Sunday 11 August 2019

Life After Miscarriage

Pregnancy loss - Miscarriage

This post was supposed to be one of excitement, it was one that I couldn’t wait to write, to share with you all.

One that I had dreamed of for many years, the dream of announcing my second pregnancy. A sibling for Leo, a much wanted second baby.

Over the years though, it just hadn’t happened and I could accept that. I knew... or I thought that if I ever did conceive again... that would be the hard part and 9 months later I would welcome our baby into the world. 

Today though, instead of sharing happy news with my little corner of the web, I am announcing the loss of my pregnancy, the loss of our second child.

Our much wanted second child, Leo’s longed for sibling.

Today I am announcing our miscarriage.

Over the past few months I have been writing secret posts, posts that when I read back scream of the excitement and love that I shared in being pregnant and adding a new member to our family.

They make for hard reading now, that smile on my face, the love that already coursed through my veins. 

After the worst happened (I’ll be sharing the whole story), I decided I wasn’t going to post my pregnancy posts, but then I thought ‘woah now that’s just wrong!’, this pregnancy did happen. 

When I look back at those very first posts, the big smile on my face, the look on Luke’s face when he realised we were pregnant again, it has a bittersweet feeling. I was so obliviously happy, so excited for this next chapter of our lives, and I didn’t think for one second that our pregnancy would result in a missed miscarriage. 

This baby was a part of me for all the time that he or she was tucked away in my tummy, and this little baby that was destined not to be is still a part of us today. 

It is a fact that 1 in 4 pregnancies result in a miscarriage, and now I am part of a club that I never wanted to join. A club that I naively thought I never would join, because miscarriages happen to ‘other’ people, they don’t happen to me. 

Boy was I wrong. 

1 in 4 pregnancies result in miscarriage.

I am 1 in 4.


Pregnancy loss - Miscarriage

This baby is a part of our story, even if that story does not have a happy ending. 

With that in mind, I’m still going to share my little story with you. The story with a less than happy ending, but a story that happened to me nonetheless. 

A story that happens to 1 in 4 people who get a positive pregnancy test. 

A story that people don’t like to talk about, but a story that needs telling even if people try to shine away from it.

If it can happen to me, it can happen to you.

It’s a story that I go over and over in my mind on a daily basis, one that I can’t escape from, it just keeps on replaying in my mind. 

I was told ‘at this stage it was just a bunch of cells’. 

No. No. No. 

It took us 3 years from the removal of my implant to conceive, 3 fucking years. 3 years of dreaming of a baby, a sibling, 3 years of Leo asking to be a BIG BROTHER, and my body failed us. 

A bunch of cells? No way.

 As soon as that test threw us a little pink line, those little cells meant we were going to be parents again. They meant that Leo was going to welcome his very first baby brother or sister. 

Our baby was never ever ‘just a bunch of cells’. Our futures changed as soon as that pregnancy test presented that second line. 

They changed again the moment we were told ‘I’m sorry but there is no heartbeat’.

Pregnancy loss - Miscarriage

A whole lifetime taken away before it even started. A baby we would never know. A piece of the jigsaw that would never fit.

No one wants to talk about miscarriage. 

No one wants to talk about loss, a baby that might have been. 

No one wants to remember a baby that ‘never was’.

I could show you what happened through the pictures I took, I could show you the pregnancy sac, the clots, I could show you, tell you, everything. 

But I won't (howver if you are facing a miscarriage and want to know what to expect, please message me. I'm happy to talk, and know what you are going through, drop me a message!).

I am going to share our story anyway, I am going to smile through the tears and remember how happy we were in those first few weeks knowing that we had a little baby growing away inside. 

I am always going to remember.

Luke will always remember.

Leo will always remember.

Little baby Rose, 30th June 2019 - 20:34.



No life should fit in one little shoe box, no life should be contained within four little walls. 

When a baby is lost in the womb, there is very little to cling to, very little to hold. 

This little box is all we have. 







Thursday 1 August 2019

A Complete Miscarriage


On Thursday 1st August Luke and I made our way back to Worcester Royal for my appointment.

