“People said it was lucky really. I don’t know how to deal with that”

This quote was one of many we gathered from young women we spoke to during the youth project consultation process I ran for the Miscarriage Association. It highlighted the need for additional support resources that  reflected the experiences of younger people.

Young women told us about dealing with miscarriage after an unplanned pregnancy, finding themselves isolated and unable to speak to parents or partners, turning only to friends for support and experiencing difficult reactions from hospital and nursing staff.

And now I’m excited to help the Miscarriage Association launch the resources we developed as a result.

A soft launch at Primary Care 2015

It seemed appropriate to soft launch the resources at the Primary Care conference in Birmingham. It was here, last year, that community midwives and school nurses asked for more specialist resources for younger women. The Miscarriage Association’s National Director Ruth, some wonderful volunteers and I spent two days spreading the word about the Miscarriage Association and sharing our new resources.

They were universally well received and we sent boxes worth of leaflets out into the world as well as showing our new films (created for us by Rob Mitchell of MadCutta films) and chatting to anyone who would listen about what we were up to. It was wonderful to see how many people benefitted from the work the Miscarriage Association does – professionally but also in some cases personally.

Sharing our new resources far and wide

Today we’re launching the resources more widely.

We’ve created a leaflet for use in schools, clinics, surgeries and hospitals. The leaflet reflects the experiences and needs that young women reported and includes a number of illustrated quotes from young women we spoke to. It’s also available online of course.

Young women told us that more films and personal stories would be “the biggest emotional support”. We’ve created a series of short films and a collection of written pieces in which young women share their stories. We hope these will help other young people feel less isolated and more able to make sense of their own experience.

Young people told us that calling a helpline often made them nervous. We’d like to explore new contact routes in the future but in the meantime we’ve created an infographic about what happens when you call our helpline. We hope that this will help young people feel more confident about getting in touch with us.

It’s often difficult for anyone to talk about miscarriage. But the young women we spoke to said they found it hard to talk to parents, partners, teachers and medical professionals. We’ve added a new page offering suggestions to make talking about miscarriage easier. We hope this page will be useful for all women and their partners.

Although the resources are available throughout the Miscarriage Association website, all of them are linked to from this page as well.

Do help us spread the word.