Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Miscarriage Rebellion. I'm Sam Payne, CEO and co -founder of the Pink Elephant Support Network.
Speaker: And I'm Stacey June Lewis, counsellor, psychotherapist and broadcaster. This podcast is where we share stories of many Australians who have lost their babies to early pregnancy loss. With evidence and empathy, we unpack the shame, blame and stigma and the lack of support that many face. This is a loss that has been silenced for too long. We deserve better. We are here to normalise the conversation. And we're here to make lasting change.
Speaker: Welcome to today's episode of the Miscarriage Rebellion, where we put a spotlight on workplaces. We bring you Niti, who is a peer support companion for Pink Elephants, but has her own lived experience and also had to balance going to work two days after a DNC.
Speaker: We know she's not alone. We know hundreds of women that we surveyed in our return to work after a pregnancy loss had similar stories. But we chose to share NITIS and we hope that you hear it with an element of hope of what can change. We also bring on Catherine McNurd, who's the Head of Diversity and Inclusion at QBE.
Speaker: who are doing incredible things with our Pink Elephant's workplace program within their workplace. The difference it is making is clear. The benefits are amazing. The feedback that we get from women who are met with the empathy, understanding, and clear policy and support within that workplace are huge.
Speaker: We hope that you listen to this story with an element of hope where you can see the change that can happen when workplaces drive change within the business to foster more empathy and understanding for the people who face challenges like pregnancy loss. So we'll jump right in.
Speaker: I'm really excited to have you here today with us, Niti. Niti is a Pink Elephant's peer support companion and has supported Pink Elephants for a number of years by publicly sharing her experiences of loss and raising awareness into the true impacts of pregnancy loss. We'd love our listeners of the Miscarriage Rebellion to get to know you a little bit more. So if you could start by sharing your experiences of early pregnancy loss, we could start there, that'd be great.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Sam. So I had my first loss. It would be about five, no, probably six years ago now. And I already, I had a child at that point. So I'd had my daughter, I'd had a
Speaker: Really easy pregnancy with her, everything had gone really well, no sickness, nothing. But we had a really difficult post period with her where I experienced what I think later probably was depression, but I just in the moment didn't recognize it as such.
Speaker: and then it took us a while or it took me a while at least to want to try again after that and so we waited for a few years and I knew in the meantime that my biological clock was ticking away and so you know we were running out of time and so we tried again and we were really happy because we got pregnant pretty quickly
Speaker: And, you know, the funny thing is, I think when you've already had a child, you just assume that everything's going to be okay because you've gotten over the worst of things the first time around, right? And so that's what we sort of assumed. And we even told our daughter, who was three at the time, that we were expecting. And we went in to have our eight -week scan. We were chatting to our OB, laughing with him because he knew us from delivering our daughter.
Speaker: And it was sort of an instantaneous thing where I could see the light that had been in his eyes as he was laughing with us and listening to us chat sort of disappear as he was looking at his ultrasound machine. And I knew in that moment that something was very wrong. And then he told us, I can't hear a heartbeat and I'm really sorry.
Speaker: And I think from that moment in, I sort of tuned out of most of what you were saying. I vaguely remember him telling me that, you know, this happens and it's really common and, you know, this is the scientific explanation and,
Speaker: here's what's next. And there are sort of words that popped out to me as he was speaking because he was talking about missed miscarriages, which for me was not a term I'd heard before that. Then he was talking about abortion tablets to remove
Speaker: the facial matter afterwards and things like that. And so there were all these things that were hitting me in quite a traumatic way. And I knew in my head that it wasn't my fault and there was nothing I could have done and it wasn't to be. And all the things he was telling me, I knew logically made sense.
Speaker: But in my heart, all I could think of was the dreams that I'd had about having this child and having a sibling for my daughter and watching them play together. And for me, having two kids had always been the dream because I've got a really close relationship with my sister. And so, for me, it was losing that as well was a really big part of what I was going through.
Speaker: Anyway, he convinced us to wait and let it pass naturally. Oh my God, it was the worst two weeks of my life. We waited for two weeks before we got the tablets and took the tablets instead. I was so anxious. Every time I went to the bathroom, I was a nervous wreck.
Speaker: And just, you know, is it going to happen now? And because he'd also told me that I needed to collect the sample so that they could test it and see what had happened.
Speaker: you know, there was that bash as well that was part of the anxiety. What if I lose the baby whilst I'm at work, you know, and I'm on a public toilet and then I have to collect this sample somehow and deal with that in the moment whilst I'm at work. And having told people that I had the flu
Speaker: right, you know, no one knew obviously what was happening and what I was going through and so I was a mess for two weeks, an absolute mess and I finally decided to take the tablets. That in itself was quite a traumatic experience because it kind of induces cramps and you sort of feel like you feel at the start of giving birth, you know, when you first start having those first few cramps and
Speaker: Anyway, collected the sample, it got tested. I had told myself, you know, the way I'm going to get through this is by trying again really quickly. So I was like, as soon as I can try again, we're trying again so that I can move past what's happened and compartmentalize it.
Speaker: And so that was the plan. And then they tested the sample and my OB rang me and he said, I'm really sorry. But we've actually found that the sample is something that's called a complete molar pregnancy, which means that because there's a risk of
Speaker: basically matter being left inside the womb and that developing into a rare form of placental cancer, you need to be monitored for at least six months to make sure your HCG levels come back to normal so you can't try again until your levels are normal and they are normal for six months.
