Women who have lost a baby prefer the term ‘pregnancy loss’ over ‘miscarriage’

Women who have lost a baby often dislike the language used by medical professionals and would prefer the term “pregnancy loss” over “miscarriage”, research has found.

More than six in 10 women (61%) who had lost a baby between 18 and 23 weeks of pregnancy said it was unacceptable for doctors, midwives and nurses to use the word “miscarriage”.

Only 22% thought that was an acceptable way to refer to the loss they had suffered, even though that is the medical and legal definition in the UK of a baby who dies before reaching 24 weeks’ gestation. Large majorities also disapprove of “intrapartum foetal death” and “intrauterine death”.

Four out of five (82%) women would prefer staff to use “pregnancy loss”, according to the research, which was led by Dr Beth Malory, a lecturer in English linguistics at University College London.

Malory began looking into how women felt about the clinical language used around baby loss after having a daughter born in the second trimester of pregnancy and seeing how often complaints were aired in online communities, such as the Facebook group of the baby charity Tommy’s.

“‘Pregnancy loss’ is much more broadly acceptable than ‘miscarriage’, which prompts really mixed feelings and which a lot of people actively dislike due to connotations of blame, failure and so on,” said Malory.

She and fellow researcher Dr Louise Nuttall found “widespread dissatisfaction” among women who had lost a baby, with “lots of words and phrases that trigger trauma”.

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Source: The Guardian, 21 November 2024