17th June 2023

Dinner

A few days ago we booked a table for dinner at an expensive restaurant. It coincides with the first day of bleeding. For reasons I can’t quite access, when we discuss it in the morning we conclude that we might as well go rather than cancel it. Denial, I suspect, plays a starring role in that decision.

Answers

I was advised that due to this being my fourth miscarriage I can send the pregnancy tissue away to test, the hope being that we may get some answers. When hope is lost and you have nothing else, answers can be very powerful. For someone whose infertility was largely considered unexplained and who has had 3 miscarriages without explanation, the idea that we might have a reason for this loss is something that my distraught brain clings on to.  

I will need to bring the – I can hardly stand to write the word – baby to the hospital when I pass the pregnancy sac. It’s a gruesome and traumatic task. I don’t know exactly what to expect or what to look for, but it feels so important that I can get these answers.   

Pain

When people say a miscarriage is just like a period or ‘just one of those things’ I can’t help but think they’ve never had a front row seat on what actually happens. Not only is the bleeding and pain something far beyond any period I have ever had (and with endometriosis and fibroids I have a solid track record for knowing my way around a heavy and painful period), but the emotional experience of grief, fear, dread is transformative. We need to stop minimising it.  

Babies

In the morning my 3 year old daughter is buoyant and energetic; she is full of curiosity and fun. She plays endlessly and ferociously. Her favourite game is babies. ‘Mummy let’s play babies’ she says ‘you be the baby, I’ll be the mummy.’ She is so beautiful and so treasured. I will the tiny motionless heart inside of me to flutter into life. I try to maintain some normality but I can’t stop crying. I tell her my eyes are sore but I’m ok. I take her out for the morning. I want it to be a normal Friday for both of us. Denial, again.  

Un-telling 

I have told very few people about my news. It was a calculated decision. Fewer people to un-tell when the news goes bad. I only have to message 3 people. I tell them I’m ok and it was only to be expected. They say kind things and it sends me lower.

Anger

I feel desperately angry and imagine myself flying into a rage, aiming my wrath and fury at the parking barrier at the hospital or something equally inane and stupid. I see double buggies and pregnant bumps and I think ‘fuck you’ and feel like a monster. I feel separate from the rest of the world. How did I become a woman who has had 4 miscarriages? I find it hard to identify as anything else right now. Even identifying as a mother to my daughter feels so far removed from what I really am. I feel ungrateful. I feel ashamed. I feel disgusting.  

Catastrophe 

On the way out to dinner the pain and bleeding reaches a crescendo. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea’ I say to my husband. And then I say ‘It’ll probably be fine’. It’s not fine. I bleed extensively in a very nice toilet. My husband thinks I might have collapsed because I’m gone for so long. I get back to the table and we get ready to leave. When I stand up I feel blood pouring down my legs. Somehow I escape to the car while my husband packs up our daughter and our things and we leave.  

When we get home I go straight to the bathroom to shower. The bleeding and clots are terrifying. I rinse my bloodied clothes and cry quietly thinking how much I don’t want to be me.  

Fathers’ Day 

Earlier in the day, my husband was emptying my daughter’s bag and found a Fathers’ Day card. He read it aloud and I heard his voice break. When we get home from the dinner that evening he sits on the sofa and we don’t speak. He has tried speaking to me through the day but I can’t find words that aren’t full of rage and hate.  

I say to him the next day ‘you didn’t talk to me when we got back’ and he says quietly ‘I’m just so angry about all of this’. 

Tomorrow is Fathers’ Day in the UK.