Speaker: that really broke me. This was my way of coping. My way of coping was moving on and trying again. And I was like, I can't do that now. Now I just have to sit and wait for months and months and months
Speaker: And in the meantime, I was like, you know, now I'm like, I don't know, I think it was 38, I think at the time. So I'm like, you know, times disappearing on me as well. So these are, you know, these six, seven, eight months are really important from a biological clock perspective. And now I'm losing that as well.
Speaker: And so anyway, I was an anxious wreck for seven, eight months. And finally we tried again when we could. And this time I was not excited about trying. And when we did get a positive pregnancy marker, I was like, okay.
Speaker: You know, steal yourself for what's coming. My OB was really good. He got us in early for a first scan at about seven weeks. Everything was great. He said, I'm really happy, but come back in in another week and a half, given your history. Let's do another scan then.
Speaker: came in again and lo and behold we'd miscarried again but this time I went straight into a DNC so literally found out and within two hours I think I was in the operation room to have the DNC
Speaker: And, you know, again, I sort of was a bit of a zombie for the next many months. And I think this time I told a few more people at work. So the previous time I'd only told my boss. And the only reason I had told him was because I was supposed to be traveling for work.
Speaker: And this time I told a couple more people, but I'd also just recently been promoted. I was recruiting for my team. I was traveling internationally. So I was doing all of that. So I remember I had the DNC and two days later I was on a flight to South Korea for a work trip.
Speaker: with my new peer group, her flight management team. And, you know, they were on a training course. So you're trying to form these connections with people and you're out for dinners and drinks. And it's like, all I want to do is come up into a ball and just stay in my bed and not leave it.
Speaker: But I've got to do this. And I've got to get through this. And do you know what? I've had a loss before. It's fine. I've been here before. I've done it before. So it's not as bad as it was last time. I think I was convincing myself more than anything else that I was okay. And it took quite a few months before I sort of realized that I wasn't okay and I needed to talk to someone about it. And that was a big
Speaker: I guess transformative moments for me personally because it really did allow me to break down some of those barriers or those walls that I'd had up for such a long time because you do have this sense of needing to move past loss really quickly.
Speaker: And so you sort of feel like you're crawling at this really slow pace whilst the world just keeps moving. And so the world's rushing ahead of you and you're back here somewhere, still dealing with the fact that you've had this loss.
Speaker: whilst the world's just gone somewhere else. And so it really felt like that for me. And there weren't many people that I felt I could talk to about what I was going through. A lot of my friends had kids and hadn't had issues, had one good friend who had, and she'd been through an IVF journey and quite a few losses as well. And so we sort of hung
Speaker: you know, hung on to each other a little bit as a support network to get through things. And amazingly, actually, when we tried again, because we did try again, that I'd told my husband this time, this is the last time. Like, I can't do more than one more loss. If we have another loss, that's it.
Speaker: We have one child and that's all we're going to have. I can't do this anymore than that. And so we tried again, we got pregnant again. Again, you know, even less excitement than the previous time. This time I was really nervous. And as it turned out, when I spoke to my friend who'd also been going through her own journey, she said to me, I've got news. I said, who?
Speaker: I do too. We both actually turned out we both got pregnant at the same time and we both had successful pregnancies this time around which was beautiful and it was really nice to have someone to be able to share that with in a moment where we were both feeling so anxious.
Speaker: about the journey. And I remember telling work when we'd gotten to, I think it was maybe 14, 15 weeks. And people were congratulating me and all the rest of it as they do. And I felt like I had this fake smile plastered on my face because I couldn't believe that it was real at the time. It still felt like something was going to go wrong.
Speaker: And it took until I had my son in my arms for me to believe nothing was going to go wrong because even at the end we had complications that had to be induced early. And so I was like, Oh, here we go. This is it.
Speaker: This is when I'm going to lose a baby. And so, yeah, so that's been my journey with loss. And it's it's been a really difficult one. But, you know, I also feel that it's opened up my eyes to what this journey can be like and also how important it is to talk about what's going on and how different things might have been to me if in the workplace setting, for example,
Speaker: we held space for people to have these conversations more because I was experiencing so much, but experiencing it in silence and feeling very isolated and alone. I'm so sorry, I need you to hear all of that and I'm really grateful that you've shared and I think the thing that I
Speaker: have really just been struck within your storytelling is that moment where you're in that jovial world and that connection that you had with your obstetrician, which moves into this other place and holding, you spoke so beautifully about how that kind of transpired. And what I also noticed about how you told that story is how delicate and important those moments are.
Speaker: That was this particular professional was telling you it was normal you know whilst you know then maybe one person that knows at work because of a trouble situation. It was those things from i guess a technical perspective have to be kind of there as a structure to support you.
Speaker: There is almost something missing to describe what those moments are like when you are that zombie person and how as a society, as a workplace, but also even just professionals can support people differently in those moments where we don't quite feel like we are ourselves at all or even human. So we don't necessarily have our best foot forward to advocate, communicate,
Speaker: I really took that away from your story so clearly. I wanted to ask you about that and what potentially would have supported you in those intricate, delicate times, whether that was on that travel trip, whether that was in that moment where the wind changed, that feeling in the room.
Speaker: These moments are almost undescribable for people that haven't been through them because that's who we're talking to here, right? We're talking to people that don't know what that feels like.
Speaker: What do we do? What would you have wanted? What would have really helped in that moment was a little bit of silence to begin with, to be honest. I felt like it almost rushed from, there's no heartbeat to, right, and now let me explain it to you and here's what we do, right? And I was like, in that moment, I actually needed some space to process those words.
