Sharon Gaffka has heartbreakingly revealed she felt like a “failure” after suffering a miscarriage.
Just six months after appearing on ITV’s Love Island, Sharon, now 29, started to display symptoms of a miscarriage while out walking her dog, close to her parents home in Oxfordshire. Initially, the former civil servant felt felt sharp “shooting pains” in her abdomen before noticing that she had started bleeding.
Concerned, she contacted her GP after the pain and sickness became too much for her and was advised to go straight to the hospital. Upon arrival, Sharon was sent to the gynaecology department and was sat in a waiting room surrounded by women who had recently given birth to their newborns.
This, she says, added to her “trauma” while suffering her loss. During her time at the hospital, Sharon’s bleeding became so severe that nursing staff gave her a nappy to wear in a bid to absorb the bleeding. But due to her work as a freelance content creator, Sharon took her laptop with her and continue to work throughout the painful ordeal.
In a new interview, she has bravely recalled the memories of the incident after a blood test confirmed she was no longer pregnant – all while attempting to continue with a spreadsheet. At the time, Sharon was advised to take painkillers and to rest up to help alleviate the pain.
Speaking of the traumatic day, she told MailOnline: “I felt very mixed emotions. In a way, I felt a bit of a relief because I hadn’t planned to be pregnant. But I also felt such sadness, shame and guilt. Society says a woman’s purpose is to be able to reproduce and I thought, ‘Am I a failure as a woman, because I can’t do this one thing?'”
After being discharged from hospital, Sharon refused to tell her family over fears that they would judge her for having suffered a loss. “I was so paranoid about public opinion, I was so afraid of people finding out that I had ‘failed’,” she said, before adding: “I felt as though I didn’t deserve to feel grief. I didn’t deserve to feel sad about it. Am I allowed to feel sad?”
Having suffered alone and feeling isolated, the star spoke to her friends in a group chat and explained what had happened, which enabled them to open up for the first time about their own miscarriages. But it took over a year for Sharon to publicly reveal the secret trauma that she had endured.
Taking to Instagram on August 15, 2023, she said she had been “trying to find the strength” to open up and had been “healing” from the past 18 months. Captioning her upload which saw her crying, Sharon said: “I want to start by saying that everyone’s healing process is different. The foetus I miscarried would’ve been celebrating their first birthday this week. Which hit me like a train and I have surprisingly found it incredibly tough to function as I normally would.
“Miscarriage affects 1 in 4 women in the UK. While I know I’m not the only one to have experience such loss, I’ve struggled with finding a space where the unique emotional journey that those who don’t envision motherhood in their future go through when facing such a loss, being talked about openly.”
She added: “My healing process has had to come in stages, weirdly one of the things I was the most scared about was people finding out and having strangers comment on it. But once those feelings passed, I’ve had to contend with feelings of failure. How as such an ‘accomplished’ woman – can I be a failure? I can only put it down to societal norms that as a woman, this is what my body ‘is supposed to do’, which has only amplified the grief.
“Breaking the silence surrounding miscarriage is crucial. For individuals who don’t want children, opening up these conversations can lead to validation, understanding, and a sense of community. Putting this into the public domain isn’t for sympathy, it’s for my own healing so thank you for reading this far if you did.”
Currently, there is no legislation in England for women to be offered statutory bereavement leave for miscarriage, which the NHS states is the loss of a pregnancy in the first 23 weeks. Instead, women are forced to rely on sick leave, or the kind nature of their bosses. Meanwhile, partners of women who suffer a miscarriage are not entitled to any bereavement leave.
This, is something that Sharon is keen to raise awareness of. Sarah Owen, Labour MP for Luton North previously spoke about her own experience in the House of Commons and called for a change in the law. Last year, baby loss certificates came into place, with women being able to have a memory of the child they have lost.
If you have been affected by this story, advice and support can be found at the Miscarriage Association. You can call them on 01924 200799 or email info@miscarriageassociation.org.uk
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