*Note: may contain triggers

“Sitting here in bed and I may be losing my baby. And I can’t do anything to fix it. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know and can’t read my own body because any symptoms there are could swing either way (i.e. pregnant or miscarriage). The only thing that I can do is wait. Sit and wait again. Like I haven’t f*cking done that for several weeks and months. I’m angry and upset and my heart hurts and want to curl into a ball but run away at the same time. So far away. So many thoughts like what if we can never have any more kids? It’s so unfair I’ve to do this. This is not how I envisioned how I wanted to have to get pregnant. What have I done to my body to have a child (children)? I look so f*cking terrible, bloated, fat, puffy, bad skin. I just want to be pregnant and have another baby. To grow my family. My own family. To move away from trauma and emotional blackmail and grief and toward my own thing. To have MY babies around me that I love unconditionally.
And I loved this baby so much already. God it hurts me inside. It didn’t matter if it was a boy or a girl, I loved it the moment it was inside and part of me. Even beforehand when we found out we lost one embryo and this one was okay. I grieved the lost one but I wanted to already hold this baby. I could feel it and see it in my mind. Even if I feel like I should have taken it more seriously, I had my moments with this baby. My little Mulberry.” *

A strange thing happened after the transfer. While I worried about being pregnant and I was so tired, this sort of peaceful, calm, content feeling crept over me. I didn’t allow myself to fully believe that I was pregnant – because, well, protective mechanisms and getting hopes up and all that – but I could feel it. I’d allow myself to entertain it in quiet moments. If I was taking a nap while my toddler napped, and she woke me, I’d cuddle her and feel excited about her brother or sister and being a mom of two. I find it tough sometimes to believe I’m a mother, and yet, imagining being a mom of two seemed to solidify it somehow. It doesn’t quite make sense, but it was this feeling of being full and content, funnily enough like I “had” this – I could do this – and it was what I was meant to be.

I won’t say that the dreaded “Two Week Wait” was “easy,” by any means, but it went quicker than anticipated, and than it had the first time, probably due to our little tornado toddler. I also celebrated my birthday during this time, and we had a nice dinner at a local restaurant and overall just focused on getting out, resting when possible, and not overthinking – and of course wrangling a toddler simultaneously.

I’d talk to my bloated belly (thanks to the IVF meds I already looked about 4 months pregnant) and while I was unable to give it as much attention as I would have in my first pregnancy, I had given it a nickname, Mulberry. I had a sense it was perhaps a boy (50/50 chance right), and I realise how silly that all sounds, I wasn’t even officially pregnant yet, but still, there was this settled feeling.

We decided to do the same thing as we had with our first pregnancy, and that was to test on day 8. It is quite early, but knowing my body and how it worked plus the fact that our clinic referred us for a blood test on day 10 anyway, we said we’d like to have the moment to ourselves to digest the news. Plus, it was starting to get nerve-wracking, and we were really nervous about the outcome.

And so, without too many frills, I went and did the test. I had planned on having a onesie or a little gift to wrap the pregnancy test in, but it hadn’t arrived. My plan had been to do the test and then send my daughter in wearing a “Big Sister” t-shirt. The more I thought about it though, the more I wanted the moment to be between my husband and I. Plus we truly did not know which way this would go. My daughter, like every toddler jumps all over me regularly and kicks my belly. I had tentatively explained about needing to be careful with my belly and tested the waters to see if she understood that Mammy could have a baby in her belly. And the funny thing was, she immediately realised it. She may not have understood the larger concept, but she was so gentle with me and kissing my belly because Mammy had “an owie” in her stomach. So just seeing how much she already picked up on, for me I did not want to have disappointing news in front of her, plus, I wanted to give myself that space as well to feel what I needed to.