Speaker: because they take time to process. Obviously, I was still processing that month's lation, but in the moment, I think I needed that little bit of space. I think we
Speaker: And I think it's the same in workplaces, right? People rush to fill in space with words. You know, you tell someone something traumatic and they're like, gotta say something, gotta say something, gotta solve it, fix it, you know, gotta help them. And I'm like, I don't need you to solve anything, fix anything. Okay, it is what it is, but I need you to just sit with me for a minute.
Speaker: Well, that's what I wanted to say. What does space look like? Because I think sometimes space can mean walk away, leave the room, don't text, which again, might be what some people need, but what did space specifically look like? I think space for me would have looked like, just letting me sit with it for a little bit and asking me what I needed in that moment. You know, isn't this in the right time to talk about what's next?
Speaker: Would you like me to talk about what happened? Would you like me to explain where we go to from here? Asking me for permission to take the next step would have been, I think, what I needed at the time because I couldn't move to the next step. I wasn't with him on the next step.
Speaker: So he was rushing ahead to the next step and I was still here somewhere. And I needed that little bit of time just to process it. And so if he'd asked me at the time, what do you need? Do you want me to talk about it? I might have said, look,
Speaker: let me go for a walk for a little bit. Can I come back? Can I come back in 10 minutes, 15 minutes and then we discuss it just to allow me to also cry? Because for me personally, I grew up in a
Speaker: in a loving home and all the rest of it, but with an Indian family background, mental health is not something we spoke about. It just wasn't a thing. And so if something happened, you kind of moved on and got on with it. And so I'd always had that sort of approach to my life of being strong and stoic and just get through things. In this moment, I wanted nothing more than to cry.
Speaker: That's all I wanted to do. But I also felt that I couldn't cry or I was resisting crying being in this room with my OB. And so I actually needed to go somewhere and cry for a little bit before I could listen to what's next from here.
Speaker: Yeah. And also that information of what's next is important. And so many of us can't take it in. You know, it's actually also really, it's not practical. Like in terms of then you want to know about steps after, those things you still do want to be involved in because it's happening regardless of the shock and the grief and the sadness. So to be able to set us all up for
Speaker: the most appropriate time or at least the best shot of you consuming that information or your partner at least if you are going through this with someone is also just, it seems to me like a responsibility that we are in a sane, a conscious state. I think just as you were talking, one thing that came to me was
Speaker: Even with that information sharing about what's next, I think what I really needed to hear and what I didn't hear at the time and what then affected my experience of the next couple of weeks was not just what happens next in terms of what are the steps, but what happens next in terms of the emotional experience that you're going to go through. What is the emotional experience of waiting to miscarry?
Speaker: versus the emotional experience of having a D &C versus the emotional experience of taking abortion tablets, right? Who can you talk to to understand what these experiences look like? Because, you know, obviously, you know, not every OBA has a lived experience of, you know, having gone through this, but, you know, and probably hasn't experienced anything like these particular circumstances. So,
Speaker: With that in mind, who can you speak to to get an understanding of what that looks like? I find it really powerful nowadays when I do my work as a peer support companion for Pink Elephants where I do have people who come to me and they say,
Speaker: I've miscarried and I'm waiting at the moment and I'm feeling really anxious and I can give them that information to say this is what it's like and advocate for yourself. If you are not able to cope with the anxiety, go and ask for the DNC. Go and ask for the tablets so that you can move past the anxiety. Because for me, I waited for two weeks thinking that if I didn't wait, I was doing something wrong.
Speaker: because that's what had been presented to me as the better option. On that meeting, I really want to talk to that searching for information, searching for emotional information and how important that is to those who go through early pregnancy loss. We know that we published our own report last year and we found that 64 percent of the women that we surveyed wanted access to emotional support and knowing what they were going to feel possibly,
Speaker: the different variants of how they might react to this experience or their experience, normalizing and validating all of those reactions as any of them are okay, as much as they wanted that medical management. And I feel that that's really important that we get that across to those that haven't been through early pregnancy loss, that this is not something that can just be medically managed alone. It needs to have the validation that's needed for the emotional aspect of it. You touched on it a little bit earlier as well about the mental health side for you.
Speaker: And I know that you went and you saw a therapist that maybe helped you kind of go through that process. What were some of those signs that you noticed in yourself that made you feel like I need to speak to someone? I need to get this extra help. And further to that, I'd like to add as well the signs that perhaps you now look back.
Speaker: Because I think the signs that you had, but then the signs when you look back and when you said the postpartum with your thirst, it'd be interesting as well as to know what the signs may have been in hindsight too.
Speaker: Yeah, so I didn't actually reach out to a therapist, and I didn't speak to anyone. But what happened was we had a mental health program that we were running at work. And I was running it, ironically. And so I was liaising with someone who is a specialist in that space.
Speaker: And we were having a catch -up one day about the program. And so this was, I think, after the second loss. And I was chatting to her, and she said to me, in the middle of talking, she said to me, Niti, I just wanted to ask you, is everything OK? You don't seem like yourself.
Speaker: I hadn't thought I was anything but myself in that moment. I kind of had compartmentalized and gone, I'm just, you know, who I am at work, and I can be a mess at home, right? And so when she said that to me, it was, I've described it sometimes as like a sliding doors moment where in my head I went through this
Speaker: like, do I say I'm fine, as I would ordinarily, or do I say I'm not fine, and actually talk about this. And in that moment, I chose to do the latter, and I chose to tell her that actually, no, I'm not fine, and this is what's going on. And it
Speaker: released an avalanche of emotion. And it wasn't just to do with the loss either. It was all this suppressed stuff because even when you talk about the emotional impact of loss, there's an impact on relationships, intimate relationships at that point in time. The burden the pregnancy loss puts on intimate relationships is big as well. All of these kind of things which no one talks to you about.
