"I'm glad I didn't wait until after the first trimester to tell people I was pregnant."

Many women avoid announcing their pregnancy before the end of their first trimester. While mums-to-be who wait do so for a variety of reasons, such as to avoid unwanted advice and due to logistics such as maternity leave, the main reason seems to come down to a fear of miscarriage.

For many, joyfully announcing their pregnancy and then having to inform people they have lost their baby would be incredibly painful.  But for one woman, the opposite was true.

The woman, known only as opalwednesday, recently took to Reddit to defend her decision to announce her pregnancy early. She said that once she miscarried, the support she received from people she had told about her pregnancy was invaluable.

She wrote, "I lost my baby, right before the end of the first trimester. Everyone says to wait until after the first trimester to tell people, and that has me thinking. Why? Because it's uncomfortable for people to know how common miscarriage is? Because it's somehow inappropriate to talk about? Well, I don't buy it."

"If people can nonchalantly ask me when (not if) me and my husband are going to breed, then good manners have me thinking that they ought to be prepared for the gritty truth of the matter. And why is it even gritty? It's sad and horrible to go through, but I feel like a lack of honesty about it just stigmatises something that is incredibly common and seemingly hard to avoid," she continued.

The woman added, "I am so glad that the people who matter to me know. I truly needed them to get through the initial depression that got a hold of me and I owe my grip on happiness to them. I'm glad that I don't have to fake okay and not mention what I've been doing for the last three months. I'm glad that if any of my friends go through this in the future they will know that I've been there."

She also called for more honesty when it came to the physical pain of miscarriage.

"I will not use words like intense to describe the physical pain of the process. I had a natural miscarriage and it hurt like f*ck. It hurt so badly that I thought I may pass out. My doctor and all of the stuff I found online had nothing to say about that, and I'm pretty let down by that. Thank god for my doula, who texted me through it when I couldn't speak through the pain. It doesn't hurt for everyone, but it would have been nice to know ahead of time that that was a possibility. 'Intense cramping' is oddly patronising," she wrote.

The woman was inundated with support from fellow Redditors who had also experienced pregnancy loss.

3rdsacharm wrote, "I was angry that there was no one to be properly angry at. It wasn't my husband's fault. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't the doctor's fault. Who could I scream at? Who could I blame? Who could I hate for putting me through all this pain? No one."

Grave_Girl added, "I am sorry for your loss. The physical pain mixed with the emotional pain is the hardest thing I have ever been through."

Thank you opalwednesday for your bravery and your honesty - it's a conversation we need to keep having.

Have you experienced pregnancy loss? How did you cope?

WATCH the video below for more advice on coping with a miscarriage...