I was asked at a coffee shop this week how far along I was. It was my first time out of the house since the D&C, or dilation and curettage procedure.
It was a fair question–I still had a slight waddle, and my hand was resting on the small, bloated curve my body had not yet been told to give up. Thanks to all the extra progesterone pills and prednisolone I was taking to protect my pregnancy. Yet here I was, four days after my pregnancy loss. I said something polite, I do not remember what. She was being kind. There was no way for her to know, because almost none of this is ever visible from the outside.
For anyone looking at my Instagram, 2026 might have seemed like the happiest year of my life. My grid showed the best three days of my husband and my life, but none of the worst ones that followed. I’ve posted just two photographs of my present self since my wedding. When people noticed my absence, some asked whether I had “a fun surprise cooking”—a pregnancy announcement disguised as social-media suspense. How ironic.
That first miscarriage happened three months after the wedding. Those photographs and videos were still being posted while my husband and I sat in a brightly lit room, looking at a lab result someone was explaining to us, being told the pregnancy was no longer viable.
People who loved us offered what reassurance they could.
“It happened to my wife three times. It’s super common. You’ll be fine.”
“At least you know you can get pregnant.”
“You should have gone to this temple. That’s why it’s not happening.”
“At least it was early.”
“Don’t worry, it will happen at the right time. You’re only thirty.”
Before I conceived, my age had been used to hurry me towards motherhood. After the miscarriage, it became the reason I should look ahead to another pregnancy. Everyone was speaking about a future in which I might have a baby while I was still trying to cope with the one I had lost.
While the first loss remained unexplained aside from some potential autoimmune markers and a few deficiencies, we believed the investigations and treatment plan might protect another pregnancy. I turned thirty-one a few months later, and soon afterwards, we conceived again.
Every milestone beyond the point where the first pregnancy ended felt like a race won. My husband began taking a weekly Polaroid of my bump, which we glued into a pregnancy journal.
Even after a reassuring scan, there was always a qualification. The pregnancy was not measuring quite right, the doctors wanted to see more, and another appointment would be scheduled for the following week. I compared myself with every pregnant woman around me—less morning sickness than she had, no cravings, nothing I could hold up as proof.
At eleven weeks, we learnt that the heartbeat had stopped. We had experienced a second pregnancy loss within six months.
During the first pregnancy, we had ignored the traditional twelve-week rule and told people early, only to then share the news of the miscarriage one painful phone call at a time. We kept the second pregnancy to ourselves and lost the baby before we could tell anyone. We were spared those calls, but it also meant that few people knew we were grieving.
Although both experiences were miscarriages, little about them felt the same. The first was a silent miscarriage–no sudden bleeding, only declining hCG numbers on a lab report. I had to deal with it at home with my husband and four heavy blankets, shivering despite the Singapore heat.
The second involved bleeding, an ultrasound screen with no heartbeat, consent forms and an operating theatre. I screamed in the examination chair while my husband broke down beside me. After the D&C, genetic testing identified Trisomy 16 and told us that the foetus was a girl.
Going through the first miscarriage had not prepared me for the second, just as being told repeatedly that pregnancy loss was common had not prepared me for either. Nor did the length of the pregnancies account for what we had lost. We were grieving a present and a future that was very real to us.
We had discussed the languages we would teach our child and imagined them cuddling between us in bed while we watched Lilo & Stitch. Whether she’d learn ballet or tennis, half dad and half mom–or both. I excitedly bought maternity clothes for my growing body from the mall attached to my office and hid the bag beneath my desk so nobody would ask questions. I dreamt of the whole future growing inside me.
The difficulty of speaking about miscarriage followed me back to work. My colleagues did not know why I was away, although my out-of-office did say "hospitalisation leave”. Yet, on the Monday I resumed work, the messages began: “Hope you had a good break! Did you see my email about…?” More recently, someone who did know what had happened messaged to tell me a relative of theirs had cancer. We all have our struggles, they wrote, and having the ‘Big C’ is much worse, they said, ‘comfortingly’, according to them.
They could not respond to something they did not fully know, but friends who knew the details could not necessarily find the right words either. In the first few days, messages came often; within a fortnight, the subject had largely closed. Group chats continued around me as though the conversation had run its course. Perhaps people assumed I would raise it if I wanted to talk, and for me, raising it was the hardest part.
There are familiar ways to speak about and celebrate a pregnancy. In Bengali families there is the shaadh, a pre-birth celebration for the expectant mother; elsewhere, there are announcements, maternity photographs and godhbharais. The questions began soon after my wedding: when were the babies coming? Was I pregnant? But when that pregnancy ends, silence and discomfort.
I began creating my own language for the pregnancies we had lost. When I entered the details of my first pregnancy into an app, it told me that the foetus was the size of a poppy seed. My husband and I began calling the baby Poppy. After that loss, I found a jeweller who made rings corresponding to different weeks of pregnancy. I ordered a poppy-seed ring and have not taken it off since.
The second baby had stopped growing when the app compared her size to a blueberry. After the genetic-testing report told us the baby would have been a girl, I had a poppy flower and a blueberry with a bow tattooed onto my body.
The apps themselves required something different from me. My pregnancy trackers and Oura ring asked me to confirm: I am no longer pregnant. Four words and a button. I sat with my finger hovering over it for a long time.
I have spent half of 2026 pregnant, with no baby to bring home and two due dates sitting in a calendar I cannot bring myself to delete. The pregnancies ended, but their evidence remains in a ring, a tattoo, those calendar entries and a body that goes on behaving as though it is still pregnant for weeks, almost months afterwards. If and when I see another positive pregnancy test, it will inextricably be intertwined with fear.
There may be no sentence capable of making pregnancy loss easier. This is grief with no outward evidence–no funeral, photograph, nothing anyone else can point to.
The next time a woman tells you she has lost a pregnancy, know that you will not have the right words; nobody does. So, say that. Let her talk about the baby she never held, without measuring the loss in weeks or turning her towards the next one. You do not need the perfect words. Send the awkward message anyway.
Just don't disappear.
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