It took me 10 years to talk about losing my baby. Here's why I'm sharing my story now

Ten years ago, I gave birth to my first child about 20 weeks too early and the baby couldn’t survive.

I had a normal pregnancy for the initial months – I was out and about (I can recall clocking in more than 8,000 steps at Gitex), I had an extreme sensitivity to the smell of pizza and all seemed fine during check-ups.

In the fifth month of pregnancy, I suddenly began experiencing what I later learnt were contractions. I was rushed to hospital that night, where doctors told me to prepare for the possibility of losing my baby because of a rare cervical condition that I have.

It was a really tough night and, despite the doctors' efforts, I delivered my little boy too early. It was heartbreaking for my husband and I to hold him.

The doctor at the hospital – who was not the one I had been consulting – was matter-of-fact about it and assured us that knowing that I had the condition meant we could be better prepared medically next time.

Recovery, both physically and mentally, took a while. A late-stage miscarriage – a term used to refer to pregnancies that end in the second trimester – is relatively uncommon. The risk of pregnancy loss in the first trimester is about one in 10, reducing significantly to one in 100 in the second trimester, according to Cleveland Clinic.

It has taken me more than 10 years to be able to tell my story, and I decided to open up because, during the toughest period following my miscarriage, it was the stories of others who went through similar experiences that made me feel less isolated and gave me hope.

Show caption: The writer with her daughter Atira and son Aarav. Aarti Nagr…

In the days after the incident, I devoured content about my condition and continually read stories of others who had gone through something similar, realising that my anguish and concerns were echoed by people I never knew around the world.

It was therapeutic and slowly helped me to ease out of my grief bubble. I leaned heavily on spirituality to also help answer the nagging "Why did this happen to me?" question. Our families were a huge source of support, helping us navigate the waves of pain that kept crashing down on us.

After I was able to recover and face the world again, I found many friends and colleagues opening up about their own experiences – some had miscarriages while others lost infants.

One thing that struck me was how many of us mostly kept our struggles to ourselves – whether it was because we didn’t want to revisit the pain, or because we didn’t want to be viewed with pity by society, or even, in some cases, to be blamed for what happened.

Women still face “enormous stigma and shame” when they lose a baby, and they are often not encouraged to talk about their experience and loss, Dr Nono Simelela, former assistant director general at the World Health Organisation, wrote in a post on its website.

“This can lead to isolation and disconnection, even from their partners and close family, and means that women end up trapped in their own personal grief,” she said.

There have been many celebrities in recent times who have openly spoken about their experiences with miscarriage, which has helped reduce the stigma.

But I do personally feel more needs to be done to encourage women to feel more confident about sharing their stories – in case they are ready to do so.

My next pregnancy was nail-biting and involved weeks of bed rest, but we had an amazing doctor who took good care of us, and we welcomed our daughter in March 2018, exactly a year after my first child’s due date. When we had our son four years later, we were definitely more confident, and it was a much easier journey.

As the saying goes, time is truly the greatest healer. I can now look back on that day without experiencing the same level of pain. And I’m grateful for the little one I could hold, even if very briefly, who first made me a mother.