I started this post in April 2022 and have finally felt brave enough to post it.
It's been a long time since I've written anything for this site, as we all know Covid hit the world and put a stop to most things we could do. Therefore, I had no travels to update on, no pole to update on and general life was a bit boring and a bit samey. I struggled with what to write about as I didn't have a niche of doing makeup or anything like that to post about. So here I am telling you what happened a little in those 2 years and I'm here to talk about something really important that people shy away from, have a lack understanding of and don't want to talk about.
So although covid hit the world I did meet a wonderful guy during the pandemic and we've moved in together, adopted our own greyhound and generally been living life as well as people can with constant lockdowns and changes to restrictions.
We have started making our house a home, both turned 30 and decided maybe it was time to start a family together.
So we made the decision together to try and start a family, we didn't think anything would happen for us until 2022, and yet 2 weeks after coming off contraception I started to get cramps, needing to pee all the time and nausea. I had this gut feeling I might be pregnant and waited until I had missed my period to find out and of course it was positive.
We were overjoyed that it had happened so quickly and amazed that it had! We started to think of things we would need to do to prepare the house for us having a baby and how it would work with Arlo too as he had never been around babies before.
I happily notified the doctors and hospital I was pregnant and went merrily along my way with what I thought was a normal pregnancy. I was still a little stressed at work and my hormones were all over the place making it worse, I was also feeling nauseous all the time and I lost my appetite for a good few weeks. I never once thought that anything was wrong, I was naively thinking that life was great and we were getting a lovely little happy ending. We were living in our little happy bubble.
As we had no signs that anything was wrong we decided that on Christmas Day when I would be roughly 8 weeks that we would tell our families as a little Christmas surprise, we got Arlo a little bandana to wear to their houses waiting for people to spot what it said.
It was a lovely moment to have with families as it does bring a lot of joy. We weren't the only ones with news that day though so the happiness was shared with others who were also pregnant and were at around 17-18 weeks at the time. If I'm honest it felt like we didn't get the full day of happiness our pregnancy deserved like others did, but that's a thought that has only recently come to me and it wasn't a thought I had at the time. It's a thought I've had more recently as I have had many varying emotions in the past few months and for different moments and memories from the past 6/7 months are giving me different feelings. I guess I just wished that we got one day of happiness and it being about us being pregnant.
I had my booking appointment just after Christmas and I had bloods taken and different things about my health checked, I asked the question at the appointment "what if its actually a false positive, could that happen?" I was told no you've got all the signs and symptoms of being pregnant so there is nothing to worry about. I didn't even know why I asked that question at the time, but looking back I do wonder if I had some kind of subconscious thought that things weren't OK.
I was finally sent through my scan appointment and I felt relieved that we finally had that date come through. I just wanted to know that everything was OK. For the week prior to the appointment I kept thinking that something was going to go wrong in the appointment, I had dread and anxiety surrounding that appointment and it wasn't something that I had felt at any other point in the weeks leading up to this appointment. Why did I start thinking it, was my mind trying to warn me?
We went for the appointment at the end of January and I was fully anxious that morning while I was waiting to go in for my scan. We went in and they began the ultrasound and I could see nothing on the screen where our baby was meant to be, the technician asked how far along we were meant to be and at that point I was roughly 13 weeks, she then asked to do an internal ultrasound scan. I'd known from looking at the screen that something was wrong but I didn't want to believe it so I had the internal scan. My partner told me that the technician looked so sad for us and had to gulp and take a deep breath before telling us that she thought we'd had a missed miscarriage. My heart broke.
We were told that the Early Pregnancy Unit (EPU) team would be in touch with us later that day to organise an appointment for a re-scan to see in a week if anything had changed in case we were just earlier along than we thought. We both knew that it wasn't the case and that our baby wasn't there.
We heard from the EPU that afternoon and they explained that they believed we had a blighted ovum pregnancy which I've never heard of before. They still had to book us in for a re-scan for a week later and to go through the options of how we would need to deal with this.
We had the term blighted ovum explained to us that it meant although the egg fertilised and began implantation, my body knew that it was not viable and it stopped the egg from continuing and was essentially reabsorbed in to my body. However, my body didn't entirely realise what had happened and continued to grow the pregnancy sac and give me all the signs and symptoms of a developing pregnancy including nausea, bloating, needing to pee constantly and headaches. At the re-scan we were again told I'd had a blighted ovum and that I had 3 options to choose from on how to manage my miscarriage. The options were:
To wait for my body to naturally miscarriage - this had no timeline and my body did not seem to be registering the loss.
Medical management of miscarriage - this meant being given tablets to pop in to my body to kick start the miscarriage. I would be in the hospital for an hour to make sure I had no side effects and then be sent home to have the miscarriage at home.
Surgical management of miscarriage - they put you under anaesthetic and they remove the pregnancy tissue and you wake up with everything removed.
I chose option 3 as I did not want more trauma of seeing everything come out of me when I was already heartbroken and I had already waited a week to be given these options. That week between my initial scan and re-scan was hell. I knew there was nothing but a sac growing inside me and yet I had to wait a week to find out what could be done about it. It felt like hell. I felt empty and lost. I didn't know what I was meant to be thinking or feeling.
We had throwaway comments said to us of "was she even pregnant" etc. Those comments have had a lasting impact on me and how I've felt on different occasions. It's made me wonder whether I should be allowed to grieve because I only had an empty sac with no baby or egg.
