This story starts with two very unexpected pink lines. Two pink lines that turned my world upside-down, inside-out, and back-to-front. They were the most astonishing pink lines that I have ever seen in my life and the world stopped for a second when I first saw them. On 19th November 2020 I was left completely and utterly speechless (that’s not an easy thing to achieve!) as those two pink lines winked back at me, and as tears pricked my eyes and made my vision blurry, I began to laugh.
Of course, I was pregnant – how could I have not expected that? I had thrown up a couple of times before breakfast in the days leading up to then and had thought to myself that I needed to stop taking my vitamins on an empty stomach in the mornings because it was making me nauseous and throw up. I had complained to my friends on a Facebook video call a couple of weeks before that I must be due my first period in 27 months as I’d stopped breastfeeding my daughter a month ago and my stomach was bloated, my skin was spotty, and my moods swings were OFF THE SCALE. But it wasn’t a dreaded ‘thunder period’ brewing like we’d joked about. It was a precious sibling for Lily, another beautiful bundle to cherish and complete our little family unit. Completely unplanned but completely and utterly loved beyond words immediately.
Two pink lines turned into six pink lines as I did a couple more tests, just to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming. Then I got in the car and brought two more digital tests to make 100% sure that I wasn’t imagining things. After what felt like an eternity of watching a timer flash on the screen: PREGNANT confirmed what I already knew, and my mind raced as I worked out when our baby would be due – it took me a while as I’d not had ANY inkling from Mother Nature that I was actually able to conceive again after my breastfeeding journey with Lily had stopped the month before. I was convinced that our next pregnancy after Lily would need to be planned methodically and that I’d be taking ovulation tests every other day because so many people I knew of had waited months and months for their cycle to return after breastfeeding ended – it wasn’t something I particularly worried about though because that was a small price to pay for being given the gift of feeding my baby for 18 months and another baby wasn’t on our radar yet anyway.
Rewind to a couple of weeks before we found out that we were expecting; I was laying in the bath trying to ease the bloating and niggling in my stomach and relax my racing mind and the pendulum that was my pregnancy hormones. I scrolled aimlessly through Instagram when I read the news that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry had suffered from a miscarriage and her profound words stopped me in my tracks. I sobbed great, big, fat hormonal tears into my bath water and I was moved by how beautiful and brave her interview was. I decided in that moment, that if I were to ever experience that heartbreak that I would speak out about it and not be pressured to grieve silently and how families are made to feel baby loss should be approached – quietly and quickly moving on. I thought I could comprehend that pain and how awful it was for families to experience that, as I had witnessed others going through it around me and my heart just dropped for them when I heard their devastating news. I know now that I had NO IDEA of what it was really like in the depths of such a loss. Something that I’ve not shared openly is that I had a ‘suspected’ loss in my mid-teens, but it was brushed under the carpet and the millions of questions that buzzed around my head were deeply downtrodden and supressed at a time when my whole perspective of life was skewed by extreme teenage angst and a disruptive time at home and at school. After having a beautiful pregnancy and birth with Lily, it was then something that I thought I’d never have to endure because it all went so smoothly, and I didn’t let it enter my mind.
Our surprise news was followed by a sleepless night for both of us. The next day I gave my mum my positive pregnancy test when she came to visit, and I was ready for her to throw her hands to her mouth in absolute shock and keeping saying ‘really?’ like she did when we told her the same news in 2018 when we were expecting Lily. However, she just smiled this time and said she knew it was coming – maybe not this soon, but it wasn’t a big surprise. In fact, it was less of a shock to everyone else that we told than it was to us! I felt the need to justify our news and make it very clear that it was unexpected, but that we were excited. I probably just hadn’t got my own head around it yet as we told our nearest and dearest fairly quickly after finding out (that was another decision that I made after reading Meghan Markle’s interview – better to celebrate in the moment now than deliver sad news to our loved ones without having joyously celebrated with them first), but everyone else was over the moon and said what lovely timing it was with Lily having just started nursery two days a week, and how good she’d be as a big sister. I actually ordered a ‘big sister’ T-shirt the night we found out about our new baby, and I messaged the lovely photographer that we were already booked in with for a Christmas photoshoot in a couple of weeks’ time to ask if she’d be up for making it a pregnancy announcement too to send to our extended family and friends in their Christmas cards. I booked a private scan for as soon as I could have one like I had with Lily, and it meant we would have a little scan picture for our announcement. We also completely rearranged our wedding that was due to happen just weeks after the baby was due to arrive. I wasn’t as naïve going into birth and the recovery this time like I was with Lily – I knew without a doubt that I would NOT be up for wearing a white wedding dress and entertaining over 100 of our family and friends shortly after having a baby! We brought the date forward by six months from our dream venue in a castle with 100+ guests, to a registry office with a limited number of people (thanks to the current COVID restrictions!) but we did not regret that decision one bit because there was now a bigger picture and being married after 9 years together, before having another baby was the most important thing to us over the venue. Everything was sorted and after a few days of intense reorganisation and planning, we relaxed, and the timing felt perfect.
