New miscarriage counselling service: trauma and grief that dare not speak its name

Irish Examiner

20-06-2025

The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) announced earlier this month that it is expanding its counselling service to include women and couples who experience recurrent pregnancy loss.
As part of a HSE-funded pilot project, anyone who has two or more miscarriages in a row is entitled to eight free counselling sessions.
'We've supported the sexual and reproductive health of people in Ireland since 1969, providing specialist counselling throughout that time,' says the IFPA's counselling director, Clare O'Brien.
IFPA counselling director Clare O'Brien.
'We're delighted to have received HSE funding that enables us to become the first State-funded organisation to provide the psychological care women and couples need following miscarriage.'
This care is sorely needed. Every year, approximately 14,000 women in Ireland have a miscarriage, meaning about one in every four pregnancies ends in loss.
According to the Irish Examiner's women's health survey, some 58% of women report that the availability of support in the aftermath of miscarriage is poor.
Women and couples have turned to organisations like the Miscarriage Association of Ireland and Pregnancy and Infant Loss Ireland or to independent therapists.
'There was nothing integrated alongside medical care, up until now. Women who have experienced recurrent miscarriage, and their partners, will now be referred to our specialist counselling services by their local maternity hospital,' O'Brien says.
The custom of keeping pregnancies secret until after the first scan at 12 weeks can complicate how people grieve, O'Brien acknowledges: 'In other countries, people share their happy news much earlier. But here, the norm is to wait until after that first scan. Because many miscarriages happen in the first trimester, this means many couples won't have told anyone they are pregnant, which makes it harder to share that they have lost their baby.'
Couples can grieve alone, as a result. 'And they do so in such individual ways,' says O'Brien.
'Miscarriage can cause sadness, anger, confusion, guilt, numbness, uncertainty, and fear for the future. There are so many unanswered questions about what happened and why. It's a very difficult time for people.'
Alice Sheridan: 'The ripple effect of miscarriage goes on for miles. It's the loss of a life and all its possibilities." Photograph: Moya Nolan
No heartbeat
Alice Sheridan is a 45-year-old from Skerries in Dublin. She believes many women and couples are 'silently screaming and no one is hearing them'.
'The ripple effect of miscarriage goes on for miles. It's the loss of a life and all its possibilities.
For some, it's the loss of the prospect of parenthood. It's a whole future that gets abruptly and violently taken away,' she says.
Sheridan speaks from experience. She married in 2009, became pregnant three months later, and gave birth to her son, Jack, in 2010.
'I sailed through that pregnancy,' she says.
However, when she and her husband tried for another baby, it took them four years to conceive.
'We were so excited, but at the eight-week scan, we realised there was no heartbeat,' she says. 'We'd lost our baby.'
Over the next four years, the couple had two more pregnancies, but both ended in miscarriage.
None of the pregnancies progressed beyond eight weeks, meaning Sheridan never developed a baby bump.
'In many ways, I felt this mirrored how our grief wasn't seen,' says Sheridan. 'The grief that follows miscarriage isn't always recognised by society. Lots of people don't know what to say to people who have lost pregnancies, so, often, they don't say anything at all.'
Jennifer Duggan, Chairperson of the Irish Miscarriage Association at her home in Carrigaline, Co. Cork. Picture: David Creedon
Relying on one another
Jennifer Duggan is a 40-year-old from Carrigaline, in Cork, who also knows the pain of miscarriage. When she married at 23, she never imagined she would have difficulty starting a family.
'We married in 2007 and were pregnant at the start of 2008,' she says. 'I was already starting to show when we had our first scan at 12 weeks.'
They were devastated when that scan failed to find a heartbeat. Their baby had stopped growing at eight weeks.
Having been reassured by doctors that their miscarriage was 'just one of those things that happens as part of women's reproductive life', Duggan and her husband soon started trying again.
They experienced another loss before having their son Dáithí in 2009.
Two years and two more miscarriages were to follow, before their daughter, Síofra, was born in 2011.
