It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post.
With Christmas approaching I think it is a time that makes everyone reflect and emotions are very much heightened.
It is nearly four months since I experienced a miscarriage. In some ways these four months feel like forever but in other ways I can’t believe it’s only been four months.
I am beyond grateful for my two year old daughter and the joy she is bringing us this Christmas. To witness Christmas through her eyes has really brought that childhood excitement back again! I am not thinking about what gifts I will get or my own experiences of Christmas. I am more excited to open her presents with her and see her happiness when she has all of her family together on Christmas Day!
But behind this excitement and joy is a lingering sadness. The sadness of what should have been. When we found out I was pregnant, Christmas felt like a great milestone. After Christmas it would only be 3-4 months and we would have welcomed our second child. It gave us something to really look forward to in the new year.
It’s hard to describe the grief that comes with having lost a baby. It’s a grief for something I had only known about for a few weeks, but that’s totally irrelevant. It doesn’t matter that I was ‘only’ six weeks pregnant. It was mine and my husband’s baby. Our daughter’s brother or sister. The excitement is shattered and replaced with overwhelming pain.
There are feelings of self-blame that lead to the mind repeating questions of, did I do something wrong? Was I not careful enough? Was it my fault?
The grief also provokes anger. Anger towards myself and my body, why has my body, once again (previous pregnancy/birth blog posts) not done what it’s supposed to? Why didn’t it protect and grow my baby?
There’s also an element of anger towards the world around you. Two days after I started to miscarry I popped to the local supermarket on my own. I came home to my husband in floods of tears as it felt like every pregnant woman and families with newborn babies were out that day. Obviously this wasn’t the case, but your mind is so attuned to them, that at the time, it feels like the world is being cruel and reminding you of what you’ve lost and what should have been.
There are days that I feel I’m doing ok. I’m smiling, I’m laughing and I’m getting through the day. And then there are days where the grief hits and it’s a struggle to get out from under that dark cloud.
Anxiety has gone up a notch since the miscarriage. That feeling of something going wrong is constantly present. It impacts on my sleep and my day. I recently had a PTSD episode, I hadn’t had one in 5 months, I think the heightened emotions and affected sleep were a trigger!
It’s not just the emotional impact, but also the physical. My body has not yet physically reset and moved on from my miscarriage. I think this is something that it is making it very difficult to move forward emotionally. The two are very much interlinked.
Being a Mummy to a two year old has really helped me to carry on. It has forced me to face the day even when I could easily stay curled up under the duvet all day. However, being a Mummy to a two year old also hasn’t helped me. You have to keep going for your little one, and to do that, all of these strong emotions have been compressed to enable me to do this!
I hope one day to have a successful pregnancy and to give my little girl a baby brother or sister. But there is a constant fear of what if? What if there’s something wrong? What if it doesn’t happen? And while I very much want it to happen, there is the contradictory fear of, what if I get pregnant and lose a baby again? The fear of going through it again is huge. It’s a real complex situation for the mind to try and deal with. The uncertainty and the unknown is overwhelming, and yet the desire for another baby pushes back against these fears.
After the first couple of months I found myself getting annoyed at myself, why haven‘t I started to feel better yet? Will I ever get over it? It’s crazy how much pressure we put on ourselves sometimes! I know its important to allow myself to grieve but to also think positively about the future. At the moment i’ll keep moving forward one day at a time.
