HARD TO BEAR

Investigating the science and silence of miscarriage

Hard to Bear investigates how and why we are failing people who experience pregnancy loss and provides a roadmap for how we can do better. Miscarriage is incredibly common, yet far too often dismissed or mismanaged in all iterations of care: medical, psychological and societal. These failures compound and magnify the trauma felt by thousands of people every year. Perhaps it's a busy doctor who thoughtlessly dismisses their patient's physical or mental pain, or an emergency department falling short of best-practice care, or a psychologist failing to identify the depths of their patient's anxiety or grief. It might even be the patient's own friends and family who don't quite know what to say, so they say the worst things, compounding sorrow and loss.

Hard to Bear combines personal stories, with in-depth investigative journalism to help us understand how the system is letting women down, and what we can do to change it.

Isabelle Oderberg has worked as a journalist for two decades in newswires across Europe, Asia and Australia, where she was the country's first social media editor for Melbourne's Herald Sun. Her work has appeared in The Age/SMH, Guardian, ABC, Meanjin and elsewhere. She also worked as a media and communications strategist across the notfor-profit sector. Hard to Bear is her first book.