Nam Kiwanuka: You're listening to Mistreated. I'm Nam Kiwanuka. The following conversation is about pregnancy loss. Please listen with care. Many of us still live in a culture where the happy news of pregnancy can carry secrecy and anxiety. At times, friends or medical professionals may advise expectant mothers to consider not sharing their pregnancy news until after the first trimester. The risk of miscarriage usually decreases at the end of that 12 weeks. A miscarriage is the loss of a pregnancy before 20 weeks. If a fetal death is experienced after, it's considered to be a stillbirth. An estimated eight out of a thousand pregnancies end in stillbirth. For those who have experienced a miscarriage or a stillbirth, the joy of welcoming a child into the world can quickly turn into a nightmare of loss and isolation. And the stats of women and birthing parents who experience child loss this way are staggering. Approximately 15% to 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. 80% of pregnancy loss happens in the first trimester. And quote, "when unrecognized early losses are included, the miscarriage rate may be as high as 30% to 60% of all pregnancies." According to a 2021 study from the Lancet, an estimated 23 million miscarriages occur every year worldwide, translating to 44 pregnancy losses each minute.

Nam Kiwanuka: Many women experience pregnancy loss at home, the emergency room, or even abortion clinics, often alone in those moments of great uncertainty and fear. That's why last year the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada or the SOGC released a new clinical practice guideline on early pregnancy loss. This guideline called for quote "broader health system reforms with recommendations to increase resources and take specific concrete actions to make care for women who lose a pregnancy more responsive, compassionate, and patient centered." The need is clear. The society noted that up to 30% of patients who lose a pregnancy present with adverse mental health outcomes. The SOGC suggests early pregnancy assessment clinics can help. If they're established across Canada, women won't have to seek aid in the ER where the care and the environment might not be suitable for someone who is experiencing pregnancy loss. For many in rural areas who can't even access ERs, pregnancy clinics could be a lifeline.

Worldwide, there's growing recognition of just how distressing losing a pregnancy can be. Early pregnancy clinics have been available in Britain since the 1990s, and there are now over 200 clinics. India was the first country in the world to offer leave from work following a miscarriage. And in 2021, New Zealand passed legislation that gave paid bereavement leave for both parents. The Philippines also offers bereavement leave for women who've miscarried or experienced stillbirth. As of April 2026, Northern Ireland will become one of the first jurisdictions in Europe to offer paid leave to parents impacted by miscarriage. Here in Canada, as of December 2025, employees in federally regulated workplaces can take bereavement leave after pregnancy loss. There's a bit of good news here in Ontario, too. North York General Hospital has a clinic dedicated to early pregnancy care. On today's episode, we speak to Eidolina Leandro about her personal motivations for her documentary, An Open Conversation, which aims to destigmatize pregnancy and infant loss.

Eidolina Leandro: Hi, I'm Eelina Leandro. I'm a actor and filmmaker.

Nam Kiwanuka: So nice to have you on the podcast, Eidina. You directed An Open Conversation, a documentary about pregnancy loss. This is a conversation that's often time difficult to have in private and hardly ever in public. Why did you want to do this project?

Eidolina Leandro: So I did a documentary about female graffiti artists before I went and did An Open Conversation. And during that documentary, it took me six years and I had five pregnancies. My first pregnancy was amazing. I have my beautiful daughter. The before after that was not so good. I had four miscarriages. I went through a lot of mental health challenges. A very hard time trying to understand what was happening to me and being a mom at the same time and being a wife and all that stuff. And I just thought to myself, well, nobody talks about this. This needs to be an open conversation. It happens too often. I would sometimes speak to somebody, they were like, "oh, I had two miscarriages." And I'm like, "really?" They're like, "yeah. Or my mom had one or my aunt had one." So, I really thought it was an important topic to talk about. And that's what prompted me to do more research and get it started.

Eidolina Leandro: I found along the way that I wasn't the only person who was being ignored, made to feel guilty or not understand that this is something that happens in one to four, one to five pregnancies. It is extremely common and I was getting an overwhelming response of people who wanted to talk about it. And I also found that no one was getting support. Doctors weren't telling people that they had options to speak to someone or giving proper medical advice or even treating people with respect and dignity I would say when it happens because I think medical professionals are so desensitized because it is so common that when it happens to someone they're just kind of brush it off and I think society does that too. You don't tell people you're pregnant for the first 3 months. And why is that? They just want to make sure that the pregnancy is going to stick. And then if you do speak about it, and you have a miscarriage or lose the baby, you're going to have to tell everyone what happened. And nobody wants to talk about it.

Nam Kiwanuka: But if you don't say that you're—that secrecy doesn't change the fact that you are pregnant. So whether you share it or not, if you do lose the baby, you have to grieve in private. So as if the pregnancy never happened.

Eidolina Leandro: Absolutely. Sometimes your family doesn't even know. A lot of people's attitudes were like, especially in the first 3 months, was just a fetus, it's okay, you could have another. And that's not what you want to hear. It's different for men and women. Obviously, men feel sad too that they lost a child, the potential of having a child. But women carry it. When I would tell people I'm doing a documentary about pregnancy loss, especially men would just be like a literal [sighs], and then they change a topic.

Nam Kiwanuka: Where do you think the stigma comes from?

