A year after my ectopic pregnancy and subsequent surgery, (you can read my story here) I fell pregnant again. This time it was planned. It was the second month of trying and I fell pregnant. Woohoo…I was on the bullet train to pregnancy town and I was leaving that ‘all stops’ train for dead.
I was 41 and already I felt my time was running out (this is the logic of a women trying to conceive in her 40’s). A month earlier I had started a new job, it was time to take a break from the hours and stress of TV and Radio. I felt now was my time.
However this plan wasn’t as simple as it appeared…
Up until this point I had been working with my fertility naturopath in preparation, recovering from an ectopic pregnancy, adrenal fatigue and to increase my fertility. She had given the ‘all clear’ just a month earlier, so no one was more surprised than me when we fell pregnant second attempt.
It seemed like a very typical pregnancy, I took a number of tests (as you do) and each time a pink line confirmed I was pregnant. Each and every positive test as clear and pink as the others. I told my partner straight away and we were very excited.
A few days later I spoke to my interim Naturopath (ironically my naturopath went on maternity leave) for next steps. Strangely, first steps was ordering blood tests to check my HCG levels then report back.
My confidence waivered for the first time, why would she ask me to do this? Why couldn’t she just believe me and the numerous pink lines on sticks?
So you can imagine my heart sinking like quicksand when the results didn’t look great. My HCG levels weren’t as high as they should have been. My repeat blood tests revealed that my HCG levels were dropping. This pregnancy was not going to stick!
It hadn’t occurred to me in all this quick moving excitement and joy that this baby wouldn’t hang around. I was blind sighted. I thought the hardest part was trying to fall pregnant, a positive home pregnancy test was all the confidence I needed. But apparently not. I blamed the temporary naturopath for doubting my pregnancy. In her mind it was never going to stick – why should I have thought any differently?
And that was my approach to every pregnancy that followed, why should I think it would stick?
This news was devastating but to be honest, the hardest part was not knowing when my body would decide to miscarry. I was told it could happen in one to two weeks, anytime really. I was a walking time bomb – ticking away until ‘it’ decided to go off! I had no way out, this bomb would drop and I had to go through the motions until it happened.
Unfortunately ‘it’ decided to happen the night of my partner’s birthday party. Prior to the pregnancy news, we had invited 30 people to our house to celebrate and that’s when the time bomb counted down its final moments. It started slowly, I could tell it was happening but it wasn’t until the next morning when the house was full of empty bottles and uneaten food lying around that it really kicked in.
No one told me how painful it is! The Physical pain is one I can remember as clearly today as the day it happened.
Painful cramps that I could only imagine felt like labour contractions. As if that wasn’t awful enough – the pain is like a final knife stab in the back. Almost as if it is a punishment for thinking for just one moment that you could really be pregnant.
I lost the baby to be, on my partner’s birthday. Whilst he slept off a nasty hangover, I was in the other room, feeling empty and physically hurting. I delayed waking him. What was the point? There was nothing he could do. I know other people would handle this moment differently but I knew no words could change that physical pain and loss in that moment.
One week earlier in a moment of over excitement, I had foolishly told my family our exciting news.
I have no idea what possessed me to tell them so early. We weren’t planning on telling anyone – we knew to keep it secret until 13 weeks, so why I blurted it out to my whole family one night, I am not sure. Everyone was shocked but no one more shocked than my partner when I announced it so early, without giving him the heads up first.
The hardest part when I lost the baby was telling my nieces, who were just old enough to understand that I had a baby in my tummy. My 2 year old niece asked for months later about the baby. There were numerous times I tried to explain that there was no baby, that it had decided it to go away. Eventually she stopped asking, on some level, even as a toddler, she understood.
So along with the devastation of my first miscarriage, in a pregnancy where I never doubted there would be an issue, there was the embarrassment that I had told people way too early, I chastised myself for thinking I could have a child so easily? How foolish of me to think just because I wanted a baby, that I could have one.
Those first nights following the miscarriage were full of sorrow, questioning of why?
What happened? What did I do wrong? What made the baby start off so strong and yet fade so quickly?
