About The Miscarriage Association
The Miscarriage Association is a national charity offering a unique support and information service to people who have experienced the loss of a baby through miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy.
There are an estimated 250,000 miscarriages each year in the UK, with one in four pregnancies ending this way. A further one in one hundred pregnancies is ectopic, a potentially life-threatening condition.
Women who suffer miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy commonly experience feelings of shock, grief and loss. Many lack understanding from those around them, information about what has happened and guidance for the future, creating feelings of isolation, guilt and anxiety. There is added distress for women who have suffered recurrent miscarriage and for those whose pregnancy was the result of fertility treatment.
Fathers too, can be affected. Expected to be a source of strength and support for their partner, men can find that their own emotional needs are likely to go unrecognised. Couples can find it difficult to talk about their needs and feelings and this can cause additional distress.
The Miscarriage Association's support and information services work to reduce distress, anxiety and isolation in the following ways:
- a staffed Helpline
- a UK-wide volunteer support network of telephone contacts and groups
- a range of leaflets, some in Asian languages and on audiotape
- a website and e-mail facility
- work with the media (including TV dramas) to raise awareness
- work with health professionals to promote good practice
- commissioning research into causes of miscarriage
Our history
The Miscarriage Association was founded in 1982 by a small group of people - women and men - who had been affected by miscarriage. While they had received good medical care, they felt that no-one had addressed their emotional needs nor provided them with information which could help them understand what had happened. They began to fill this gap, providing what information they could on photocopied sheets and offering support by letter and then by telephone, all through volunteers.
Gradually the Association decided to hire its first staff member and by 1993 had appointed its first national director, though the complement of paid staff remained small and volunteers continued to offer local telephone and group support around the UK. Leaflets were re-written and are now regularly updated and professionally printed, with several new titles produced over the last few years.
The Miscarriage Association has developed from a tiny organisation, working from a volunteer's kitchen table, to a nationally recognised and respected UK charity. Even so, we continue to rely very much on volunteers who have themselves experienced pregnancy loss and who both steer our work and provide many of its services. In this modern age, when expectations of a healthy and successful pregnancy are higher than ever, it remains crucial for us to work to the organisation's founding aims of providing support and information for those who suffer the loss of a baby in pregnancy.