The things I wish someone had said to me in that waiting room.

I want to be honest with you up front. This isn't an explainer. It isn't a guide. It isn't five things you should know about pregnancy loss.

It's a piece about a particular day, and a particular waiting room, and the silence that fell when the sonographer turned the screen away. Some of what I'll write here is mine. Some of it is what I wish someone had said to me, in that waiting room, when I needed it most.

If you've found this page, I suspect you've had your version of that day. Or you're in the waiting room right now, with your phone, scrolling for company. Either way — you don't have to read this all at once. You can come back to it.

Not advice. Just witness.

The day

I will say this carefully: every woman I've ever sat with who has a story like this remembers the silence more than the words. The silence is what stays.

What nobody said

I'm not going to tell you what they should have said. They each had their own reasons. But I want to write down, for the next person who is in that waiting room, the few things I wish somebody had said to me.

So I'll say them now. To you.

What I wish somebody had said

I'm sorry. That's the first one. Not I'm so sorry but... Not I'm sorry but everything happens for a reason. Just: I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Whatever week you were at, whatever the circumstances, whatever the cause, whatever the medical name for it — I'm sorry. The baby was real. The pregnancy was real. The future you'd already started imagining was real. None of it is less real because it didn't continue.

I'm sorry. You can take as long as you need. There is no schedule. You don't have to be back to work in two weeks because that's what the form said. You don't have to be back to your usual self by the end of the financial year. The body grieves on its own clock and the heart grieves on a different one.

I'm sorry. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. You also don't have to not talk about it for the comfort of the people around you. If somebody flinches when you bring it up, that's their work to do, not yours. You get to mention it as often as you need to.

I'm sorry. The next pregnancy, if there is one, will be two pregnancies in one body. The current and the previous, layered. That's a real thing, and you're not paranoid for feeling it that way. There's a piece I wrote about pregnancy after loss — and a page on pregnancy anxiety counselling for if you want company through that stretch.

I'm sorry. You will laugh again. I know that doesn't help right now. I'm not going to tell you when. I just want you to know it's allowed, when it comes back. Laughter is not a betrayal of the baby.

I'm sorry. You don't have to know what you'd say at a service. You don't have to have a name. You don't have to plant a tree. You can do all of those things, or none of them. There's no checklist.

I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

What helped me, eventually

I'll write this softly: doing the work I do — sitting with women in their loss — has not erased mine. It's done something better than that. It's given my loss a place in the world. It's not just mine to hold any more. The work is how I share it.

What I'd say to you, if you were here

If you were sitting in front of me — on the screen, with your tea, with the box of tissues you've been pretending not to need — I'd say a few small things.

You're not making it up.

You're not being dramatic.

You're not weak for not being over it.

You don't have to perform okay-ness for anyone. Not your partner. Not your mother. Not the boss who needs you back. Not the nurse who said you'd "be alright."

You can grieve this for as long as it takes, and as long as it takes is much longer than the world will tell you it is.

The baby was real. You are not making them less real by struggling to talk about them. You are not making them less real by struggling to remember them, sometimes, when you're carrying the next one. The whole architecture of your motherhood includes them.

I'm sorry. The baby was real. You are not alone.

Practical, briefly

I won't put this at the top because grief deserves not to be interrupted by a hyperlinked services list. But if you need it:

Red Nose Australia — 24-hour bereavement support, free, professionally trained. 1300 308 307. They are extraordinary.

Pink Elephants — for early pregnancy loss specifically. Excellent resources, peer support, and sit-with-you energy.

PANDA — 1300 726 306, Mon–Sat. Perinatal mental health, including loss.

For ongoing private counselling, perinatal counselling is one of the threads I sit with most often. You can book a free fifteen-minute call when you're ready. No preparation needed. You don't have to have words. You don't even have to make eye contact for the whole call. You can just be on the screen.

A small note before you go

If you've read this far and you're crying — that was the recognition. The recognition is the start of the grief becoming bearable, eventually. It's slow.

If you've come back to this page weeks later and read it again — that's also normal. Grief comes back at intervals you can't always predict.

If you're a woman who is about to be in the waiting room, on the day of the scan that is going to be the one that changes things — I am so sorry. You don't deserve this. Whatever happens next, you don't have to do it alone.

The baby was real. The pregnancy was real. Your grief is real.

I'm sorry.

— Elisa