Sorry, There's No Heartbeat.

I am sharing this to say that if you have experienced early miscarriage, then I am so, so sorry.

I had a miscarriage when our first born had just turned one. It's not something that I think about regularly now (over 15 years later) but at the time, it destroyed me. It was completely out of the blue, and we did not know how to process it all. People around you may not know how to help or what to say, because to them you may not have even told them that you were even pregnant in the first place, you weren't showing any signs and physically, to the outside world, nothing has changed.

To me, everything had changed. We had talked about our little girl becoming a big sister, and when the baby would be due, and if we were having a boy or a girl...we had got carried away with the excitement that a new baby brings and foreseen the new bundle of joy in our near future. What colour hair would they have? Where will they sleep? What shall we name them?

All I kept hearing when it happened to us was how common it was. I became part of the 1 in 4 statistic.

Looking back, I probably knew that something wasn't right. During the whole of my pregnancy with our first, I had a constant hangover type feeling - I was headachy, nauseous, dizzy and just generally felt terrible for most of the nine months. The second time round, I hadn't even realised I was pregnant. I had missed a period, did the maths, then took a test, working out that I was around 5 weeks. I booked a doctor's appointment to confirm everything but at what I thought was around 7 weeks I started to bleed. I got a hospital appointment, where I was checked over and a sonographer saw that the sac was there but she couldn't find a heartbeat. At that point, we were told that maybe I was just earlier in the pregnancy than we thought, and therefore the scan might not be picking up the heartbeat. I was told to go home and had a second appointment scheduled for a few days later.

In that time, I continued to bleed (it was like a progressively heavy period), until the time I actually physically lost the baby. This was the weirdest, saddest, most insane experience. It was like a clot of blood, but I could see that it was clearly a tiny foetus, which I shakily wrapped in tissue and took it with me back to the hospital. I handed it over, waiting for what seemed like forever to be given a verdict. I naively hoped that someone could come back to me and say that it was a false alarm and that all the worry over the last few days had been for nothing. However, I was instead taken into a cold, stark little room, where a doctor said she was sorry for our loss. Then she went on to say that I needed to be examined to ensure that nothing remained internally. It was all very clinical and cold.

The rest of that day of a bit of a blur, but I know I had no hope any more and to this day, I still can't quite wrap my head around how quickly we were out of the hospital and back home, not pregnant and hurting in ways I'd never felt before; mentally and physically. We had to tell people what had happened, and I called the doctors to cancel my upcoming appointment. We got some bunches of flowers and lots of hugs. We had lots of support around us and a few people told us their experience of miscarriage, showing empathy and understanding. On the other hand, some people often found it awkward or uncomfortable. We didn't hear from one close relative at all, and when we saw them a few days later they said that they hadn't messaged us in case it upset us. Like the whole thing didn't happen if we just ignored it! Other things people would say to us when we told them:

"Never mind, at least you've got one baby already..."

"Well at least you lost it early, it would be much worse later on..."

"It's just one of those things..."

"At least you know you can get pregnant..."

The best was...not acknowledging the loss at all. A handful of people just gave me an embarrassed look and told me to get well soon.

Those sweeping statements were true, but really not what I wanted to hear. I don't know what I wanted to her but it definitely didn't help being told that I was basically lucky and better off than many others and essentially, that my sadness wasn't valid. It was comforting to know that I had no trouble getting pregnant. I was now, however, completely scared shitless of losing another baby and constantly questioning whether I had done something to make it happen that I could dodge in the future. Taking care of our one year old was a good distraction, but also a painful reminder that we had lost the chance to bring another baby like her, home. I felt immense guilt, because I was so lucky to have her and she was such a joy, but I was just so, incurably sad.

How do you grieve a person you never got to meet?

I felt like my body had failed to do the one thing it was designed to, and the most frustrating part was that I will never know why I miscarried. On top of that I became a bit obsessed with making sure that I didn't look pregnant in any way, spending far too much time getting dressed each morning so that I could not be mistaken for having a baby bump. Because the thought of someone asking me when I was due was beyond mortifying.

My opinion around trying for another baby changed quite quickly. I spent a couple of weeks convincing myself that I definitely didn't want any more babies because the thought of going through this loss again was unimaginable. After this I did a complete u-turn on myself and decided that I absolutely HAD to have another baby because then I could prove to myself that I was not useless and that my body did work.

I feel that I need to add here that this is my perspective of a very personal experience and not in any way meant to upset or offend - my opinions and feelings of my own miscarriage would never be how I viewed others going through it. As the saying goes, you are your own worst critic and in many ways, my miscarriage bought me to my lowest point in terms of body confidence and self loathing. I blamed myself for something that was out of my control and essentially, didn't show up for myself in the same way that others around me were so clueless. It was a confusing time all round and I wish that I had shown myself more compassion and self care. It wasn't my fault.

I was extremely lucky to get pregnant again around six months later, and went on to have our beautiful rainbow baby, as well as two more. I have never had to experience baby loss again, and consider myself truly and utterly blessed with my four healthy kids.

But on the 21st October each year, I will always stop and think about the one that didn't make it.

Lots of love to anyone who relates to this blog and please reach out if you are struggling.

www.misscarriageassociation.org

www.tommys.org

www.sands.org.uk

www.houseoflight.org.uk