**TRIGGER WARNING** Baby Loss - My experience.

This post details our experience of baby loss, purely from my point of view. In no way does that diminish the loss that my husband also experienced, as baby loss does not just affect the pregnant person, but the partner too. I feel it is important to acknowledge that before telling my story. My husband lost his child too.

In March of 2021 I was on furlough during the 3rd lockdown.

I'd had a miserable few months as many of us had, living through a winter lockdown, and I was really beginning to feel lost. I had been away from work for the best part of a year and my son was at nursery 3 days a week, so on those days I didn't feel I had a purpose. I had begun to work on my mental health by getting into cooking, journalling and setting up a podcast with a friend - I had felt that there was something missing for me and learning a new skill in the form of editing the podcast helped to keep my brain active and make me feel like I wasn't totally stagnating.

On the morning of my birthday I did a pregnancy test. My period hadn't come yet that month and I had been feeling a bit different in the days leading up to it with various symptoms (particularly a headache which I just couldn't seem to shake). A test 3 days prior had been negative so although I did have that in the back of my mind, it still felt like my body was trying to tell me something.

I thought in the event that the test was positive (which I was pretty confident it would be), it would make an amazing birthday present and make the day feel more special when I couldn't have a proper celebration. It was positive.

As Lee and I took a walk together that morning, we couldn't quite believe it, but of course it was all we talked about. That special feeling came flooding back. The feeling of excitement about the life growing inside me, the wondering about who they would be. Would they be a boy or a girl? What would they grow up to be? Would they look like their big brother? Would they have the same smiley relaxed personality as him? I worked out that I was only about 5 weeks pregnant, so it was early, but I had a smooth and uncomplicated first pregnancy with Jack, so I had no real reason to think that this one wouldn't work out. After all, the statistics were on my side.

But this new found positivity was not to last. A week after finding out I was pregnant, I started having some back pain and bleeding. I called the doctor who said it could be implantation bleeding, but to see how the next 24 hours or so went. When the bleeding became heavier the next day, it was recommended that I go to A&E. This was March 2021. The UK was still in the grip of a pandemic, and no one in hospital could have a partner with them. I sat bleeding and alone on the floor of the A&E waiting room, desperately hoping my baby was going to survive, and too polite to ask anyone for a seat. The agony of my situation being so invisible just seemed to make the whole experience so much crueler and more isolating. I was seen fairly quickly and sent home a few hours later with the comfort of being told that there didn't appear to be any live bleeding, and with the hope that my blood test would show that my HCG hormone levels were as expected. It turned out they weren't. They should have been over 1000. They were 103. It was arranged for me to go in for a blood test 3 days later, on a Saturday morning. HCG levels can double every day in early pregnancy, so they needed to give my body time to see if this was happening. What followed was an agonising wait from when the bleeding started on Tuesday afternoon until Saturday evening, when I received the call confirming that my HCG levels had dropped to around 69, and the pregnancy was "not viable". Those few days were agony. Thoughts of my pregnancy and the horrible feeling I had in my gut consumed my every waking thought - to this day I still do not know how I didn't lose my mind. The lack of available support for couples and women in this situation, and the expectation that we can just go on as normal whilst waiting to find out if the life inside of us is dying is just unbelievable. It is honestly enough to send you insane.

We had friends over on the day that we found out the pregnancy had come to an end. They were friends who were aware of the situation we were facing, and we couldn't have asked for them to handle it better. They were amazing. They did the absolute right thing I think you can do in that situation, and they followed our lead. They were happy to talk about it without awkwardness if we wanted to, but happy to carry on as normal if we didn't. There is such a huge stigma around baby loss that it makes people so awkward in their reactions to it. I find this hugely frustrating, because in reacting this way, you are essentially making it about you, and not thinking about the pain of the person who has lost. And as usual it is women who are expected to suffer these things in silence so as not to make men uncomfortable with the graphic details of what we endure. To that I call bullshit. Your discomfort is nothing in comparison to the pain that the person who has just lost a child is feeling, but it is hardly a surprise that so many people are so terrible at talking about these things when they are just not discussed openly in society as a whole. I totally understand that for some people, baby loss is something they simply cannot or do not want to talk about. For some, exposing that pain is simply too hard, or too personal. I completely respect that. However, that was never going to be me, and I think it should be down to the woman or couple in question to deal with it as they need to. I felt that not discussing the loss and what had happened to me made the pain too difficult to bear. It was hard enough walking along the street knowing that anyone who saw me would just carry on as if nothing had happened to me when my world had been shattered. I wanted to shout from the rooftops that my child had existed, even if just for a brief week or two, because what we had lost was so much more than that time, and to pretend they had never been here was somehow doing them a disservice.

3 days after we discovered that the pregnancy was over, we went into the hospital for a scan. It was confirmed that an ectopic pregnancy had occurred (where the embryo forms outside of the womb so cannot survive). Up until that moment I was still desperately harbouring some hope that there had been a terrible mistake, and they would find that my baby was actually fine. I had continued having some pregnancy symptoms such as nausea and sore boobs, which had further fuelled my hopes, although realistically I knew deep down what was happening. The site of the embryo stuck in my fallopian tube confirmed that it definitely had not survived.

