“It’s the idea that everything is healed.” Jennie Agg is talking to me about miscarriage. Or, specifically, how it feels to have a baby after miscarriage – or miscarriages, plural; Agg had four before she gave birth to her boy. Life, Almost – her book detailing her experiences and investigating why miscarriage still remains such an under-researched and under-acknowledged experience – has just come out, and it’s a vital new examination of the subject, with each chapter given the title of some of the false, trite or dismissive things people say: “It’s just nature’s way”, “it’s not a real baby yet”, “everything happens for a reason”.
In a book full of insights, perhaps one of the most affecting is the dawning understanding of the legacy that pregnancy loss can have. There is still an absurdly prevalent notion that finally getting a healthy baby – as most couples who experience miscarriage will – somehow wipes the slate clean, and makes everything that has happened in the past melt away. “Any residual grief, trauma or yearning is supposed to be washed away by the arrival of a longed-for child,” she writes. “After all – you got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
