I have wanted to be a mummy since I was a tiny child. It has been my dream all my life.
It took me until I was 36 to meet my husband and a year after we married we had our son. After a year we excitedly decided to start trying for our second.
It was a huge shock that it wasn’t happening for us as the first time took just 4 months, so when we got to a year we started to worry. I had hormone tests to check for early menopause and all was normal.
Then, the most wonderful thing happened, I saw ‘pregnant’ on my test! We were over the moon and started to make plans. We nicknamed our little one ‘Little Bee.’
Our joy lasted exactly 1 day. The following day I started spotting. Trying to convince ourselves all was ok, we put it down to a normal part of pregnancy.
Because I was so surprised to be pregnant, I kept doing tests, watching happily as the ‘weeks pregnant’ went from 1-2 to 2-3 to 3+. Then, one day, the weeks indicator dropped to 2-3. Worried, we contacted our midwife who booked an early scan.
The next day I started spotting again so I had a blood test to check my hormone levels and it was normal. I still felt sick, I had sore breasts, so I should have felt reassured, but something didn’t feel right.
I had my scan and they told me that they couldn’t find a foetal pole which wasn’t unusual at 6 weeks but I needed to go back for a second scan.
The 8 day wait for the scan was torture, I knew that the baby wasn’t OK but I kept trying to stay hopeful. I was still so nauseous and tired. I felt so pregnant.
At the second scan I clutched a pair of my son’s socks to give me comfort. I desperately tried to crane my neck to see the screen. Then we heard the words we had been dreading, “I’m so sorry, but it’s not good news”.
The world felt like it went black. We were put into the bereavement room and we were left there waiting for half an hour, all the while hearing nurses laughing, babies crying and seeing heavily pregnant women walking past. We were in hell.
I decided to let our little one slip away naturally. It took a week. It was quiet. I bled heavily for three weeks and had horrific cramps for several days, but it felt quiet. This was just before Christmas and we should have been announcing the good news on Christmas Day.
After three weeks I had an awful cramp and then passed what looked like a deflated grape. It was finally physically over. I said goodbye to our child.
I don’t know how to cope with what happened. My due date is so close now and it feels like everyone around me is pregnant. I’m broken, we are broken, by what has happened.
We are trying again but I have been told by my GP that I need to accept that I’m probably too old now. She used the term ‘secondary infertility’ which was something that we had never heard of.
I feel like I have failed my husband and cheated my son of a sibling. I feel like I must have done something wrong. I feel like I am very far away from who I used to be. I’m on anti depressants to help me cope and we are focusing on our beautiful son as he is our whole world and he feels like a miracle. We know how lucky we are to have him but the loss of our second child is horrific.
I am being very open about what happened, to help to process things and to break down the taboo around the agony of miscarriage. If I can help one person by sharing my story then that brings a little comfort.