2 days after the re-scan appointment I went for my surgery. I cried the entire way down to theatre and I was even crying when they put me under. As soon as I woke up from the anaesthetic I was crying and the nurse next to me kept telling me it would be ok, all I could ask was "is it gone now?" I have never felt so broken and empty in my life. I'd spent a lot of my life never wanting children and I just felt like because of thinking that for so long it was the universe taking this child away from us. I know that whilst having the surgery my partner was pacing the hospital room as he thought something had gone wrong as I was gone for longer than he thought I would be. I don't think it's often thought about how our partners deal with this pain and loss and him telling me that made me realise just how much he cared about me, about us and about the loss we had. I've told him many times and even in those first initial weeks that he shouldn't feel the need to be strong for me and that he should allow himself to show and feel any emotions he needs to.
The following weeks I was broken. I barely ate, all I did was sleep and cry, I argued with my partner a lot when I didn't feel like he understood me. Deep down I know he understood what I was feeling and what I was going through because he was going through it too, it was just he was trying to be the stronger one of us to look after me as best as he could. I know we both still feel the pain of this loss.
A few weeks after our loss, one of my partners close friends were having their baby shower and I'd initially said I'd go before everything had happened with us. I couldn't face going and I felt so much guilt about not being able to go. Everything was just still too much. I wasn't enjoying anything I used to prior to being pregnant. Life had just lost all joy for me and I was just trying to survive and get through this pain.
I had other friends announce they were pregnant within that first month and again it set me off in to a black hole. I couldn't understand why everyone else seemed to be having their pregnancies happen and everything be fine and why ours and our first ever just went straight to this hell. Why had it happened to us was all I could think. Why did we not get to have our happy time and pregnancy, why did ours end in heartbreak and misery. I still have moments of thinking that now, since January I have seen around 6 or 7 people announcing they are pregnant and it's still heartbreaking. I still don't understand why this happened to us. I feel guilty every time I get upset and jealous of other people's happiness...
I know it's normal to have those feelings but it's unreal how bitter I feel in those moments. I feel awful for having those feelings.
I tried to go back to pole which is something I've loved and enjoyed since I started it. My instructor and friend had her baby there my first class back and I broke down in the reception on seeing him. I was happy for them but my heart was breaking too. I felt so bad for getting upset upon seeing him as I didn't realise I would get so upset as he'd been born before we found out about the miscarriage. We never know what is going to set us off, but I'm learning that anything baby related does upset me at the moment.
There are many moments in the past 3 months that have triggered me to have bad days like our friend having their baby, a couple of my friends and people I know announcing they are pregnant, my partners sisters baby shower. Its natural for me to be triggered and get upset by these things, and I need to remember that myself sometimes as I feel guilty about getting upset.
It's hard to explain to people that I don't want to see them or be around them whilst they are pregnant right now because it does upset me and hurt me. I'm trying to be ok with it but at the same time it sets me off back down that black hole.
The thought of trying again does give me a lot of anxiety as I am scared that this will happen to us again. I don't think I could cope with this pain again.
I still feel like my body failed at what is meant to be such a natural thing. I still feel like it was the universe telling me no. And I just keep thinking that it's all my fault. I'm also thinking my body is just failing in general as it's taking its time to return to normal and I have no clue what is happening with my periods anymore.
I'll be honest...
I'm angry at the world for this happening to us, I'm angry that this happens at all.
I am jealous of people and things working out for them, because it didn't for us.
I am jealous of everyone who seems to have the perfect life and everything falls in to place for them or falls in to their lap.
Why do we not get that? Why do we have to feel this pain and emptiness?
What did we do wrong to deserve it?
There are no answers.
I feel like people need to educate themselves on how to react and be around those that have had miscarriages, early pregnancy loss, late pregnancy loss and any form of child loss. Considering this effects at least 1 in 4 couples.
Some things I haven't appreciated hearing:
At least you can get pregnant - this is fairly naive in my opinion as just because someone gets pregnant once doesn't mean they will again easily, if at all. You don't know if people struggled to conceive that first time so please don't assume and say this to someone.
It happens to loads of people - don't dismiss how someone is feeling, allow them to feel what they need to in that moment. Yes it is common but you don't realise how alone you feel in it until you are going through it yourself.
At least it happened now and not further down the line - a loss is a loss no matter what, it is still painful, upsetting and traumatic no matter when it happens in a pregnancy.
Why don't you just try again - some people will suffer a lot after a loss and will be too anxious and worried to want to try again for a while. They may also struggle to conceive again, stop making assumptions that it's easy to try again.
Just move on now - it's not as simple as moving on.
Life is no longer simple and doesn't always make sense. I have good days where I feel ok and it doesn't hurt as much. I understand that makes people think I'm fine then, but I promise it's still there underneath. We've had some wonderful distracting weekends recently and yes I've enjoyed them and they've been good for us. However, I still have days where something will upset me and I'm back to sobbing in a ball and feeling all that pain like it only happened yesterday. I know my partner still gets upset sometimes too, and he's been keeping it in for so much longer and he doesn't acknowledge it as much as I think he should, but that's his way of dealing with it and that's OK.
It's going to take time to get over. It's going to need patience on those bad days and forgiving myself for having certain feelings.
It's OK not to be ok.
It's OK to be upset and sensitive.
It's OK to feel jealous and bitter sometimes.
It's OK to feel angry.
It's OK to be confused.
It's OK for things to take time, don't feel pressured to get 'back to normal' normalise not being OK normalise the healing process.
A little kindness, compassion, empathy and understanding goes a long way.
Since I wrote this draft of this post last year I got pregnant again and had a successful pregnancy and birth.
I gave birth to my baby boy in February 2023 and I am grateful to have him here with us 💕
I had a lot of anxiety throughout the entire pregnancy following what happened to us the first time and it's completely normal to feel that.
I'm happy for anyone who is going through this to reach out and speak to me if they feel it will help them 💕