One woman's perspective of (twin) parenting (and other thoughts about things)
The following post was written for a project called Letters To Other Women: Let’s Talk About It, curated by Eleanor Perkins. In the first collection of letters, women write about their experiences of getting, and staying, pregnant. You can follow the project on Instagram, where you can also order a copy of the first book, or contact me through Twitter to find out more.
TW: miscarriage, blood, gaslighting
On 5th October 2019, I bounded (well, trundled - I very rarely bound) downstairs, pee-covered stick in hand and ceremoniously announced to my husband: “Well, it looks like we’re going to have a baby then…”
5 weeks pregnant.
This is a story about miscarriage, and the way we talk about it (spoilers: it needs to change).
Like most women, I think, I was brought up on the idea that I must do everything in my power to avoid getting pregnant until I was “ready” (what does that even mean?) Such is the way our society demonises young mothers - but that’s another story. I lived in fear of The Late Period. Every time I called my mother from uni with a life update of some sort, the first thing she’d say was “oh God you’re not pregnant are you?”. As a result, I’d been on the pill pretty much non stop since I was 17. I was 35 when we started trying for a baby, and friends and family fell over each other to tell me that it might take a while to conceive because I was “getting on a bit” and because it would take a while for 20 years of pill hormones to clear out. There was also my own awareness that, having hormonally blocked the option for so long, I had absolutely no idea whether I was able to have children at all. We were over the moon, then, to get pregnant very quickly. Not only were we fertile (phew!), but apparently impressively so (go us!) We had triumphed over the adversities of age and synthetic hormones and we were going to be parents.
6 weeks pregnant. I was overjoyed to have very few symptoms. I wasn’t really nauseous, apart from when I didn’t eat enough (not a problem I normally have). I had sore boobs but nothing to write home about. Mainly, I couldn’t sleep. I love sleep. However, despite this, I made peace with my lot and decided I could just about deal with it. I wanted to tell a few close friends, which I did, although the decision of who to tell carries so much weight. As well as not really trusting a test result that comes from you peeing on a stick you bought in your local Co-Op, it is apparently just Not The Done Thing to tell people before your 12-week scan. One of the reasons for this is “just in case”; the unspoken end of that sentence is of course “…you have a miscarriage”. But nobody says that bit, so nobody really engages with the possibility of it happening.
This is the first problem, and it’s a big one. We are, as a society, increasingly disinclined to be at peace with the fact that life is sometimes uncomfortable and hard (see my thoughts on mindfulness later on). As a result, we slip further and further away from being able to process that which is difficult, choosing instead to ignore it until it’s staring us in the face. This has the effect of making it even harder when we cannot ignore it any longer. Perhaps if we spoke more openly and less dramatically about miscarriage (to name just one example), women would be free to share their whole pregnancy journey with more people at an earlier stage, if they wished to. This would mean increased support networks in the event of miscarriage or other complications, as well as not having to hide the (sometimes debilitating) first trimester symptoms in the workplace. Instead of early pregnancy being “A Big Deal” that we don’t talk about, it could be “Not A Big Deal” that we do.
8 weeks pregnant. I was on tour with work in Newcastle, and one day, I woke up realising that I’d had the best night’s sleep I could remember in weeks. I immediately knew that all was not well. I texted a few aforementioned inner circle friends with my concerns, but the responses were all along the same line: “Oh, I had days when I forgot I was pregnant!”, “Some pregnancies are just really lucky with no symptoms!”, “Don’t worry, everything is absolutely fine!”
I had a midwife appointment in the diary a couple of weeks later, so I decided I would just press pause on the worry, continue as if I was pregnant, but not let myself get too excited about it. I thought I would explain my concerns to my midwife and perhaps have an early scan, or a heartbeat check. The midwife’s response, however, echoed that of my friends: “Oh I wouldn’t worry about it at all, symptoms come and go, it’s probably all fine!” No possibility of a scan or a check up unless I had something I could reasonably take to the Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit (pain, bleeding et c).
At this point, I began to doubt my own intuition.
This is the second problem. Why, in a world where people are trusted (expected?) to self-diagnose so many things, is the default position that pregnant women “are worrying about nothing”? Maybe some are unnecessarily concerned, but couldn’t we learn to work more holistically with each person, ascertaining and understanding their individual experience before unilaterally writing their concerns off? Essentially, what we end up doing is making our women mistrust their own bodies and minds. Truly, that is Not OK; it is arguably a form of (albeit unintentional) gaslighting. Of course, it is important to note that, like most NHS staff, our midwives are stretched for time and resources. I also recognise that I am fortunate to live in an area of the country where it’s normal to have the same midwife throughout pregnancy. My stance here is entirely idealistic, but it’s as good a starting point as any, I think.