Speaker: in that moment, and they're so important. And so for me, it was just this moment where I could talk about everything that was happening for me.
Speaker: I felt really vulnerable in that moment, but after talking to her, I felt like this giant way should be released off my shoulders and that I could really breathe again and that I hadn't been breathing for months. Like I'd been holding my breath for such a long time.
Speaker: And it really helped me to see just how important it was to talk about what I was going through, not just with the loss, but just generally. And so for me, that sort of started a journey of being more open with what I'm experiencing and talking about my trauma, talking about my pain and sharing it. And that's what's led me down the path of talking about my losses
Speaker: as well has been that conversation that I had that fundamentally just changed my approach to dealing with grief and dealing with loss. Yeah, you articulate that so beautifully. I read a lot of your LinkedIn content around the way that you explained that as well. There's that ultimate sense of relief when you connect with another who gives you that safe space to truly listen and you can be vulnerable and share where you're at and what you're feeling.
Speaker: I think that, as they're saying around connections, the antidote to isolation, and I feel like that's the first point, and I had that with Gabby. It took Gabby to notice I wasn't coping and that I wasn't okay. She was the one that then advocated for me to get the support I needed. I guess I want listeners to hear that, hear that if you're listening because you've got a loved one of friends going through this, that's something you can do. You can hold a safe space where they can share and be vulnerable and tell you the truth about what they're feeling, but when they're ready.
Speaker: And also, you can empower them to go and ask for further help and support as well, because often when we're sowing these journeys and experiences, we really can't see the wood for the trees. We really can't kind of identify what we need. I'd love your take on that as a therapist, Stacy.
Speaker: Well, I think what I find important about this conversation as a whole, just even branching off what you were talking about from a medical approach and how we do go into these types of experiences, very segregated. And I really want to just redefine this idea of mental health being separate to health, separate to medical health.
Speaker: Mental health is health. It is medical health. Because the system hasn't quite caught up with the information and the research or paying much attention to what we have, doesn't mean it is separate to our health system or our health. So this word, holistic health, is not a woo -woo term. This is evidence -based
Speaker: information we have about how the body copes and also how the body responds physically. They are not segregated. It is an integrated system we live in, this human body. I think it's also really important to acknowledge that as a beginning point. I think those conversations, whether you're a friend that might offer the emotional support or perhaps
Speaker: find maybe someone locally that they could talk to from an emotional perspective, coming from a place that we as a society are picking up that slack for each other, that our community hasn't quite got there yet. This is something that we know is actually really, really missed. And I think it even goes back to, say for example, you do go through fertility treatment of clients that will often come in and talk to me about
Speaker: Side effects, even when they're talking about prescribed Western medicine, there are side effects that will talk about the emotional qualities, the emotional side, the mood swings, the mania, the psychosis, the lack of sleep. But they're not something that is often really presented. It's more you might get cramps. You might have a headache.
Speaker: The emotional side of sex seem to be very much still segregated from, even though they're on the piece of paper and they're there. So I think we really need to kind of take a step back and actually understand why. So then it empowers us to perhaps behave or act differently for those around us because our system is not quite there yet.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's really interesting. I actually saw my OB the other day, and I was talking to him about the fact that I'm doing a little bit in this space now. And I felt like a child having this conversation, by the way. I felt really nervous about talking to him about the fact that I was doing this now.
Speaker: But it was really interesting as I was talking to him about how important it is to talk about loss and how important in the workplace it is for people to hold space for those who have suffered loss. And he said to me, but not a lot of people want to talk about it in the workplace. And it was interesting to me because it made me think, that's a really interesting assumption that you hold, right? And where has that assumption come from?
Speaker: Because I honestly, even though I was scared to talk about it, I wanted to talk about it. And I didn't feel I could talk about it with my friends because they didn't get it. I didn't feel I could talk about it with my family because we'd never had those conversations.
Speaker: I had some of those conversations with my sister who had been through some of her own experiences. I had some of those conversations with a friend who was going through her own journey. But there were very few people I felt I could talk to about what I was going through. And you also feel like you're going to burden people
Speaker: with your pain, you feel that people are not going to want to hear you. You feel like people are going to think that you should have moved on. My partner very much was off the school of thought of, well, it wasn't meant to be so we've just got to move on and it is what it is.
Speaker: Let's focus on what's next. And you know, he was obviously grieving in his very own separate way and didn't really know how to hold space for my own grief. But it's like this assumption that we have that people don't want to talk. It's so flawed. I mean, especially in my work as a peer support companion.
Speaker: It's people, women who want to talk about what they're experiencing, and I don't think it's just women. I think men want to speak about it too. I remember when I first wrote about my pregnancy losses on LinkedIn, and it was the first time I'd spoken publicly about it. I'd been wanting to speak about it publicly for ages before then.
Speaker: written the story in my head beforehand. And so I'd say it out loud in the shower randomly and my daughter thought I was mad at the time. But I had this story all ready to go and row search. And what amazed me afterwards was the number of men that reached out to me in messages.
Speaker: to say thank you for sharing what you shared. We had a pregnancy loss and I felt so helpless. I couldn't support my partner through what they were experiencing and I had my own grief but I didn't know how to deal with that either. And so it's not a gender specific thing either in terms of an experience at an emotional level as well. And I think that's another thing we often forget
Speaker: in the mix is how does this impact both people in the relationship if there are two people in the relationship. So, you know, I just think there's so much here to be unpacked in terms of the assumptions that are made about what people want and don't want and what they need and don't need in the moment.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think back to that point of your colleague or who it was that said, you know, people don't want to talk. I think we also need to look at it as talking works really differently, particularly if you then start to engage workers with a professional, whatever that looks like for you.