Eidolina Leandro: I don't know. I just feel that women's health, women's mental health is always brushed under the carpet. You didn't even speak about periods with your children—it's like, oh my god, don't talk about your period, never mind a miscarriage. I really do believe that I had postpartum depression. No one told me that that would kind of happen because even though when I miscarried I'm like "well I didn't do full term so I'm not going to have that." Also I was a new mom and I didn't have time to grieve. When I was seeking went to my doctor, she's like "oh maybe you just need to like have some wine or relax." The one thing that everyone had in common was the ignoring of the mental health aspect. I think it just makes people uncomfortable. But why do I have to be made small for you to be comfortable?

Nam Kiwanuka: When you had the first miscarriage, you had your daughter was a toddler. So, you've had that connection with your baby. And to experience miscarriage after you've had a baby, devastating. And then if you're pregnant for the first time and you have a miscarriage, that is your introduction to motherhood.

Eidolina Leandro: Absolutely. And that's something that was spoken about as well. I've spoken to women who've had like seven, eight miscarriages, pregnancies, never been a mom, but on Mother's Day, they never say happy Mother's Day or acknowledge that they're mothers. It's hard to be pregnant, know that you're pregnant, and you're giving life. And stillbirth is even worse. It's after 20 weeks. You're giving birth to a baby who is not alive. I don't think people really understand what that does to you if you have not gone through it.

Eidolina Leandro: In my second pregnancy, I had gone to my 8-week ultrasound and there was no heartbeat. She told me over the phone. And it didn't pass naturally. And the hospital, they don't consider having a DNC important enough to make an appointment for you in the hospital. They make you wait until it passes and sometimes it doesn't in my case. So, I spent a couple of weeks knowing that I had a dead fetus inside me and I couldn't take it out. So, I was told by my doctor to go to an abortion clinic. And then when I was there, they looked at me and said, "At your age, why don't you want this child?"

Nam Kiwanuka: I'm so sorry.

Eidolina Leandro: I'm like, "The child didn't want me. And even if I was there for an abortion, how can you say that to someone?" So this is the kind of thing that women are going through. They didn't recognize that this was a severe enough issue for you to go to a hospital and get it done with a doctor. So then I started thinking, if I'm getting treated like this, who else is? So on top of feeling alone because you feel that your body has failed you, you're incapable, you feel like a failure. You don't even have anyone around you to give you support.

Eidolina Leandro: Well, I think because I'm the one carrying the baby. We are the lifegivers. So, we're supposed to be nurturing this human being. And you can't even carry it to term. Growing up, my daughter would always be like, "Oh, I wish I had a brother or sister." And it just makes you feel like you did something wrong. Yes, I know that now. But it took a lot of work.

So after the third miscarriage, my husband and I just agreed that we're not going to try anymore. We're just going to accept the fact that we have one beautiful, healthy, miracle child. A couple weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. Something that was supposed to be so happy was devastating. I couldn't imagine going through another pregnancy that didn't happen. I thought about having an abortion. And then I thought, well, maybe this is the miracle. Maybe this is the rainbow baby. It was my longest pregnancy, but it was also the worst miscarriage. That one happened naturally. I passed the baby in the toilet and I went hysterical and my husband flushed it and I even went more hysterical and that's a very common thing. How can anyone not think that doesn't affect someone's mental health?

Eidolina Leandro: In Toronto, there's a place called PAIL, which is the pregnancy and infant loss support out of Sunnybrook. Your doctor doesn't be like, "Hey, go and do this."

Nam Kiwanuka: In the documentary there was a mom recalling that her doctor called her baby "this"; another mom who was crying was told that "you need to leave now you're going to make the other moms upset." What needs to change?

Eidolina Leandro: I think there needs to be more of a sensitivity. They talk about pregnancy loss like they talk about a dinner that they're having. The last miscarriage that I had, I went to Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai was the only place that I had a nurse and the doctors be sensitive to me. They sat down and spoke to me and said sorry. In June of 2025, SOGC released new national guidelines to have pregnancy clinics or centers. In an ER setting doctors are moving fast, dealing with emergencies. So having these pregnancy clinics—why don't we have that already?

Nam Kiwanuka: Exactly. Why isn't there urgency? For example, when you have to sit and wait for weeks with your dead fetus inside your body.

Eidolina Leandro: It's literal torture. It's sickening actually. And that you have to go somewhere where people choose to terminate their pregnancies—which I didn't choose that. So why do I have to go somewhere and do that? It just needs to change.

Nam Kiwanuka: 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Why is there so little known about this?

Eidolina Leandro: Some women don't even realize that they're pregnant. I didn't know until I was pregnant what that the baby was in the uterus, not in my stomach, because I just didn't learn. Birthing classes never talk about pregnancy loss. When I see someone who's pregnant or when I see someone giving birth, I always say, "Thank you, universe," because I don't think anyone understood that that's a miracle. Speaking of women who've gone through IVF treatment—nobody speaks about that.

Nam Kiwanuka: What do you think is missing in how women are treated?

Eidolina Leandro: Telling them that there's support, education. What happens to your body? Some people miscarried just because the pregnancy wasn't viable and we don't talk about that. Please just anybody who's listening to this, you're not alone. You can get support and talk about it because the worst thing you can do is push it down. The documentary is on my website, ssquare.net. I will always advocate for women's mental health, especially during pregnancy loss.