“7 THINGS I’ve learned about miscarriage.”

This week's "7 Things"

“7 THINGS I’ve learned about miscarriage.”

*One in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, more end before we are even aware of pregnancy. It’s common, sadly. And yet when it happened to me the shock was enormous. I was unprepared for the first, shocked by the second, surprised by the third, expected the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh etc… and was utterly, utterly floored by the last. I stopped trying, gave up. The pain of loss and the emotional upheaval was far far worse than any joy I felt at the thought that it might all turn out okay in the end. Having sailed through all the tricky milestones, I thought, no, I believed we were home and dry. I made plans. I bought baby clothes. I told people. I picked names. I built an Ikea crib. I was going to have a baby…

And then just like that, I wasn’t. Again. But loss in the third trimester was nothing like the other times. It changed me.

Against all the odds, I had managed to carry a baby to full term after my second miscarriage and before my third. That baby is celebrating his 25th birthday this weekend and I am beyond thankful for him. I’m also mum to another 25-year-old son. I didn’t meet him until he was 8, but he’s my boy.

Life has taught me there are many ways to parent and each day I count my lucky stars to have these two wonderful young men in my life.

Here are my “7 THINGS” this week.

1.     Time. Giving yourself time to come to terms with your loss is vital. I wanted to be superwoman. I thought I needed to get back to work, jump on the horse, keep running, keep smiling, not stop, not look up, sweep it to one side because that’s how we get over things right? We keep going and we keep going until we can’t… Hindsight is of course a wonderful thing, but I wish, I wish, I wish I’d gone more gently, trod more slowly, and taken my time to process each and every loss. I owed it to myself, and I owed it to my body.

2.     Honesty. I’ve learned that when it comes to baby loss and miscarriage it’s far better to be honest. Had I been able to say out loud, “I am hurting! I am angry! I am broken! I want to be alone! I want not to be alone! I want to hide! I want to howl! I want to punch a wall!” not only would it have been easier for those around me to know how to best respond and support me, but it would have been so much better for my mental health to have had those conversations out loud. It would, I am convinced, have helped me to rationalise in some way what I was going through.

3.     Grief. Yes, you can grieve for something you have never had. I remember feeling a little ridiculous and a little self-conscious for grieving for something I had never held, never had, something that had not materialised in the way I had hoped. But I now know that I did have something. I did lose something. I had hope for the babies I was carrying. I had big dreams for a life I saw in my mind, and I had something physical taken from me too soon. My grief was and is personal and unique, as is yours. It is valid. It is allowed. It still affects me in the strangest of ways and at the oddest of times. And I let it. I’m no longer ashamed of my grief, I don’t try and hide it. I am open to it and see it as part of my healing.

4.     Blame. For years and years, I thought I must have done something to make me lose my babies. I blamed myself. Without knowing or understanding what the “thing” was that I’d done, but I was convinced I must have done something. A clearer head and greater understanding has taught me that these things really do sometimes just happen. Even if like me you suffer with serial miscarriage, *about 1 in a hundred women suffer from recurrent miscarriage. Once I could get my head around the fact that I wasn’t to blame, I understood that as shitty as it was, it was just bad luck and there wasn’t anything I could have done to affect a different outcome. It helped.

5.     A Very Awkward Topic. It really is! People I loved found it a very tricky subject to navigate, what was the right thing to say or to do? And the truth was I didn’t know and so how were they supposed to? There were times when I didn’t want it acknowledged or spoken about and times when I did and so I guess we are back to that honesty thing again, having the courage to say, what you need and when you need it.

6.     The Right Way to Handle Miscarriage. THERE ISN’T ONE!!! There’s only what is right for you. I take comfort from lighting a candle and having a weep. I take comfort from talking to others who have suffered similar loss. I can’t stand the anniversary of the dates of my loss and could quite happily spend the days with my head under the duvet… On occasion, I wonder about how old they would be and picture myself with a clutch of little ones running around. I talk about it on occasion, and this is how I handle it.

7.     It Wasn’t Only My Loss. It was my husband’s loss too. It was my kid’s loss. My parent’s… The last time I lost a baby, I came home from the hospital and working like a whirling dervish, I cleared the shelves, emptied the drawers and dismantled the crib. Getting rid of all the things that promised a different outcome felt vital. It never occurred to me to ask my husband if he wanted to keep any of the little socks or the teddy he had bought. It was only months later that we discussed it and I realised that it was a shared loss. It was a realisation that helped me enormously, not only was there someone else who felt the loss of my little ones, our little ones, but it meant I was not alone. And this made the discussions so much easier to have.

Thank you for reading my 7 Things this week. Has it resonated with you in any way?

*Tommys.org  - which is a wonderful resource with great advice and information if you have been affected.