'Looking at us from the outside, people probably thought we had planned the perfect family: A boy followed by a girl two years later,' says Jennifer. 'They would never have guessed we had lost four babies along the way.'
Both had come from large families, so they yearned for more children. 'But we held off for a while, after Síofra, for fear of something going wrong,' says Duggan. 'But, eventually, the want for another baby grew bigger than the fear.'
They had two more miscarriages before they sought help from a fertility clinic.
'They told me my ovarian reserve was low and recommended we try IVF with donor eggs,' says Jennifer. 'But that didn't feel right to us, so we decided to try one last time, and, happily, we had our son Oisín in 2015.'
Looking back on it now, Duggan can see how traumatic the pregnancy losses were: 'My husband and I really relied on one another for support. Our family were great at looking after us, but friends often struggled to know what to say. I started trying for a family at the age of 24, when none of them were at that stage of life.'
She found the peer-to-peer support offered by the Miscarriage Association of Ireland helpful.
'Because members had been through it themselves, they understood the jealousy I'd feel at others being pregnant or the sadness I'd feel coming up to the due date of a baby I'd lost. They got what I was going through,' says Duggan, who is now chairperson of the association.
Alice Sheridan: 'The grief that follows miscarriage isn't always recognised by society. Lots of people don't know what to say to people who have lost pregnancies, so, often, they don't say anything at all.' Photograph: Moya Nolan
Grieving alone
Sheridan benefited from counselling after her miscarriages: 'It helped me process my loss and figure out what the future would look like for me and my family.'
Sheridan found the experience so beneficial that she decided to retrain as a counsellor: 'I wrote my thesis about the disenfranchised grief many feel after miscarriage. People don't always recognise the profound loss involved and how women and couples need that loss to be acknowledged.'
Acknowledging that loss is what the IFPA's new counselling service plans to do.
'It's difficult to say what the demand will be, but we do know that one in four women experiences miscarriage and our team of eight counsellors will be there to support them,' says O'Brien.
'All of us are accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy or the Irish Association for Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy and have decades of experience. Women and couples will be able to choose between in-person counselling at six centres throughout Ireland or sessions over the phone or Zoom.'
These sessions will aim to validate people's bereavement. 'The grief that accompanies miscarriage is real and deeply felt,' says O'Brien. 'We don't want anyone to feel isolated and alone. We want them to know they can speak to us about their loss, frustrations, and fear, without judgement and with total confidentiality and support.'
In the meantime, if you know someone who has experienced pregnancy loss, O'Brien has advice on how to support them.
'Sit with them and listen to what they have to say,' she says. 'Don't feel you have to suggest something to fix the situation, as they have just had a huge loss that can't be fixed. And remember that practical help — like childcare, cooking meals, doing shopping or cleaning the house — can make a big difference when people are going through something as physically and emotionally taxing as pregnancy loss.'
If you have experienced miscarriage and want to avail of free counselling from the IFPA, ask your healthcare professional to refer you to the service.
Click here to read our National Women's Health Survey.
The Irish Examiner Women's Health Survey 2025
Ipsos B&A designed and implemented a research project for the Irish Examiner involving a nationally representative sample of n=1,078 women over the age of 16 years.
The study was undertaken online with fieldwork conducted between April 30 and May 15, 2025.
The sample was quota controlled by age, socio-economic class, region and area of residence to reflect the known profile of women in Ireland based on the census of population and industry agreed guidelines.
Ipsos B&A has strict quality control measures in place to ensure robust and reliable findings; results based on the full sample carry a margin of error of +/-2.8%.
In other words, if the research was repeated identically results would be expected to lie within this range on 19 occasions out of 20.
A variety of aspects were assessed in relation to women's health including fertility, birth, menopause, mental health, health behaviour, and alcohol consumption.