Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss. The Club No One Wants To Be A Part Of. Uncut with Irena Gilbert
6/11/202656 min
Back in 2020, we released an episode titled “Talking Miscarriage” where Laura spoke about experiencing not one but two miscarriages. It is an episode that people still message us every week about. Six years ago the topic of miscarriage was still pretty taboo, and it has changed slightly but it’s still an experience that leaves so many people feeling alone and grieving privately.
Today’s guest has unfortunately experienced miscarriage a number of times.
We first got to know Irena Gilbert on The Bachelor Australia back in 2020. After that final rose, her and Locky have gone on to get married and build a life together! Before welcoming their daughter Ava in February 2024, Irena experienced multiple miscarriages; her first in 2021, her second in 2023, and now another just 2 weeks ago. Today we're sitting down with Irena to talk about something that affects one in four pregnancies in Australia, and yet still so often goes unspoken, pregnancy loss.
This conversation is not easy. But it is important, generous, and going to reach a lot of women who need to hear it.
Irena brings something rare to this conversation: she is both a woman who has lived through pregnancy loss multiple times, and a nurse with over 15 years of experience caring for women going through the same thing. The gap between what she knew clinically and what she felt personally is something she speaks to with a lot of honesty.
We chat:
- When Irena & Locky spoke about having kids
- Why their Covid-interrupted season actually gave them something most Bachelor couples never get
- Her first pregnancy loss and why she felt she wasn't "allowed" to grieve it
- How the second miscarriage
- How partners grieve differently, and why their pain gets left out of the conversation
- What miscarriage actually looks like physically
- The statistics: roughly 280–300 miscarriages happen in Australia every day
- Pregnancy after loss: why Irena couldn't let herself feel excited, couldn't take photos, and was still waiting for something to go wrong on the day Ava was born
- Her third and most recent loss two weeks ago
- Why this one hurt the most and what her obstetrician said that finally made sense of it
- "At least you have a healthy baby" - why well-meaning words can be the most dismissive thing you can say
- Why pregnancy loss and infertility are different experiences that don't need to be compared
You can follow Irena on Instagram
Free counselling is available from Red Nose Grief and Support Line
Timestamps
- 0:00 — Intro
- 2:20 — Bachelor 2020, meeting Locky, and talking kids on their very first date
- 4:40 — The Covid season: why six months of phone calls gave them something most Bachelor couples never had
- 6:40 — Going back to nursing after the show and why it kept her grounded
- 8:30 — First pregnancy loss
- 12:00 — Laura shares her own experience: the complicated feelings of an unplanned pregnancy lost
- 13:40 — How the second miscarriage unlocked everything she'd buried from the first
- 20:40 — How Locky processed it
- 23:05 — What miscarriage actually feels like physically
- 29:25 — The statistics: 280–300 miscarriages a day in Australia, and that's only the ones that are known about
- 30:00 — Pregnancy after loss: not allowing herself to get excited, not taking photos, waiting for something to go wrong
- 35:20 — Why she struggled with social media pregnancy announcements and the joy she'll never fully have back
- 36:00 — The third loss: two weeks ago
- 38:20 — Why this one hurt the most: her obstetrician's explanation that finally made sense
- 39:30 — "At least you've got a healthy baby" — why this is the most dismissive thing you can say, even when it comes from love
- 43:10 — The grief Olympics: pregnancy loss and infertility aren't competing, they're both just really shit
- 45:20 — Laura's experience of her second loss, and the complicated way miscarriage can clarify how much you want something
- 49:20 — The shame hangover: why women of our mothers' generation stayed silent, and what that cost us
- 53:20 — Her mum's stillbirth, growing up knowing about it, and being a rainbow baby herself
- 54:05 — What she wants every woman who hears this to know
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsLaura Byrne· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hi, guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura.
Irina Gilbert· Guest0:12
And I'm Keisha.
Laura Byrne· Host0:13
Now, today's episode is one that is very close to my heart. If you are a long-term listener, one of our OGs, you would probably remember that back in 2020 we released an episode which was called Talking Miscarriage. And I've spoken a lot over the years around my own personal experiences with having miscarriages, and our, I guess my journey towards motherhood. And back in the day, it kind of was a, [sighs] a little bit more rare, I think, for people to really wanna come forward and talk about it. And I know when I experienced this, I felt not like I was broken necessarily, but I felt incredibly alone. And, you know, you read the statistics that miscarriage can happen in 1 in 5 pregnancies, and I remember when I had my second miscarriage, I was like, where are these women? Like, where are they? Because they're certainly not around me. They're not here. But what happens when you speak about something like miscarriage is that the community comes forward, the women who have experienced pregnancy loss, they come forward, and they put their hand up, and they say, "I've also experienced this," and you become part of a club that you absolutely never, I'm gonna cry saying it, you never wanted to be a part of. But there is something very healing in, I guess, the shared female experience that we have when other