Something that niggled in my mind from shortly after finding out that I was pregnant was a very light cramping sensation in my tummy most mornings. I must have had it since falling pregnant because I was convinced that it was period cramps starting. I didn’t want to say it out loud to anyone though – ANY period like symptoms while you’re pregnant is automatically turned into something scary and I wasn’t going to share those thoughts with anyone. At the time I had started practising the art of manifestation after having books and podcasts recommended to me (that is for another blog post!) so I kept telling myself that it was nothing and that everything was fine. A few trusty Google searches reassured me that once your uterus has stretched and grown to carry your first baby, subsequent pregnancies can show and grow quicker (not always!) and sometimes ligaments and muscles moving and relaxing and growing can be more apparent and this symptom was common. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I noticed a pink mark in my underwear that got darker during the day and my heart sank. Again, a panicked Google search told me that this is also common, and some women experience light spotting or bleeding when their first missed period should have been due or for a couple of weeks after. I compared my own underwear to graphic images on forums and google images of other women, and I was grateful for the first time ever that people out there over-share this kind of thing on the internet! My first missed period had been due a few weeks before the spotting started, so I wasn’t entirely convinced that it was that, but I still tried to stay positive and thought it would pass. I avoided going to the toilet as much thinking the less I saw the marks, the less upset I’d get myself.
Eventually the spotting turned into light bleeding and I text my midwife in a light-hearted way to ask what to do, while uncontrollably sobbing and panicking on the toilet because I knew deep in my heart what was happening. She called me immediately – I will forever be grateful to the amazing community midwifery team that were there from the moment I registered my pregnancy. She reassured me that this can happen and there was nothing I could do expect keep an eye on it and carry on with daily life and to not focus on it. I did what she said but I did still constantly focus on it. I couldn’t think of anything else. From the moment I found out that I was expecting, my whole internal dialogue was either about the baby or to the baby. As a pregnant woman there is a part of your brain and your heart that is focusing on the life growing inside of you 24/7. You imagine what they’ll look like, what time of year they’ll be born, how old they’ll be when certain milestones and events happen in your life, what you’ll call them, if your home is big enough, the list goes on and it’s a beautiful ongoing monologue in your head. My internal dialogue with my baby was turning into frantic pleading that they would be okay and that this was nothing to worry about. I spoke out loud as I held my now cramping stomach and asked them to hold on and be okay. As the days went on and I started to tell a few people about what was happening (still light-hearted because I couldn’t bear people confirming what I was fearing) I knew this wasn’t normal. I phoned my midwife back and she immediately told me to contact the Early Pregnancy Unit because she wasn’t specialised in early blood loss like this and wanted more professional advice for me. They offered me a scan in two days’ time, and I was both extremely grateful and horrified to wait that long when I needed one now. When I told my midwife the situation she said “that’s great news, they usually don’t have space that quickly for scans as they’re really busy” so I bit my tongue and accepted the situation.
