JUSTICE Secretary Humza Yousaf has revealed he was left feeling “utterly helpless” as he and his wife endured multiple miscarriages.
The couple, who have a one-year-old daughter, Amal, have suffered the loss of four pregnancies in the last three years – with the most recent happening during the coronavirus lockdown.
Yousaf said while it has been “difficult”, he and his wife Nadia El-Nakla spoke about what happened “so others could hopefully take comfort and know they’re not alone”.
He told Holyrood Magazine “nobody gives you a manual for this kind of stuff” as he recalled his feelings of helplessness as his wife suffered miscarriages.
Yousaf said: “Nobody tells you, in some cases, in our case, in almost all of them, just how horrifically traumatising they’ve been for the woman who’s suffering the miscarriage or going through the physical and emotional elements of it.
“For me, I just felt utterly helpless, not knowing what to do. Nobody, nobody, talks to you about this stuff.
“Nobody tells you about everything that miscarriages can entail, not just the physical elements but the emotional elements, and I suppose for me part of talking about it, and it’s taken me years to get to this point, I just hope that other men don’t actually have to buckle up and keep this all to themselves.
“I really regret the fact that, certainly after the first couple of miscarriages, I really didn’t share this with anyone, and while the focus is rightly on the woman who is physically going through this, men should really talk about it, too.”
His wife said because her most recent miscarriage happened during lockdown it was “even harder for my family and friends who wanted to comfort me but couldn’t”.
She said: “That was probably hardest on my mum, who just wanted to give me a hug, but thankfully at that point in lockdown we could meet in gardens and I remember my best friend sitting in the rain just so she could be there for me.”
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