**Trigger warning: The following article contains discussion of miscarriage and baby loss.**
After four years of campaigning, Myleene Klass has helped change history by making the government implement better support for women who miscarry.
The I’m a Celeb winner, 45, called for a change in pregnancy loss laws after suffering four miscarriages herself.
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She spoke about her own experiences for the first time in a groundbreaking Instagram post in October 2020 to mark Baby Loss Awareness Day that year, where she said she is a ‘mama to seven babies’ including ‘four little stars in the sky’.
In July, the Department of Health and Social Care announced a bunch of new measures to ‘boost the health and wellbeing of women and girls’, including a pilot scheme to ensure women have medical intervention after each miscarriage.
Under the updated rules and guidelines, women will no longer have to wait until they have three consecutive miscarriages to receive medical intervention.
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The former Hear’Say singer’s mum used to be an NHS nurse which is why she sought for her miscarriages to be tested, which she did privately.
The results found no correlation between them as 'all her miscarriages were different’. One was a missed miscarriage, for instance, where a baby has died in the womb, but the mother hasn't had any symptoms, such as bleeding or pain. “I was growing, I was standing in the shower growing really feeling quite confident that finally I was going to get my baby,” she tells Tyla.
“A Missed miscarriage is extremely cruel because your body thinks it's pregnant and the baby's heartbeat has stopped and it's not until you go to the next scan that you find that out.”
In her Instagram post in July celebrating the change she and Olivia Blake MP achieved, Myleene remarked: “Miscarriage is the final taboo, dismissed as ‘one of those things’ or ‘it wasn’t meant to be’. I now know that not to be the case. Change has to come from the top, from Government.”
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On miscarriage being the final taboo, she tells Tyla: “Women have been silenced in their healthcare for many, many years not even just the term ‘you just gotta get on with it’, ‘you'll pick yourself up you'll be okay’, ‘women have been suffering like this for ages’ or, ‘my grandmother went through it, you'll be fine’ - It's just that dismissed language."
The ‘it wasn’t meant to be’ comments, though may be intended to be helpful, can be quite damaging.
“If somebody close to you died, and I said, ‘It wasn't meant to be’, how would you feel? But whereas when you've had a life, at least you have a photo or memory. Here, it's even more painful, because nothing was realised - you've got only your imagination, which can take you to some really dark places."
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She shared: “You might find yourself one day just walking down the street and you'll see a child that is potentially the age that your child would have been. Grief hits you in waves, I'd go to birthday parties, or I'd just go to the park and going to the park felt like trying to dodge a missile, because if I saw a pram or heard a baby crying it's a huge trauma and trigger."
There are ways for friends, families and loved ones to help someone who has just experienced a miscarriage, but it has less to do with what you say and is actually done through kind gestures, like one mum who made her some food.
“Don't try and make it better. You can't. There's not a single word you can say that can make it better. You can just be there for comfort. One mum just [dropped] off some food and left it on the doorstep and honestly, it was one of most touching things because you’re still trying to run your household.”
The 9th-15th October marks Baby Loss Awareness Week. For help, support and advice, you can contact charity Tommy's here.
Featured Image Credit: W / Instagram/@myleeneklassTopics: Celebrity, Health, Mental Health