to a degree that you don’t feel alone, but ultimately you are alone until you find those other people and then you realise that “its common” is not a substitute for not grieving.’

Finding those other people that have also experienced the loss means speaking out about your experience though, something more people are doing in an attempt to end the stigma. Just this week, Elizabeth Day, journalist and author, opened up about her own miscarriage being the inspiration behind a scene on Fleabag.

The author, who is a close friend of writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge - whom ‘unwittingly’ used Elizabeth’s experience of miscarrying at a family dinner in Fleabag - explained to The Independent that she hoped it would raise awareness of the issue. ‘The more that is shown about this, the better,’ she told the publication, referencing how little women’s health problems are shown on screen, ‘We almost never see menstrual blood, but look at how much blood from violence there is.’

It’s not just the lack of visibility on-screen that stops women from sharing their own experiences though, but unwritten rules that - unconsciously or not – stop parents from feeling they can talk about pregnancy until 12 weeks in.

For Jo and Steve Peck, whom shared their experience of miscarriage withGrazialast year, the 12-week rule prevents parents from opening up about their grief and adds to the stigma surrounding miscarriage.

‘I remember when we found out the first time, my mum was always saying “oh don’t tell anyone until 12 weeks because you don’t want to have to tell people if it’s gone wrong”, Steve told Grazia, ’there’s this whole mindset that you don’t want people to know it’s gone wrong, and if it has its almost a bad thing, and it is terrible, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but it happens and if people did talk about it, it wouldn’t become so much of an issue.’

And it’s with sharing this experience, whether privately or publicly as Alex has, that we can begin to better provide aftercare for those suffering with miscarriage. The fact that Alex went straight back to work following the news has started an entire new conversation about the way in which we deal with grief. With many women sharing similar experiences to Alex online following her interview, it serves as proof that women – and men – do want to destigmatise miscarriage, we just have to help them.

For support in coping with miscarriage, visit www.Tommys.org