Speaker: It's their job to find ways to support you. I have to be really innovative and really susceptible at what my client needs. That is not one way. So I think there's many ways to discuss, many ways to be heard, many ways to tell your story. It might mean that you go into a session and talk for the 45 minutes about your dog and then the last 20, you know,
Speaker: 30 seconds you happen to bring something. It doesn't look a certain way. So I think we've got this idea that people don't want to talk because they don't want to be someone that maybe broadcasts it on social media perhaps, which again, is very therapeutic for some. It looks different. So allow, we need to allow professionals
Speaker: to really be given the chance to do their job and to understand that their job is to find ways for that to work for individuals. It's not a one -way conversation here.
Speaker: It's an individual conversation. I'll challenge that with research as well. So we did a piece of research in 2021 with the University of Sydney. We interviewed 607 women on the return to work experience after a miscarriage within the last two years.
Speaker: prior to that 2021, and the majority disclosed to their workplace and wanted to talk about it. So that is a complete opposite of what this pervasive silence of miscarriage tells us that no one wants to talk about it. It's its own echo chamber, making the same thing happen again, but if you actually ask women,
Speaker: what they want and what they did. They are now telling their workplaces. And the reason that they were telling the workplace wasn't again an assumption that they wanted more support for them. It was actually really generous. It was to change it for the next generation. It was so that if anyone else in their workplace went through a loss experience, that they were met with clearer policies for bereavement leave, more awareness and understanding, less stigma and shame.
Speaker: On that, on policies, what are your thoughts around having clear bereavement leave policies specific to early pregnancy loss within workplaces?
Speaker: Oh, I think it's incredibly important. I think even when the laws change, thanks to the work that you did at Pink Elephants, and we now have the days of leave that people can avail themselves of. One of the things I think that struck me about that was just how it would open up a conversation.
Speaker: Because even though two days may not be anywhere near enough to process what you've gone through, it allows people to start having the conversation about what they're experiencing if that's where they want to go. And so I think that's really important. But I think alongside policy, and I say this with respect to anything because I do a lot of work in the diversity space as well, policy is for me only the first step.
Speaker: A policy is a piece of paper that gives people information about what they have available to them in terms of options. But without cultural change that accompanies the policy, the policy can become meaningless. And so for me, what's really important in this space is how are we leaning into people having these conversations?
Speaker: What happens when someone comes to a manager and says, this is what I'm experiencing? Do they know how to have the conversation? What do they say? What do they not say? Do they know how to hold silence?
Speaker: Do they know how to be supportive for this person? And not be a counselor, not act as someone who needs to fix things for this person, but be able to hold space for them in that moment. And so for me, that is important. It's how do we start having those types of conversations in the workplace? Because grief, pregnancy loss, any sort of trauma and pain,
Speaker: They're one of the conversations that most people struggle with the most. I remember the first time I experienced death in my life, suddenly a lot of my friends were nowhere to be seen. And it wasn't because they weren't good friends, it was because they thought I needed space. And they didn't know how to have the conversation.
Speaker: And we're not taught how to have these conversations. As children, as adults, it's not a conversation we know how to have. We might intuitively pick up some of it over time through our own experiences and the experiences of those around us, but we're never taught how to have them. And so I think that, to me, is the important piece of this. So you can have the policy
Speaker: But what accompanies the policy in terms of the conversation and the training? It's equipping everyone within organizations to have hard conversations. These are not easy conversations to be able to understand how to give that safe space to people when they need it. And that takes a level of understanding that needs to come from a program bespoke to that. I love that you've brought that up.
Speaker: So we are intentional with the miscarriage rebellion this is time now for those of us who want to have had experiences of early pregnancy loss to really get loud to really show the truth of our experience to challenge those false narratives like you've just shared to your own story.
Speaker: to make people realize the truth of our experience so that we can invoke some empathy but incite some real action because it's not moving quick enough. So the magic one question, if you could change one thing within the system that could change the experience for bereaved parents facing the loss of a baby today, what would that be?
Speaker: I think we've already touched on it, but I think for me it's that initial moment when you find out about your loss and the support that's provided from an emotional and mental health perspective at that point in time. I think having those resources, knowing where you can turn to, knowing what things might be like. And I'm really thankful and grateful for the work that you do at Pinkulgence because I think
Speaker: It's such an amazing service for people to have access to. I only wish that I had access to it when I'd gone through my own losses, that it existed at that point in time. But I think for me, it's really changing that part of the conversation and just knowing how
Speaker: to support people in those conversations at that point in time so that they feel that they have at least some knowledge about what they might experience and they know who to turn to, they know who to talk to, where to go for support. I think for me, that's one of the things that would change the most.
Speaker: Did you know 74 % of women who suffer a miscarriage report feeling unsupported by those around them? This includes workplaces. The chances are high that someone in your workplace is being impacted by miscarriage and or fertility struggles right now.
Speaker: Pink Elephant's workplace support program has been designed to help you give your people the opportunity to grieve their loss by providing them the support, empathy and understanding they need.
Speaker: For more information, visit pinkelephants .org .au or email contact at pinkelephantsupport .com. Now let's get back to today's episode and hear more about Pink Elephant's Workplace Support Program as Sam chats to the Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing at QBE, Katherine McNair.
