MISCARRIAGE OF (IN)JUSTICE

It's the elephant in the room: miscarriage. Pick up a dictionary and it means two things: 'a condition in which a pregnancy ends too early and does not result in the birth of a live baby' or 'an unjust legal decision'. The latter is so much easier to palate.

Social media is packed with photos of cupcake-rammed baby showers, impeccably-filtered post-birth pics and triumphant videos of urchins staggering across the room to be rewarded with a babycinno. Ask every one of the parents behind the lens if they had a miscarriage, knew of someone who had a miscarriage or feared it might happen to them and the resounding answer would be 'yes'.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against cupcakes, filters or babycinnos (one look at my Instagram feed and I'm leading the charge) and Facebook is certainly not the forum to reveal the heart-rendering pain of miscarriage.

But this polish doesn't always reflect what has gone before. It's about sisterhood – or parenthood to be specific. The truth is miscarriage is part of life; it's part of the terrifying, yet brilliant road to procreation. It is a surprise that I'm quoting Katie Price from her tantalising tome, You Only Live Once, but for all the pneumatic breast, she's a sharp cookie and believes, 'life and death are just the start and end of something. Miscarriage is a horrific process, but there's always a chance to start over.'

Sure, she probably revealed the news of her 10-week miscarriage for sympathetic gain – Peter Andre was planning his sharp exit at this point. But at least she admitted something hordes of parents haven't: miscarriage is a part of pregnancy. It happens, it's shit – the rubbishness of a uterus just not working is unquestionable. But it's common. Gosh, it's common.

All the brilliant women bustling about with their Bugaboos and bombastic clan may not have had a miscarriage but they have known fear. The fear of losing a part of them. The fear that suddenly the 'peanut' or 'bean' they've grown to love and nurture with a holistic cocktail of chia seeds, babycentre.com and iron tablets might not materialise. The fear of decorating a nursery too soon. The fear that every scan will reveal a quiet emptiness – a silence that pierces even the hardiest souls.

It's certainly not about over-sharing – the women I know are good at writing, talking, crying and tidying sock drawers with the kind of frenzied dedication of a ravaged mosquito to combat life's injustices. It's more about the difference between empathy and sympathy when speaking to someone who has just gone through the pain of a miscarriage.

Sympathy starts with 'at least you can get pregnant', whereas empathy puts the kettle on, stacks up the Jaffa cakes and says, 'it's shit, I'm here'. If you know what it is to love someone, you know what it is to lose someone. That elephant shouldn't still be lurking.

For more on empathy versus sympathy, go here