Pregnancy After Miscarriage

On the 01/10/2019, I began to miscarry for the second time, I remember in the lead up to this moment I was almost just waiting for it, like a part of me expected that it would happen because being pregnant to me seemed to wind up in a pool of disappointment. In my mind pregnancy was so far from my reach, like it was up on this shelf that I would finally get a grip of, and then it would slip away from my reach again.

A year from the date mentioned above, on the 01/10/2020, I got a positive pregnancy test. It wasn’t just any pregnancy test, it was the kind I had longed for. The kind that has me here, able to share my experience.

I preached that more women should speak of their losses so that the word ‘miscarriage’ didn’t feel like such a whispered word. In the shadows of becoming a mother can be loss, time and so much trust in ‘what will be, will be’. I knew that because I spoke about my experience with miscarriage rather young, having had my first loss at 17, many readers were my age and likely didn’t see the topic as relevant, admittedly - I totally get why now, because at the time they probably weren’t interested in a family at all.

But it made sense to me then, and this was a topic I quickly became passionate about.

The chances of miscarriage are 1 in every 3 pregnancies, which meant it was likely that one of my readers, whether my own friends, or one their friends were going to experience a loss in the future. So I spoke from my experience to get rid of this unrealistic view that I naively had too, where you just get to pee on a test and it will mean that you get a beautiful baby at the end of that, but that just is not the case at all.

For people like myself, who have lived in these moments of pure despair wondering what you did wrong, questioning ‘why only me’ when you are seeing friends around you announce their pregnancies, have their babies and suddenly noticing all these strangers with big belly’s when that is all you long for.. I see you. Take comfort as I sit here holding your hand if you have felt this way too, acknowledging that it absolutely does fucking suck, and it totally does feel that way, but knowing that no matter what, we can navigate this together.

When I fell pregnant this time, I had a whole different experience. It was like I just surrendered to the experience and fully trusted my body in whatever it had to do to get me and my baby through. I didn’t google every little thing with every fleeting moment, I didn’t stress that I would see blood when I next went to wipe. I just trusted that this time, things would be different, and if, for whatever reason they were not, we would try again. I know that losing another pregnancy whether at 6 weeks, 9 weeks or 12 would lead us one step closer to our healthy baby, but I held on to a slither of hope, sharing amongst our nearest and dearest as we were cautiously optimistic, that this was the time we had waited for.

I made it to my dating scan at 6 weeks, I was nervous for this week in particular because both previous pregnancies were lost at around this time, but with the support of my mum, I got to see a flicker on that screen, and a heartbeat of 123bpm.

I let out a sigh of relief as my mum screamed “woohoo!” In the car park of the place I had the ultrasound. I had a fairly breezy next few weeks with limited symptoms, and no dreaded morning sickness.

But because I had none of your stereotypical pregnancy symptoms, I began to worry at 9 weeks, so I booked myself in for a private ultrasound, and there I seen my baby again, with a heartbeat at 172bpm, and the beginning of what will be our baby’s arms and legs.

And then at 9 weeks and 4 days, I had some bleeding and with that I went to the hospital. I think my mind took over at the very moment I seen blood, thinking the worst I quickly switched my mind over and told myself “we haven’t come this far to only come this far.” After some tests and an ultrasound in the emergency room, we were comforted to see our baby jumping around, we discovered that there was a heamatoma and that was likely the cause of my bleed, so I continued to trust what my body needed to do to get us through this.

The next few weeks went on, we past that 12 week mark and I still didn’t believe that this was really happening.

I protected my heart for a little too long and felt guilty that I hadn’t yet connected to this baby. I worried that something was wrong, that because I wasn’t sick like everyone tells you is a ‘positive sign everything is fine’ then something was wrong.

I continued to remind myself that this experience was mine, not my friends who had been sick through out their pregnancy, or the person next door who couldn’t get out of bed because of the fatigue, but uniquely mine, and I count my lucky stars everyday for that.