An ectopic pregnancy (probably because the name contains the word pregnancy) is something that many people do not really know about or understand. It certainly doesn't conjure up a sense that a pregnancy is over, but it is still very much a loss. Ectopic pregnancies can be extremely dangerous and in some cases, fatal. In my case it occurred the "best" possible way it could - no surgical intervention or drugs were required, and I didn't suffer any ruptures of my fallopian tubes or internal bleeding. Obviously that doesn't change the trauma, but not having to go through extra physical pain or interventions didn't add to it. However, that is not to say that this experience was easy. I bled for several weeks and I remember feeling that with each time I wiped, I wiped away more of our child. I even found the throwing away of all my used pads traumatic as I felt like I was throwing what was left of them in the bin like waste. The experience of the bleeding certainly made my first period afterwards quite horrible as I was now programmed to feel fear when I saw blood. I had also monitored my bleeding to help the doctors by taking photos on my phone - photos which to this day I still cannot bring myself to delete. It makes me shudder every time I scroll past them, but in a weird way they are all I have left and I don't feel quite ready to let go. It probably seems very strange and morbid to someone who has not been through it, especially since I hate to see them, but we all cope differently.

As time went on, and we felt more comfortable, we began to share what had happened with those around us. Many people were super understanding, but it will never cease to frustrate me how society has taught us to console those around us with that dreaded phrase "well at least..." at times of sorrow. "Well at least you weren't too far along." was one we got. Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that the further you are into a pregnancy, the more bonded you can be with the idea of this little person, and therefore the more traumatic the loss can be, particularly if you have to go through labour. However, I do resent the idea that an early loss is "just a bunch of cells." That bunch of cells is our child, not just a statistic, and we have lost a whole life, not just a week or two. Another was "at least you have Jack" as if I could not possibly be grateful for the existence of our older son and simultaneously devastated about the loss of our second child. The two are not mutually exclusive. If there is one thing I have learnt, it is that grief is very complex and it is not up to you to decide how deeply it affects someone, or how quickly they should move on. You also do not need to fix it for them. Sometimes all someone needs is an acknowledgment of the shitness of their situation, and to know that you are there for them. They don't need you to fix it with "at least.." because in doing so you are often undermining how they feel, and making them feel like their feelings are not valid because it was not worse. Sometimes just giving someone the space to feel what they are feeling and work through it, is the best possible thing you can do.

There are some excellent quotes about pregnancy loss which I came across in the days after it had happened, when I was desperately searching for some comfort, or for someone who understood what I was feeling. I'm sharing them now as they best convey my experience and they may help someone else too:

"In those few weeks of pregnancy you mock up an entire life - who the baby is going to look like, where's it's going to college. That's the loss we suffered.' - Kirsty Alley

"If I were to start a file on things nobody tells you about until you're right in the thick of them, I might begin with miscarriages. A miscarriage is lonely, painful, and demoralising, almost on a cellular level." - Michelle Obama

"It's not just a statistic. It's me." - Anon

"I never got to hold you, or bounce you on my lap. I never got to read to you, or watch you as you nap. You slipped away so quickly, before I said your name. And I want the world to know, I Ioved you just the same." - A Peterson

"I wanted to talk about it. Damn it. I wanted to scream, I wanted to yell. I wanted to shout about it. But all I could do was whisper 'I'm fine.' " The Idealist

"It's all very thief-in-the-night. No one really knows what to say. You go into the emergency room, you think you're going to be a mum and you walk out empty. It's all neat and tidy, there's this potential being in your life and you're empty -all cleaned up and put back together, but completely shattered. " - Tori Amos

"When you are pregnant you are either talking to your baby constantly in your mind or thinking of things relating to your baby. That is why it is like falling through a trapdoor if they die. One moment you are in this avid dialogue, the next moment, silence. I think it may be the loneliest feeling in the world." - Zoe Clark-Coates (sayinggoodbye.org)

On the day we found out I was pregnant, the magnolia blossom was in full beautiful bloom everywhere. Something about it really stood out to me, as both my body and the world were full of new life. Once I knew that the pregnancy was not going to work out (something I felt strongly in my gut from the first time I found blood) I knew that I wanted something as a reminder of this little person I had carried inside of me. I decided to have a tattoo on my inner arm of a magnolia flower as a reminder of our little bud that never had the chance to bloom. I very strongly felt like it was something I needed to do for me. I had a scar on my stomach from the birth of my first son (and second son now), and a beautiful scar in the form of this flower dedicated to the child we would never meet. As I sat in the tattooist's chair , I was in a considerable amount of pain, but it all felt worth it - it felt like the least I could do to mark the short life of our little one. Like the loss, the tattoo will be with me forever.

I read something beautiful a little while after my loss which was incredibly powerful. More recently this has also been discussed by Myleen Klass and Anna Whitehouse on Anna's podcast "Dirty Mother Pukka". Apparently when we become pregnant, DNA from our baby enters our body to help fix or tweak any issues that might require strengthening. That DNA stays with you. Part of your baby quite literally stays with you and does not leave. It is probably the most beautiful biological fact I have ever had the pleasure of learning, and I cannot tell you how much comfort I took from it. The sadness of the loss will always be there, but part of the child always will be too. Does it take away the grief? No, of course not. But the beauty of it has ensured that sadness is not the only emotion I feel in the wake of this experience. That sadness has now been joined by further wonder at the female body, and from that wonder, I have been able to take comfort and strength.