The next day, on Wednesday 2nd December as I sat in my car in a carpark in a local village while waiting for Rob to get his haircut and listening to Boris Johnson and the news presenters on the radio exclaim in delight about the new COVID vaccine being approved and plans for it to be rolled out immediately, pain took over my lower back and my stomach and I felt the gush that was the confirmation I so desperately did not need or want that I was losing my baby. As the contractions ebbed and flowed, I text Rob but didn’t want to panic him as he was in absolute denial about anything being wrong up to this point, so I just said please come straight back to the car instead of finding us some lunch when he was done. I saw in my rear-view mirror minutes later that he ran back through the village – he knew without me saying it that I needed to get home now. I will never forget the sight that we were greeted with at home when I looked at what that gush had produced. With a large blood clot that could never be mistaken as a ‘heavy period’ like miscarriage bleeding is often flippantly described, was our baby. Of course, it didn’t look like a baby and there were no distinguishable features, but we knew exactly what it was. They were absolutely peaceful and unaware that the sight of them outside of my body destroyed us and our world fell out from under our feet. We just started to shake and couldn’t catch our breath. What are you meant to do? Who do you call? Do you keep it? Do you put it in the bin or down the toilet? This was our baby and the only thing I wanted to do was wrap them up and tell them (and myself) it was all okay. But it wasn’t. A call to the midwife and the Early Pregnancy Unit semi-confirmed what we didn’t want to say out loud, but I still needed to go for my scan the next day to assess the situation, look for a heartbeat and go from there. That sentence to me meant ‘we need to confirm that you’re no longer pregnant’, but that sentence to Rob meant ‘there is still a chance that everything is okay’. We dealt with this part of our loss VERY differently.
That night I stood in the queue at Lily’s nursery for pick-up, listening to all the other parents discussing the new vaccine and the news that had been playing on loop around the world about our country’s new hope for preventative measures towards fighting COVID and how life would be able to return to normal again. Meghan Markle’s words “I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second” echoed in my head and I have never squeezed Lily so tight as I did that day when she ran out of nursery and into my arms and I never wanted to let go.
Rob wasn’t allowed in the hospital with me when I attended my appointment the next day in the EPU and to this day I feel like that is one of the biggest injustices that we suffered during this time. Luckily (I use that word very loosely because you’re never lucky to be going there!), two weeks later, the government reconsidered their legislation and allowed one support person to attend all appointments with a pregnant mother. It’s something that you should never have to do full stop, let alone on your own. Life is precious and it should be shared through the ups and downs with a loved one when you’re at your most vulnerable. I sat in the waiting room on my own looking at miscarriage posters, while Rob entertained Lily at his office which is local to the hospital and text me for updates and to let me know how torturous the wait and my silence was for him. A morbid and graphic chat with the nicest gynaecologist/midwife/bereavement midwife (also called Amy) led on to blood and urine samples and both external and internal ultrasound scans. I’ve experienced the trauma of a car accident, given birth to a baby and have had countless surgeries and procedures on my ankle (another blog pending about this!) and I can safely say that the internal scan while experiencing a miscarriage was the most uncomfortable and soul-destroying experience that I’ve ever been through. I thought my world would actually collapse around me when she confirmed that there was no live pregnancy or heartbeat visible on the scan, and I had no one to experience that with me. When I got dressed after the investigations were complete, a white feather fell in front of my face and on to the floor next to shoe as I tied my laces. Just like those pink lines on the pregnancy test ignited something beautiful inside of me, so did that feather. It was a symbol of hope and comfort for me and I’ll cherish it forever. I could not have needed a sign like that more than I did in that moment. The white feather was sent to remind me to be strong. My midwife left the room for a minute to collect leaflets for me about the possibility of having an extrauterine pregnancy (a pregnancy that implants outside of the uterus, most commonly in the fallopian tubes which is also known as an ectopic pregnancy. A negative home pregnancy test that I had to do a week later confirmed that this wasn’t the case for me – I had what is known as a complete miscarriage) and I was sobbing at the thought of walking through the hospital alone, bleeding and not pregnant any more to find Rob when he picked me up and tell him the news too. The student nurse who had quietly observed the whole ordeal (with my permission – I always grant permission to have students present as it’s the only way they’ll experience what they need to become qualified and successful) asked me why I was crying. What was I meant to say to that? I’m not pregnant anymore. I have just been told that I have lost my baby and you witnessed all of it. My inner dialogue to my baby had been muted and I was left empty and alone in an instant. When I didn’t answer, she then asked me what my concerns were. Again, how do you answer that? I’m now concerned that I have to tell my partner that our baby has died. I have to tell everyone that we shared our news with that I’m no longer pregnant. I have to tell all the people that we didn’t get to share our news with yet that I was pregnant and now I’m not. I have to wait for this pain and bleeding to stop and carry on life for my precious Lily. The nurse’s inexperience and insensitivity made me more determined to share this experience and educate people who feel uncomfortable around people who are grieving. Death is a part of life and shying away from those whose hearts are broken into millions of pieces actually makes it harder to begin putting that jigsaw of broken pieces back together. As morbid and cynical as it is, the statement ‘the only certainty in life is death’ is true! What an empowering experience it would be to have your grief and emotions validated by those around you and openly talked about at your pace, instead of feeling the need to apologise to them before you tell them your own devastating news because you know they’ll find it difficult to hear and talk about. My messages to some of my loved ones to tell them our news started by saying “sorry to tell you this in a message”. Why was I apologising to them?! I have learned a lot about those around me through my latest experiences and it’s given me the fire and the passion in my gut to make a difference for anyone else in this position who feels almost completely alone too.