A week ago I made the same journey filled with such hope, I thought I was going to see my baby’s heart beating on screen for the very first time. I thought that all of the worry of the last few weeks, of that last hospital appointment was all going to be forgotten. 

Only that wasn’t the case. I had gone away with the knowledge that my baby didn’t have a heartbeat. That my baby had shrunk.

That my baby was dead.

That my pregnancy had failed.

That it was all over.

The miscarriage had already happened naturally on the Tuesday (30th July), but I hadn’t had the heart to ring the hospital and talk it through with them. I don’t think I could have, not without being a big blubbery mess and not making much sense. I decided to keep my cards close to my chest and just go along today and tell them before the scan.

We arrived and sat in the same waiting room I had sat in exactly 7 days before. I watched a pregnant lady walk in with her notes. I looked down at the floor, reality gripped me and wouldn’t let go. I tried to hold back the tears. 

I didn’t want to cry here. Luke rubbed my leg, he knew I had seen her. 

He knew I was gutted. 

My name was called, we got up and walked along to a different ultrasound room to the week before. I saw the male sonogropher who I had deeply hoped I wouldn’t have last week... he was lovely. I told them my sorry tale. I sort of kept it together but I could feel my voice crumbling beneath me. 

They told me they were sorry, but they could never be as sorry as I was. I explained that I was still bleeding and asked if they would be able to do the scan as a trans abdominal ultrasound. 

They said that they could. I was beyond elated.

My empty uterus flashed onto the screen. As last week it was tilted away from me, I asked if they could move it so that I could see too. 

He told me that I had a retroverted uterus, something that no one had ever mentioned to me before, this helped me trust him. They had failed to tell me this at the viability scan a week ago. One of many things that were written in their official hospital notes but not vocalised to me.

An empty black space where my baby and gestational sac had been appeared. They explained that I had experienced a complete miscarriage. This means that all signs of the pregnancy had gone, just how everything should be in a situation like mine. 

I asked if they could make sure that everything inside me looked as it should look, I knew they couldn’t tell me why my baby had died, but I needed to know if it was something that my body may have done.

As expected... everything was normal. Everything was as it should be.

I had written a list of questions that I bombarded this poor man with. He half answered most questions, almost avoiding the real answer. He couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me when he thought the baby had stopped growing, there was just some speel about mistakes being made, and not being able to go into that detail (or something along those lines).

They apologised once again, and we left to go to the EPAU (early pregnancy assessment unit) where I had appointment with a nurse.

We waited until my name was called and followed a lady into the room where I had been told my baby had died.

I got my list of questions out again. I pulled up the scan photo on my phone, I asked her all of my many, many questions. 

She gave me more than the sonogropher did. She said the baby looks to have stopped growing around 6 weeks, that the baby may have never had a heartbeat. 

I was told sometimes these things just happen, that we never really know the reason why. I was handed a miscarriage information booklet, she offered to take my pregnancy notes for me... I declined. 

I wanted those notes to keep, we have a shoe box (ironically the one I used to announce the pregnancy to Luke and Leo), where we have put everything that relates to our little Pop. We don’t have a lot, but those notes needed to be with the rest of Pop’s things. Proof that he or she existed, if only for a short time.

Then she said it ‘it was only a bunch of cells at this stage’, I couldn’t have disagreed more. That little ball of cells was our baby, our future. We had already planned our lives around having a new baby, and just like that it had all been ripped away.

I had been determined not to get sad, but I failed. The tears came, and I was angry at myself. 

I have realised that I am a crier. I cry when I’m sad, when I’m happy and when I’m angry. No matter the situation I cry. 

I hate that.

I stayed in that room asking all my questions and she gave me that time, I really appreciated that. I knew when I left that room, when we walked out of that hospital, that was it. That was the end. 

My pregnancy was over and my normal life had to resume sometime. I had been off work for 2 days, since the miscarriage had happened, but tomorrow it was time to go back.

I know some people take longer, but I knew I was over the worst of it and sitting around at home was not going to do me any favours. 

My body had not been able to keep the pregnancy, but it had successfully cleaned me inside and saved me the horror of any management options, especially the trauma of surgery.

We got in the car and drove home, the miscarriage was behind us, but emotionally we both had a long way to go.