Speaker: So today we have the pleasure of having Catherine McNair, who we've had the incredible privilege of working with for the number of years in partnership with Pink elephants. Catherine is the Head of Diversity and Inclusion at QBE. We love the opportunities that we have to work with QBE and the difference we get to make, but we think it's important to allow you to share what those are. So maybe we could start with how QBE has embedded the Pink elephants workplace program across the whole business.
Speaker: Fantastic. Thanks, Shannon. Well, first of all, as a family -friendly accredited organisation, we recognise that families come in all shapes and sizes, facing their own unique sets of circumstances and experiences. And this will, of course, recognise those that sadly experience pregnancy loss.
Speaker: So we know through the work of Pink Elephant how lonely this experience can be and where I workplace support raising awareness and understanding and having people with lived experience to speak to is critical. So our work started back with yourselves, think the fabulous Pink Elephant support team back in 2021, where we'll just check the time to listen and learn about what would make a positive impact for parents who had experience loss.
Speaker: And we knew from other programs of work, we had to leave it. How important it is to work with subject matter expense. So having pink helicopters, our workplace partners was absolutely critical.
Speaker: So there are a couple of things we do. Our review started with our policy, and this was our paid parental leave policy, where we really wanted to make sure that our people in the workplace that experienced loss had access to the same period of time. So the current paid parental leave of 12 weeks
Speaker: So the starting point was really to make sure our language and terminology was current. It was correct. The language was inclusive. It reflected all families, LGBTIQ +, single parents, birth parents, partner parents.
Speaker: And that a royal differentiator was that this policy reflected the experience, which is that it is not a moment in time that there needs to be time to physically, emotionally and mentally heal. That there are going to be ongoing anniversaries, future pregnancies, ongoing fertility treatment potentially, scans, and other moments where people just need the time to take a moment.
Speaker: It's also important to remember that the experience is really diverse. Medically, it's incredibly diverse, but also in terms of the individual experience, it may be one loss or it may be multiple losses. That isn't anything anybody needs to know, but your policy really needs to reflect that the experience is different for everybody and the support people are going to need needs to really be tailored to what that family is going through.
Speaker: I did mention partners, but I think what we learned from parents... Oh, sorry. We nearly said parents at work, don't you understand?
Speaker: What we learned through Pink Elephant was the importance of specifically calling out partners. So partners who may not be embarrassed, and of course the emotion of loss and the need to not only support themselves, which may be very different from how their partner is going through their grief process, but the time to support their partner as well.
Speaker: So the next thing we knew was, you know, promising can be great, but how do you bring it to life? So there were a couple of things we did after that. One was to create curated content. We did this again with pink elephants. Pink elephants through their workplace support program have a whole raft of resources.
Speaker: sources to people readers, for employees. These range from videos to tip sheets to people sharing their experiences to conversation guides and really making sure that just having a policy on its own really was indicative of the fact that people are going to want to know more, they're going to need to educate themselves. So where do they go for that type of information?
Speaker: So we have a Working Families Hub, which really reflects the diverse needs of all of our people. It speaks to elder care, early pregnancy loss, menopause, really everything and anything that working families may experience. And that's really a hub of information that people can go to as and when they want further information on this topic. And a really important one, I think, for people to be further educated on.
Speaker: And one of the most important things with a policy is how you bring it to life. And we know that bringing it to life is through shared stories and having people who are courageous enough to share their lived experience. So one of the most important things that we were able to bring to life
Speaker: through the Pink Elephants Workplace Support Program was standing up what we call our QBE Pink Elephants Peer Support Program, which are a couple of very courageous and brave QBE employees who have come forward to share their lived experience
Speaker: Why that's important is the policy is one thing, but bringing it to life with people that are likely not to have had the same experience, but a shared experience of loss. One, it normalises the conversation. It helps people to see that there are others that have had a similar experience.
Speaker: And it also acknowledges that people in the workplace may not have even shared that they are pregnant or their partner is pregnant. And so how do you talk about it with your team or your people leader when you're actually talking about what should be happy news has now
Speaker: You know, the topic is quite different and it's a really challenging one. So there are a whole range of circumstances, of course, that we're going to come across in the workplace. People may have shared the means and now they are going to need support through that conversation. They may not have shared the means and they know that they've engaged in one of the pink elephant, our peer support.
Speaker: context in the workplace. Equally, this initiative has been so incredibly important to people leaders to go to, to help to understand how do I have a conversation with someone in my team in a respectful way, in a way that really makes the person feel that their loss is acknowledged.
Speaker: and that we can tailor our response to their needs. Some people will want to speak about it and others won't. And how do we also support people in the team who may have a partner who have gone through this loss?
Speaker: Two other things that we did. One was then bringing that to life in terms of a quarterly support circle. So, in the first instance in standing up, the peer support network was making sure that that team have ongoing support and capability built through pink elephants. That's really important to make sure that it's not just a set and forget that there's ongoing support.
Speaker: And that like a lot of topics where this is a lived experience of some is making sure that the information you have is current and correct and that it's maintained and that it's up to date with the latest research, but also we know terminology and language can shift. So it's really important to make sure that that peer support network has the emotional support they need, but also in terms of facts and anything else.
Speaker: that Pink elephants are able to bring to the table. And what we did this year, which I'm really proud to share and has been received so well, is we've opened up those forums to now have quarterly support circles. These are now offered to all of our employees. They are hosted by Pink elephants and the QBE peer support network.
Speaker: And they just provide a safe space for people who may have the lived experience to come and be supported and have their experience validated or equally for people who want to learn about this topic, maybe a friend or a family member or a team member, and they just want to know more about it. So each one of these quarterly forums is focused on a different topic.
