Miscarriage

I am breaking the stigma that I feel surrounds miscarriage and speaking from my heart about the loss we had in mid January, 2017, with the hope that through my vulnerability will right now (or in the future) help the women and potentially men that read this understand that you don't have to always feel alone through this struggle.

It has been one year and seven months since I lost my baby who would be turning one on the 17th of September given the chance he/she arrived on the due date.

I still feel every inch of helplessness and guilt I did from the start.

I feel my heart sink to my stomach every time I have to think back to that day, it is harder then I can put into words, it is truly one of those feelings you cannot explain, one that no one can possibly tell you they understand until they have been through it themselves.

I was going about my day working in a cafe. I found myself needing to go to the toilet more frequently, so off I went down the alley way to the toilets and there it was, my worst nightmare that I had been doing everything under the sun to avoid literally staring me in the face.

The start of a week from hell and one million questions, 'what did I possibly do wrong?'.

I closed the cafe early with support from my boss.

I had an emergency ultrasound at our local hospital at the time, I met there with my partner and mum. I had blood tests taken day after day to ensure that my hcg levels (which for those who aren't familiar with stands for human chorionic gonadotropin), weren't rising or fluctuating but the hope was that they were gradually going to go down, which thankfully they did drop and my body naturally did all the work it had to do on it's own.

I went about the next week feeling pretty distant from the world. I had never felt the way I did during the first few months, I have experienced periods of depression before but this feeling was beyond me, I don't know how to describe it, it just felt like my purpose as a woman had been taken from me and that feeling has never completely gone away since and I'm not sure it ever will.

It sounds selfish but at the time I didn't understand why this had to happen to me, I didn't like the idea of being put under a statistic of 'one in four' when so many people around me were announcing their successful pregnancies. I found myself noticing so many more pregnant women out and about and feeling so much resent and anger to strangers I had never spoke to simply because they had what I lost. I found myself ranting to my mum about those kinds of people you see doing obvious harm they shouldn't be during pregnancy and feeling infuriated that people like them got further into pregnancy then me. I found myself leaving baby showers angry and upset and crying to strangers when I congratulated them on an obvious bump.

My pregnancy was a tiny, miniature soul, it was not 'nothing'. It was valid. It has been and always will be worthy of my grieving process up until now. I never got the opportunity to bring to this world my first pregnancy. I walk everyday with a memory of my baby, a tiny foot tattooed to resemble the fact we will walk through this life together, despite the fact he/she never made it to physical form in my arms.

The pain after miscarriage lingers and there's constant reminders of what I don't have but could have had but simply knowing I did everything in my power to try keep up a healthy pregnancy is enough to some what ease my mind, nature simply just did it's thing. At some point you learn to be quite about how bad it hurts and just accept things as they are because no one wants to hear about it as constantly as you feel it.

I know that one day when the timing is right, another tiny soul will call my body home for a full 9 months.

From the bottom of my heart I wish you all the happiness in the world..

Maddy

Xx