Thoughts often led to blaming my body for being a failure. I wasn’t worthy of this. I wasn’t fit to be a mum. Self-destructive thoughts, that manifest over time and rotate around your mind every time you experience a loss. The thoughts and feelings marinate until the next time and unfortunately they are ripe with new evidence. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I remember on the night it happened, lying down on the side of the bed, sobbing with my whole body and my partner kneeling down next to me at eye level, consoling me, saying ‘these things happen’ and assuring me we would try again and it was a matter of keep going forward. I couldn’t hear those words, I could not believe them or justify them. All I thought was ‘I will never get over this’, I was too lost at that moment to ever think I could stop sobbing and get out of bed, ever, ever, again.
To be honest this first miscarriage is the strongest memory I have of all the losses that followed.
After that, things becomes vague, they tend to blend into one, details are fuzzy around the edges. We could analyze this….did I start to block out the thoughts and feelings or did they become so often that I couldn’t keep up anymore? I am not sure. But the first cut really is the deepest.
Then there are Chemical Pregnancies….
It is by definition: a very early miscarriage which occurs before the fifth week of gestation and well before the foetus can be visibly detected on an ultrasound. It is believed to affect as many as 75% of pregnancies that end in miscarriage.
If you are trying for a baby and taking pregnancy tests eagerly (like I habitually was) then it’s more likely you will be aware of them. For my first chemical pregnancy, I had a strong line on the test but as the week went on, the line became fainter and fainter (which made me become a regular and neurotic test checker – which is an expensive and obsessive way to be). It drives you crazy as you search for that clear line you saw just days ago. You go out and buy more and more tests and you question your sanity but it’s too late, you’ve become a line chaser and the line is fading…until there is no evidence at all and you feel that you must have imagined it because you wanted it so bad.
With a chemical pregnancy, you are losing or have very little HCG - the line either disappears or never really shows.
I have had a pink line disappear, I have had a faint line that only I could really see and I have had no line at all but a delayed heavy period and some weird symptoms you can’t explain. All of these have been chemical pregnancies and you may have had it yourself. It is otherwise called a ‘non sticky pregnancy’ or a ‘phantom pregnancy’.
I had a number of chemical pregnancies which can be just as hard to deal with as a celebrated pregnancy.
My last loss was a celebrated pregnancy and ended in a miscarry. At the time I wrote a letter to this baby when I felt a hunch that I was likely losing this one too. I was worried that maybe I didn’t love the baby enough and that is why it wanted to leave me?
I have included an extract of that letter below.
Dear Baby,
Today I did another test, I hoped you were there. You were, hanging in there, I know you’re doing the best you can to hang in there, I know you’re doing all you can to be our baby. I know you want us to be your parents, and we are so keen to be yours.
Please feel comfortable and get cosy and stay with me. Please know that I love you and your potential. I am giving you everything I can to help you along. Please give me every hope possible, please send me messages of reassurance, please let my intuition connect with you, so that I know you are there and realise my life dream and goal, to have a child I can love unconditionally. Because I know I can and I will. We invite you into our lives, happy, whole and loved.
Love you already to the moon and back. Love and love and love and love and love and love and love xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
This letter was written on 17th Feb 2016. A couple of days later I lost this baby. Even though I had a very clear pink line, I was told by our IVF specialist that the HCG was very low once they tested me. We were told to start IVF again off the back of this.
Which we did. And it also didn’t work.
But I don’t want to leave this story here, because as much as my story is full of losses, hits and misses, sadness and sorrow. It is also a story of hope. You see at the time I would never have dreamt that four months later, I would fall pregnant naturally with my son.
Those last four months prior to falling pregnant were in no way easy or enjoyable. I didn’t know for each of those four months what was around the corner.
I know that miscarriages are common, I know that. I also know that women all over the world experience them and feel pain at the loss. For me the loss is personal. Deeply personal. It doesn’t matter how much your partner is supportive or doctors try to explain it away in a scientific way, it is happening to you the individual, yes there are collective hopes and dreams from your partner but this is happening to you, your body, your heart, your organs, your soul. The physical loss is as big as the emotional one and no one else feels that but you and no one can ease that pain.
That sense of emptiness, the feeling that there is no way back, no way to reverse the situation, no way to reclaim that time, there is no quick way out of the grief that follows. And lastly it is the big question of ‘what now?’ do I ever get to fall pregnant again or was this my one and only chance?
If you have been trying for a long time and this was the closest you came to being pregnant, then it’s hard to think that you will fall pregnant again – let alone it to be successful.
