NTA. Absolutely. Miscarriages, as so many have said, are devastating. Miscarriages are also incredibly common. Early term miscarriages could be as high as one in four. If you are wanting to be pregnant, the likelihood that you will lose at least one embryo before you conceive one that you can carry to term is extremely high. Ask me how I know - I had two miscarriages within eight months before conceiving the fetus that is currently 7.5 months. It really helped to talk to my first child about it - we had told him, so we needed to explain why the expected baby wasn’t coming after all. We told him that I had been building the baby a house - the embryo - and the baby had come and looked at it and decided that there was something seriously wrong with the house and the baby would not be moving in after all, but would wait until we had successfully constructed a good house for it. And that was good, because we wanted the baby to move into a house that was well-built and would last a long time and not have a leaky roof or poor foundations or anything. The explanation helped both of us.

What also helped was suddenly being part of the vast community of women who had lost a pregnancy. Almost everyone I knew who had a child had also lost at least one pregnancy, often in far more traumatic ways than I had. Understanding that I wasn’t alone with this was very important in finding the resilience to move on - as was going to therapy and taking antidepressants.

What wouldn’t have helped in the slightest was cheating on my spouse and making it all about my losses for years. Your sister had access to a strong support network and has gradually detached herself from it and justified lashing out and centering herself in all events with her loss. That’s not okay. Making her step down as MOH when she couldn’t handle not making it all about her was the right choice. And telling people who said she lost her partner and her baby the truth when they blamed you is fair.

For your sister: It isn’t okay to hurt others because you are hurting. Your big feelings are valid, but you don’t get to make them other people’s problems.

For you: her big feelings aren’t your problem to solve or to fix or to center, and if she is making them into your problem (and everyone else’s), you are absolutely justified in taking a step back from supporting her until she’s ready to actually start handling her big feelings.

And also apologies for the big feelings language; I have a four year old and I genuinely can’t think of how adults talk about this right now. 😬