Ahmeda Ali is a GP and an Assistant Scheme Director of Northeast ICGP Training Scheme based in Ireland. She has a special interest in bereavement care, and reflective practice in medical education. This piece is written in memory of her daughter, Alma, who died in December 2024.
I lost my daughter Alma in a pregnancy that began with hope and ended in heartbreak. As a general practitioner and medical educator, I believed I understood grief. I had sat across from countless patients whose pregnancies ended in silence. I had listened as they spoke through tears of miscarriages, terminations, stillbirths. I had closed the door gently to give them privacy. I had written sick notes, arranged referrals, handed over tissues.
As a general practitioner and medical educator, I believed I understood grief.
But nothing prepared me for the hollowing loss of Alma. Nothing taught me how to keep functioning—prescribing, diagnosing, listening—while feeling like a piece of my very self-had been torn away and buried forever.
On paper, pregnancy loss is a clinical event. But in reality, it is a quiet unraveling. For parents, it is not just the loss of a pregnancy—it is the loss of a future imagined in soft blankets and birthday candles. It is the disappearance of a name you whispered into the night, long before you ever spoke it aloud. Alma was never abstract to me. She was real, loved, named. She was not just a pregnancy—she was my daughter. She had a place in our family, and a future we had already begun to see.
Her absence is not empty. It is a heavy presence I carry daily. And yet, only six weeks after she died, I returned to work. It felt like stepping into a parallel life—one where everything looked the same, but nothing felt right. The familiar stethoscope around my neck now felt impossibly heavy. Every positive pregnancy test I confirmed brought a complex wave of emotion—genuine happiness for my patients, yes, but also a piercing grief. I saw Alma in every early scan, every hopeful smile, every patient who quietly said, “I think I might be losing the baby.”
As GPs, we are taught to create professional boundaries, to compartmentalise. But what happens when the grief in the room is your own? When your trauma is mirrored in the stories unfolding around you?
I began to notice just how deeply pregnancy loss weaves through general practice—hidden behind vague complaints, unspoken until gently invited into the open. Women would present for “something else,” then crumble when asked a simple “How are you?” And I didn’t just understand their pain—I felt it, closely.
As a GP educator, I confronted a different kind of silence: the near absence of pregnancy loss from our training curriculum. We prepare our trainees to manage crises, to give bad news, to stabilise emergencies. But we rarely prepare them to sit quietly with a woman whose world has just fallen apart. We don’t teach them how to hold space for miscarriage, for stillbirth, for loss that cannot be fixed—only witnessed.
We certainly don’t teach them what to do when the grief belongs to them.
So, I began to speak. Not just with patients, but with colleagues and trainees. I talked about Alma—not for sympathy, but for truth. Because grief, when shared with honesty, has a power all its own. It deepens our compassion. It sharpens our awareness. It teaches us the sacred value of presence and silence.
Alma has made me a better doctor. A more present teacher. A deeper listener.
It felt like stepping into a parallel life—one where everything looked the same, but nothing felt right.
There is still so much stigma and invisibility around pregnancy loss. Patients are often encouraged to “move on.” Clinicians are often too afraid of saying the wrong thing—so they say nothing at all. But general practice is uniquely placed to hold these moments. Our strength lies in relationships, in continuity, in knowing the whole person.
To break the silence, we must be trained. We must be supported. We must be willing to meet grief face to face.
Even in her absence, Alma continues to teach me. She taught me to honour sorrow, to sit with discomfort, and to model vulnerability with dignity. Her name means soul—and truly, she has changed the soul of my practice forever.
I carry her with me now into every consultation—not as a shadow, but as a quiet, guiding light.
May her soul rest in peace.
Deputy Editor’s note -See also:
- Nada Khan on the UK Pregnancy loss review: https://bjgplife.com/the-pregnancy-loss-review-what-does-it-mean-for-general-practice
- Laura Douglas on experiencing Sherman’s Syndrome: https://bjgplife.com/experiencing-ashermans-syndrome/
- Bert Leysen and Johan Wens on bereavement policy: https://bjgplife.com/national-bereavement-leave-policies-in-times-of-mass-bereavement/
Featured Photo by David Tomaseti on Unsplash
“On paper, pregnancy loss is a clinical event. But in reality, it is a quiet unraveling.“
What a powerful statement. What a powerful article. Thank you for sharing this Ahmeda.
Thank you for sharing this personal account of loss and grief Ahmeda. I do believe that when we experience trauma and loss, we are able to connect to our patients on a different level. We develop a shared empathy, a shared understanding. Everyone’s experience of grief is individual but we can connect on this deep level, on this very human level. I am glad Alma is your quiet, guiding light. To have her guide you is to remember her and honor her. My best wishes to you Ahmeda, I am sorry that you are living this trauma but am very glad that you feel you can share this experience with us, and able to share how this influences your professional identity. Indeed, as educators, we should not be afraid to show our learners that these personal experiences can shape our professional experiences. This is a powerful piece which perhaps could be used in the education space to prompt discussion amongst our learners.