Speaker: It just enables people to drop in and out as they want to. You can see in terms of the impact that this is having that the people who are there really appreciate it. There are lots of questions and we do get people sharing their experiences. I think it just provides a safe space for people to share.
Speaker: to emotionally connect, but also to know that there is support in the workplace. And by just having a foreign and a visible presence, it's just another way of normalising the conversation, of giving people confidence in how to talk about this topic, but equally confidence to people to feel safe, to speak up and to seek out the support they might need.
Speaker: So we've touched a little bit, we could hear some of the benefits of those people, the ability to feel, seen and connected in a workplace and understand the language. Maybe you could talk us through what some of the benefits you've seen, I have in place are.
Speaker: Absolutely. I've really realised this into four key benefits. The first one, I think, is raising awareness and understanding is critical. What we rarely allege through pink skeletons is I think we all come to this topic with what we think we know, but in fact, there is
Speaker: so much complexity to this topic. So awareness and understanding is really critical in debunking what we think we know about this topic and really taking the time to, you don't need to know the ins and outs of every
Speaker: kind of loss. What you do need to know is that it is incredibly diverse. Don't make assumptions about that person's experience and just listen and understand the support they need. The second thing I would say is it gives people confidence to speak up so equally by providing simple resources such as conversation gamut that might seem like, oh, you know,
Speaker: what's in a conversation guide. There are so many simple things that pink elephants share about. Here are the helpful things to say. And here are some things that can potentially be harmful. So what no one wants to do is add to the load, especially when they think they're being kind. So this really enables team members and people leaders to support with confidence.
Speaker: So that doesn't mean you're always going to get it right. But what it does mean is that people will try. And the other thing we know that saying nothing actually adds to the load and it minimizes the experience of loss.
Speaker: The third thing I would say is that it supports a culture where respect, safety and validation, that we are all individuals and our experience of that being individual is foundational. And that's really important regardless of whether this is your experience or not. Particularly with this experience, the grieving process
Speaker: Again, we don't know what people's experience is. Is this one loss? Is this multiple losses? We don't know what the compounding factors are. So to have someone to tell you about their sister -in -law or their friend or share another experience that's completely differentiable is not what is needed at this point in time. So that point about really making sure that people understand this is an individual experience.
Speaker: And I think the first benefit is about a culture of care. So we are all going to have various needs at various life stages. So this is one of those very important moments for people. And so to really understand that support is there for you. And again, I know I've referenced multiple lessons, but
Speaker: It is acknowledging that for some people that will be their experience and so it may be that they need to access the support at various times and knowing that that's why that support is there.
Speaker: A little bit. I love the cultural piece, and I think it is one of the benefits. Definitely. Amazing. If we can touch on policy and why it's important to have clear policies that are inclusive to issues like pregnancy loss. Yeah.
Speaker: So as a first point, I would say when we're thinking about any policy is to make sure it's inclusive. What I mean by that is that they are reflective of the diversity of all of your employees, all of the families that we're all a member of and reflect the unique needs of your people. And so what that should mean is that there shouldn't be any policy where someone needs to ask if it actually includes them.
Speaker: And I would also say that includes the partners of people who have experienced loss as well. But if we just go back to that baseline, if you need to ask a question about a policy about whether this applies to me or my family or my circumstances, I would just say, take a look at that policy and get some other people to read it.
Speaker: get some feedback on the policy about how it could be made more inclusive. And of course, pink elephants, if you're looking at the experience of loss of subject matter experts in this space, and we're invaluable when we were reviewing our policy, but also how you frame it in the language news so that, you know, I sometimes describe our policies as, you know, you feel you're getting a hug. And that's really hard when you're writing a policy that can seem very clinical,
Speaker: But it's really important that policies are written through a people -centred approach or with people at the centre. So I would say with policies, what is really important, and again, Pink Elephant's got some really fantastic advice on this, is that your policies are clear and supportive and don't inadvertently add to the load of loss.
Speaker: and grief that your people are already experiencing. So it's important the policy is flexible. It can be taken over a period of time. The language reflects the experience of loss and that it's more than a moment in time that you're not going to potentially, depending on who you are or what your experience is,
Speaker: you're not going to be all okay when you come back. We know this requires physical recovery, mental recovery, emotional recovery, and a policy that really calls out the leaders intended to be taken at the time of recovery, but also as you need it for those days that are coming ahead. And we mentioned this before around
Speaker: future pregnancies, appointments, anniversaries, perhaps someone sharing news in your team about their pregnancy. You know, you're not going to be showing up as your best the next day. And that's not to say everyone will need that kind of support. But what it is saying is that we're all individuals and that that support is there as needed.
Speaker: I think it's also important in your policy to make sure you include residual pathways that people may not know exist because this may be the first time that they are considering the support they may need for themselves or someone else, including pink elephants.
Speaker: including referral pathways such as pink elephants, your employee assistance program and there are many other external supports that you can include. Of course for us we include our pink elephants peer support network within our policy as well but anything and everything that will provide people support at their time is needed.
Speaker: People don't talk about it, but it's happening behind closed doors, hidden behind smiling faces. There are so many people suffering in silence right now, unable to access the support that they need and deserve, simply because they don't even know that there is support available.
Speaker: The pink elephants community is made up of people from all over Australia. Some come from the big smoke, others from the bush. Some of us have heaps of friends and family around. Others have none. Some have lost babies at five weeks. Some had ectopic pregnancies.
Speaker: Some had multiple ultrasounds. Others only ever saw the two red lines on a positive pregnancy test. But we all have something in common. We have all lost a baby. We are all bereaved parents.
