How tattoos became the ultimate conversation starter about miscarriage

Amy Duncan’s husband Christopher had already booked to have another tattoo added to his sleeve when the couple found out they had lost another pregnancy – the second of what would become three losses. Instead of cancelling the appointment, the pair went together and while at the studio they booked two more sessions.

Duncan, of Sydney’s Sutherland Shire, planned to replicate her first and only other tattoo: the tiny feet of a girl lost at 16 weeks. The footprints were taken by a nurse at the hospital who stamped them onto cardboard for Duncan to keep. Now, after losing her second pregnancy, another set of feet was tattooed onto her other ankle.

For the 38-year-old, these tattoos are emblematic of an increasingly popular way to commemorate pregnancy losses.

Amy Duncan at her home. Credit: Louise Kennerley

Deb de Wilde, an obstetric social worker at the Mater Hospital in Sydney, has spent 35 years working with women who experience miscarriage, stillbirth and the death of newborns. She says this trend is increasingly common among the patients she sees and that it illustrates a generational shift in acknowledging this kind of grief.

“Until relatively recent times, people were expected to manage a loss in pregnancy whenever it occurred stoically and in private and that often the remedy for the loss of a pregnancy was simply to get pregnant again,” she says. “Now we have a much greater understanding of the complexity of emotions that follow a pregnancy loss, and we know it’s not as simple as replacing a pregnancy or a baby with another pregnancy or another baby.”

“A significant proportion of families I see would get some kind of tattoo. They want this marker on their skin to reflect the significance of that relationship of all that it meant and continues to mean to them throughout their lifetime.”

Duncan knew instantly that she wanted a tattoo to commemorate her first miscarriage, even though she had never had a tattoo before. “I hadn’t had any at that stage and – I don’t know why – it just seemed to be the most permanent way to commemorate the baby we had just lost,” she says.

Duncan and her husband also got plants at the local cemetery to commemorate the loss but she says her tattoos gave her more peace of mind. “No matter what I do in life, they’re with me. If I lose everything, they’re still there.”

Amy Duncan has two tattoos to represent two of her three pregnancy losses. She plans to get another soon.Credit: Louise Kennerley

A generational shift

For Geelong-based Anna Clausen, 33, her tattoo serves as a reminder of her fourth miscarriage. After two miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy, Clausen and her partner were expecting for a fourth time. In December 2022, they reached their 13-week scan – the furthest along they had gotten in a pregnancy.

After Clausen miscarried, it was her mother-in-law’s idea to get a tattoo to commemorate it. She chose three flowers: a daisy, which was the name she gave to the baby she had lost; a daffodil for the month she had lost her and a sprig of gypsophila, commonly known as baby’s breath.

For Clausen, whose tattoo is on her forearm, the public nature of it is significant. Her grandmother had seven pregnancies that ended in miscarriage or stillbirth and didn’t talk about them, as it wasn’t common to do so at the time. “It wasn’t really spoken about. That was just the way it was,” says Clausen. “I feel like I can make a little bit of a difference if I talk about it.”

Lara Melrose, 32, has the number 24 in Roman numerals tattooed onto her wrist. It represents the day she met her husband, the day she got married and the day she lost her pregnancy.Credit: Lara Melrose

Amanda Tipping, general manager of Pink Elephants, an organisation that offers resources and peer support for those who have experienced early pregnancy loss, says many of the people she sees getting these kinds of tattoos are doing so to “share and reduce that stigma” surrounding miscarriage.

Wollongong-based Natalie Bull, 43, wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate her first miscarriage but put it off when she fell pregnant again. However, after her third pregnancy loss, she booked an appointment. The three feathers on her forearm have the dates of each loss and they are the first and only tattoos that she has. When she got them, she asked the tattoo artist to leave room in case she lost any more.

“Everyone kept saying plant a flower, plant a tree or something and I thought, ‘well, when that dies, that’s me going to be feeling guilty for that memorial for something that’s passed’,” she says.

“And it opens up the story for other people to ask ‘what does that symbolise?’, which then helps me own my story even more.”

However, these kinds of tattoos aren’t always there to spark conversation.

Lara Melrose, 32, doesn’t tell everyone the meaning behind the small tattoo on her wrist. Matching with her partner who has a similar tattoo, Melrose, of the Gold Coast, had 24 in Roman numerals. “My husband and I met on the 24th, we got married on the 24th and the date that we lost our son was on the 24th,” she says.

Melrose’s husband also has the same tattoo and, when people ask, they can choose whether to talk about their loss or not.

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