As I emerged from our little bathroom downstairs, the test wrapped in tissue, I had Spotify on but I didn’t have the brain power to truly find a “perfect” song to “find out if I was pregnant”, so I skipped on until I found something not inappropriate for listening and it landed on “Beautiful Soul” by Whats-his-name-Mc Cartney. It sort of felt cheesily appropriate. And so we held hands, held each other and looked at the stick together. And sure enough, it was positive. He yelled “Yes!” and I let out the breath that I didn’t realise that I was holding in. I was crying, the tears streamed down my face, bawling with the relief, the joy, the determination for this pregnancy, and the love for my husband and our family. It was over, the “unknown” was over and we could focus on our family and having a baby. Words cannot describe the relief and the immense “this is right”. I was beyond ecstatic, excited and thrilled for my beautiful daughter to have a sibling. It was such sweet relief. We’d made it.

Until one evening almost three weeks after the transfer, I was doing bedtime with my sister as my husband wasn’t home yet from and I quickly did a “mom pee” (you know the one: door open, within hearing/shouting distance of “Mammy is just doing a wee-wee”). And I saw blood. Twenty-two years of periods gave me .03 seconds pause until my brain caught up to my stomach-drop, and I realised this was not good. I wanted to run. And for whatever reason, probably because we’ve been through thick and thin together, but I yelled for my sister to come quickly. She must have heard the urgency in my voice because I could hear her telling my daughter to “sit and stay for a moment and play with Bluey ,” and she came quickly. She calmed me and said it could be nothing, just some spotting, but I already burst into tears. Deep, deep, deep down, I knew.

My husband came home and came upstairs to me. He didn’t understand at first, but then I could see the devastation, the wanting to help, the hug, the squaring of the shoulders to be strong for me, to assure me it was okay, and it could be nothing but also so unsure, trying to be positive “until we knew for sure.”

By the next morning it had eased up and I felt hopeful as it had almost completely gone. That evening however, it came back with a bang that with cramps and I knew this was it. I bolted from the sofa at one point afraid I was going to leak, and made it to the bathroom. That was the heaviest and worst evening. Over the next 10 or so days, I had cramping on and off as well bleeding and finally the HCG hormones started to decrease.

I was doing a HCG blood test every 2-3 days and the reason I say finally is because while we were unsure if I was miscarrying, I still had to continue taking the estrogen and progesterone as if I was still pregnant. So my body was fighting to miscarry, but I’d to keep going, pretending as if I was still pregnant. I was a mess. Physically, mentally, and emotionally devastated.

Some may think that it’s taken three blog posts to write about this, but not only is this a process to heal, but the ordeal itself was a process and there was so much waiting and unknown. I know that for me I had absolutely *zero* idea what was happening. Even the clinic didn’t know what was going on.

It is such a unique and personal experience that there simply isn’t a way to “google it” and expect X, Y and Z to happen in a chronological order. And not only that, but because I miscarried, the ownership of responsibility changed. The clinic weren’t responsible for the check-ups – they after all a fertility clinic not a gynaecological clinic – to ensure the miscarriage was “going as it should be going”. So, I had various appointments and I was just done with it all.

I can’t really explain, to this day, exactly how to describe how I felt at the time, but it truly was just coping and taking each day at a time. Once I stopped bleeding it sort was “done” and we could get back to being relatively normal. I mean, life went on and schedules and work and toddler-life and so on continued.

I can honestly say that the combination of estrogen with progesterone and then pregnancy hormones, really impacted me this time around. The loss itself was one facet of this experience, whereas the medication and the really low thoughts were another experience one altogether. A few weeks after the miscarriage, the excessive bloating dropped, the nausea faded, I felt more positive, I had a little more enthusiasm for things I *knew* would pick me up and made me feel content, my outlook changed as well and I threw myself into a project that I had been putting off and now the time seemed right.

If – or when – we go again, I will be more prepared on what to expect with the medication and have certain “holders” in place to help me cope and deal with that. I tried to give myself the grace to feel what I needed to and to grieve: I took it easy where I could, I read some novels, wore my favourite and most comfortable clothes, I went for walks with family, I planted some flowers and overall actively tried to do something other than scroll on social media. I don’t consider myself a depressed or a negative person, although I certainly have my pensive and introvert days, but the power of hormones and modern day medication, while it can save a life and help create a child, is also a force to be reckoned with and certainly not to be underestimated.

*Note: I wrote this while in the midst of going through the entire miscarriage.