During this period of time, I read a book. It was called Women’s Bodies – Women Wisdom by Christiane Northrup.
It’s a book I recommend whether you have had a loss or not. As per the title it covers women’s bodies and health issues with alternative views about menstrual cycles, Endometriosis, ovaries and fertility to name just a few. It is such an important book – it’s important we understand our bodies and educate ourselves on these organs which are unique to us. I often go back and re-read elements of this book when I need to understand my body better.
Sometimes when going through a miscarriage or a serious health issue, it feels like your body and your heart are out of alignment – they’ve stopped talking and I believe this book can help your body start the conversation again. You see…your organs can ‘feel’ emotions and these emotions are stored up and take on the stress, loss and all the pressure that builds up. It’s no surprise I was feeling like I was living under a pile of bricks.
I have read that some women’s grief from a miscarriage can be as much as a woman who delivers a stillborn baby. I get that.
However did you know that the chances of having another miscarriage scientifically does not increase after having one, but women do tend to lose trust with their bodies after a miscarriage. We tend to beat ourselves up, feel guilty that we may have done something to cause it.
One element Christiane Northup talks about is ‘feeling your grief’. A popular sentiment, especially on Pinterest and Instagram these days is: ‘being present in the moment’ but what she talks about is ‘sitting in your feelings’. Instead of medicating or distracting, blaming or hiding whatever emotion you are feeling….sit right there, in the middle of whatever you’re currently experiencing.
So if it is extreme sense of loss – then feel that, until you no longer feel that extreme emotion anymore. If you truly ‘feel’ an emotion and just sit in it – then you will likely move on from it in a cleaner and more enlightened way than trying to push it aside. You can then re-gather, know you have been authentic to your feelings and when the time is right – move on.
If you are currently going through this or ‘been there, done that’ in the past, you aren’t alone…but I already know that doesn’t necessarily make you feel better – does it? It doesn’t dim the pain or numb the senses. Instead feel those senses and take solace from someone like me, you can move on in time and see it for what it is – the past.
Maybe I am different? I tend to take a long time to move on from things but once I do…..I am done.
No longer do I like to live in the past. I don’t like school reunions and if I pick up an old hobby I left for good reason, it doesn’t recreate the same joy. Maybe it’s just me – I am no longer the romantic I once was. It wasn’t always this way – in fact I used to be the opposite, I used to love reminiscing of the good ol days, I would journal every conversation with a guy in an early relationship and I admit I once listened to the same mixed tape twice a day for over a year after a breakup. But not anymore.
These things (‘these’ being pregnancy loss) tend to change you. It was no longer romantic to look back over the past, it no longer served me any purpose. Instead I learnt to push on, to be resilient and pick myself up again and again. I knew I was pushing against the odds. This was the hand that I was dealt and that’s the hand I had to play. Keep going. Find a way.
I don’t keep a date of these losses or when these babies ‘would have been born’, it’s not the way I think but I understand others do. I get that for some, this is important. I can’t live that way. I’ve had too many loses to think of all those dates and hopes I lost along the way. I don’t want to be defined by this.
Moving forward is the only way. It’s like going to the beach for a swim with a big swell, you have to embrace yourself for the oncoming wave, be prepared that there is a chance you may get the wrong part of the wave and be dumped or pulled in the wrong direction. Nature cannot always be predictable. Neither can your path to becoming a parent. You need to keep preparing for the next wave, sometimes there’s a lull but you always have to look ahead.
You can get angry and upset at others for falling pregnant easy, you can get angry that people who don’t even want kids - fall pregnant or for the people who have never had to fight for a goddamn thing in their life - but at the end of the day that just leaves you angry and them pregnant. It doesn’t help your cause, it won’t change the situation and if left too long it will leave you bitter…
Believe me when I say that you need to find a way to look forward, whether it is practicing meditation, journaling through your pain, counselling or embracing gratitude. You need to use this experience to better yourself, as it won’t be the last time in life you will need to call on your resilience/ your ‘Sisu’/ your core.
Read, learn, ask questions, share your story, and get to know yourself and your body at the deepest level. Learn to trust again.
At some stage I will talk about how long do you keep trying for? How to know if you can keep going? I will blog about this as this is a question you may ask after a loss. I know I did. But for now I leave you with this Steve Jobs quote.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever .....
Always look forward and trust your body