Since sharing my news on social media a week after being discharged from the hospital, I have been supported and cushioned by people who I hadn’t spoken to for months prior to my loss, we wouldn’t have classed ourselves as close friends up to this point, but they have instantly become the most valuable friends and support for me and I hope I’ll be able to return that for them on their darker days when the waves of grief hit hard and unexpectedly. I have a deeper connection and understanding with some of my close friends now too, an unfortunate unwritten language that you can only have when you share this level of grief, and I’ll be eternally grateful to them for being my light when I was consumed with darkness that they knew all too well. We’re part of the worst girl gang in the world, we don’t want to be members of this group and we definitely don’t want any more members to join us, but we are all connected and there is strength in numbers when we share our experiences and our feelings.
I don’t feel like it’s my place to suggest support for anyone in my situation because I’m still very early in my journey and everyone experiences loss and grief differently. However, I am passionate about sharing my own experiences through the highs and lows and hope that people find comfort and their own bravery in my story. The Miscarriage Association UK were recommended to me by my bereavement midwife and it’s a great place to start when you’re lost and feel like there is nowhere to turn for answers. There are also so many charities and organisations out there that regularly share help and support online and host charity events and raise much needed awareness to break the taboo. In my opinion, a bible for anyone experiencing baby loss, or for someone who wants to support a loved one through their experience of grief is ‘The Baby Loss Guide’ by Zoe Clark-Coates. Listening to her book (I’m an audiobook/podcast addict!) and journaling through her daily tasks to navigate through the path of baby loss is helping me come to terms with things and validate my own loss so that I don’t need to seek it elsewhere from people who don’t understand or know how to help. I follow Zoe on social media for daily posts and to watch her speak eloquently and respectfully about baby loss from her own experiences and sharing others’ experiences too. Sharing my story has been cathartic and therapeutic for me, but I understand why it is too painful for some to talk about or even acknowledge. I personally couldn’t comprehend being able to navigate through this without everyone around me knowing what I’m going through because at the moment, it takes up most of my mind, but others may cope better by keeping it to themselves or within their small circle and everyone else carrying on as normal around them is what they need to come through it. It is an entirely subjective topic, and this is why the statistics and data surrounding baby loss is so uncertain because it’s not widely shared by everyone for many different reasons. National statistics estimate that 1 in 4 pregnancies ends with loss, while my midwife and other independent studies estimate that 1 in 3 is more accurate and may be even more. There are MANY men and women in the public eye who openly share their own experiences and I urge anyone to search for these profound and brave stories, but some of my personal favourite people who have openly shared and helped me enormously are Giovanna Fletcher (her book and podcast Happy Mum, Happy Baby’ have got me through SO much over the last 3 years), Chrissy Teigen, Zoe Clark-Coates, Chris and Rosie Ramsay, and most recently at time of writing, Binky Felstead.
Baby loss is something that will now endlessly be a part of me and my family, and I will remember all of our special dates forever, but I will spread awareness and rainbows as far and wide as I possibly can. I don’t know how to end this blog post because it certainly isn’t the end of my story, and the conversation needs to be continued; maybe just a message to my baby to say that I held you for every second of your life, and you will stay with me for every second of mine. I love you and I miss you every day, thank you for sending me the white feathers that have been appearing thick and fast around me and Lily, they have helped me stay close to you and they are safely tucked in your memory box for me to have forever. And to Lily, thank you for giving me something to get out of bed for and holding my world up when it collapsed.
Love from your mummy, Amy x