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When someone you love is in the throes of fertility struggles, choosing the right words or actions is tough. To help, we gathered advice from professionals and women who've been there.

- CASSIE SHORTSLEEVE

The first and loudest phrase you'll likely hear if you talk to someone who has experienced pregnancy loss or infertility is: It's so isolating. No matter your situation, so much can feel, well, gone. Pregnancy, a baby, but also control, how you thought your life would look and trust in your body. That's why it makes total sense to approach fertility challenges, as well as pregnancy and perinatal loss, through a grief lens, says social worker Dvora Entin, who specialises in perinatal and reproductive mental health.

Yet while we tend to sit with people's pain in other areas of life - attending funerals and honoring those we've lost - too often these specific types of struggles are met with a flood of pat, inappropriate, non-empathetic responses: "You'll get pregnant again!" "At least you have another child." "This happened for a reason." Loss is often invalidated, which compounds feelings of aloneness. "People wind up thinking, I'm not going to tell anybody about this because no one is going to get it," says Entin.

South Africa has a miscarriage rate of 7.3 to 9.6 percent per 1000 women, while the stillbirth rate sits at 9.8 per 1000 women for pregnancies at, or, after 28 weeks, according to findings by scielo.org.za. So, yes, fertility issues are common - and so is not knowing what to say to communicate thoughtfulness and sensitivity to a loved one experiencing them. To lead you through the waters, WH spoke to perinatal mental health professionals and people who have faced loss or infertility.

DO SAY, "I'm Here"

Erin Erenberg, a mom of three and co-founder of The Chamber of Mothers, recalls "something very specific" a friend said to her that meant the world: "Losing a baby is a very lonely kind of loss. I'm here if you want to talk." Erin adds, "Those words rang so true to me."