Speaker: There are estimated to be over 100 ,000 of us across Australia every single year. Please help us connect with these people to give them the support that they deserve. No one should have to lose a baby and be left on their own to navigate their grief. Help Pink Elephant support more bereaved parents. Visit pinkelephants .org .au
Speaker: I love hearing Niti's story because Niti's been connected to Pink Elephant for such a long time. As most of you know, she's a Pink Elephant's peer support companion and she is very articulate on LinkedIn about her experiences of early pregnancy loss. And I think it lands so well on LinkedIn because we don't normally share those stories there, right?
Speaker: We can only talk about these private experiences of women in the workplace. I feel these stories need to be shared because hopefully, we'll foster more empathy and understanding for other women who may or may not be going through this experience in a workplace. We've got this opportunity here to maybe unpack what you hear, Stacy, from clients in your setting. What do they tell you about this juggle of managing work?
Speaker: deadlines, everything else that goes on in that life whilst also trying to build a family and maybe having fertility challenges or pregnancy losses. In the practice it was interesting the word juggle because it felt like it didn't resonate with a lot of the clients that I've worked with and anecdotally just even hearing about how people personally approach their workplace after a loss or in that process of figuring out whether they are having a loss because let's not forget there's often a lead up
Speaker: Um, for a lot of, for a lot of people, but with my clients, I feel like the one thing that's really consistent is there's not a juggle. It's a double life. So it's actually on and off. And a lot of them are coming into the practice and trying to find a way. There's actually not often a space for them to even remotely consider integrating that actually they're trying to find a way to survive living as a person that they're not.
Speaker: And it is incredibly damaging. It's also incredibly difficult because it often means that by putting forward a, you know, kind of a tougher exterior or even a fake exterior, it's almost more likely that there's an unraveling.
Speaker: You know because there isn't there isn't an ability to unravel it's almost like there isn't an option so I think what I. Have noticed that we haven't even got to a point where there is a contact one person that most of my clients are feeling like they can speak to.
Speaker: I think the other thing that I really observed from this episode was how inconvenient and awful and, I guess, unspoken about the actual physical and the physicality elements are of working with your body through loss. You know, we heard the story of Niti talking about the airport scenario. And, you know, I've obviously heard so many of these experiences
Speaker: in my practice of just all kind of it. I'm on the sideline of my other child's soccer game. I'm on the train. I'm realizing that I'm bleeding and I'm taking a PowerPoint presentation in front of 20 other people. You know, these are just some of the physical experiences that women are going through when it comes to a loss that takes them by surprise.
Speaker: So this episode really took me to that harrowing part of this story that we don't speak about. Not just the shame of the emotional shame, but the embarrassment. I mean, look at how we deal with periods and if we had a bit of blood on our school uniform, how we would cope with that. It was like we have to go home. So society hasn't changed much from those times. So experiencing that and having all of the shame about how we deal with
Speaker: blood and how we deal with women's bodies is just also another factor to this story that I feel like needs to be acknowledged. Yeah. I feel like on top of the blood, there's that waiting that people don't understand more. There's this perception that miscarriage happens quick and it is full of blood, not always. Some women will have - Not often, yeah. Yeah. Miscarriage, they'll fight.
Speaker: and a sonography scam that their baby has no heartbeat, and then they'll choose to wait for what's referred to as a natural miscarriage to pass that baby when their body's ready. But that could mean they've got two weeks where they're still presenting at work, knowing that their baby has passed away, but no one really knows that they're pregnant. It's an incredible wait, Harry.
Speaker: and alone having that fear of, when am I going to start bleeding? What happens when I am giving that presentation to others? What happens if it's at this point in a way it's a lot? And I feel like we need to tell these stories so that workplaces and people that work, real people who work within these workplaces, like all of us do, we have working lives, but
Speaker: hear them and think of, oh, yeah, actually what they deserve there at this point is. And that's obviously why we brought Catherine onto this episode from QBE as well. Best practice example in terms of what they offer for their people are those one -on -one peer support companions. So those are trusted individuals who work within QBE, who've been through Lost Themselves, but have also been through a Pink Elephant's training program.
Speaker: You can be those people that you can go to and say hey this is what's happening to me how can i manage my return to work what does this look like for me what options are open to me what support what policies and having inclusive policies as well like making sure that it's really clear that it's okay to take this amount of leave this is what's happened to you.
Speaker: Because by having a policy that is inclusive and very clear that everyone feels seen and validated within, you're opening up the access for support as well and making it more culturally appropriate that they will ask for that support. There's so much to do this. It's not just one thing or another. But as always, really, really grateful for Niti for showing her personal story because it is hard to do, particularly for a workplace lens, and for Catherine for joining us and sharing what they do as well.
Speaker: If anyone is looking to kind of incite some change in their workplace, feel free. There will be links in the show notes to Pink Elephant's workplace program. You're welcome to introduce us to HR, to DNI, and we can have those conversations. Similarly, if you're listening yourself and you're looking for support, again, the links are all in the show notes. You're not alone. You are exactly why we're here, raising awareness and making a difference in this space.
Speaker: Today's episode may have brought up some feelings for you that you need some support around. That's totally okay. Head to pinkelephants .org .au to find access to our circle of support, your safe space where you can be met with empathy and understanding throughout all of your experiences of early pregnancy loss. We're here for you. You are not alone. If you enjoyed listening to the miscarriage rebellion, please help us by leaving a five star review wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker: The Miscarriage Rebellion is a Pink Elephants podcast, produced by our friends at 3P Studio.