11 weeks pregnant. One Sunday evening, I went for a wee and there was some blood. My first reaction was “ah, I knew it”. However, almost immediately, I backtracked. Having been repeatedly told I was probably just worrying over nothing (albeit by very lovely, very well-meaning people), I convinced myself it was probably just a result of the particularly enthusiastic sex I’d had the night before. Also the internet is full of “bleeding in the first trimester is normal, don’t worry!” A Google search told me not to use my menstrual cup just in case it was a miscarriage, so I found an ancient sanitary towel and tried to forget about it.
Over the next day or two, there was more blood, so I booked an early scan at the EPAU. I was told that things didn’t look great, but that there was “foetal matter” in there that was consistent with 4-5 weeks’ growth. Was I sure of my dates?
At this point, I felt confident enough to self-diagnose a missed miscarriage. The foetus had obviously stopped growing shortly before that really great night’s sleep a few weeks back, and my body was only now ready to do something about it. (NB a side note for those who have not had to wrangle with the confusion of pregnancy dating: due to the high variation in cycle lengths and wide ovulation windows, pregnancy is dated from the first day of your last period, which means, for those with a regular cycle, “5 weeks growth” roughly equates to “7 weeks pregnant”.)
I was sent home with a variety of leaflets, but not a huge amount of practical advice, and told to wait and see what happened. I didn’t have to wait that long. I started bleeding a lot more the following afternoon (I decided to have a glass of wine at that point) and the “main event” started that evening. I’d spent the day researching what I could expect and how to manage it and was lucky enough to have found a blog (just one) where the author’s experience echoed what I felt I was going through:
There Will be Blood: What Nobody Told Me About Miscarriage.
Essentially, this author felt, it was simply a case of biology. It was not an overly emotional experience, although obviously that might come and go. The “results of conception” (or “pregnancy material” as she’d found it referred to) were simply that. Some people collect what comes out, I read elsewhere, but that wasn’t the way this particular lady rolled, and neither did it seem the right approach for me. In fact, most of the other stuff on the internet seemed to actively not apply to me:
| What I was told I would probably feel | What I actually felt |
|---|---|
| Guilt / like a failure | My body was just doing what it was designed to do when faced with a non-viable pregnancy |
| Grief / need to reflect | This was just an annoying roadblock - frustration at having to start again |
| Lack of interest in physical contact | Overwhelming desire to have sex with my husband again - for intimacy as much as (if not more than) trying to start again |
This is the third problem, and why I am so keen to specifically share my story with others. If there’s a taboo around talking about miscarriage (and there is), there seems to be an even bigger one about not feeling particularly emotional about it.
Don’t get me wrong, it was bloody painful, incredibly tiring and relentless. The husband and dog just set up camp next to me on the bedroom floor and we rode it out together. But I didn’t cry (apart from in pain - miscarriage gives you a handy heads up on what contractions are like) and I certainly didn’t feel like I was losing a baby that demanded to be grieved. Whoever I spoke to, despite my protestations that actually I felt ok, the response was the same: “give it time, it’ll probably hit you when you least expect it”. Everywhere I looked, I was told that I wasn’t doing this in the expected way. The only time I felt understood (by somebody who didn’t previously know me) was when the nurse came to give me the leaflets in the “reflection room” at the EPAU. She pointed out a memorial box that I could leave a message in if I wanted to, but then said “although I get the impression that isn’t really very you”. I loved that nurse.
We have to remove the societal messaging that the only way of processing a miscarriage is through devastation and grief. Women must, of course, be free to grieve if it is right for them, but it is not ‘one size fits all’, which effectively tells every woman that they have to grieve, whether they feel they need to or not. Also, by telling women over and over again that it’s “normal” to feel like a failure, we tell them that that’s what they are. Can we not be bold enough to trust people to process these things in ways that make sense to them? I was not devastated, I was pissed off because I am a planner and I hate being made to rethink my plans (2020 lockdown is doing wonders for this, incidentally). The NHS webpage on miscarriage deals exclusively with grief, and what it might feel like. Nowhere does it say “it’s also ok to be ok”. Dayna Winter’s blog (link above) was a saving grace, because it made me realise I wasn’t weird for reacting in a different way.
14 weeks (not) pregnant. My understanding from Dr Google was that you have to wait until the bleeding stops and you have a negative pregnancy test before you start having sex again to reduce the chances of infection. This test, tallying with NHS advice, should be taken no earlier than 3 weeks after you’ve miscarried. I am not a particularly patient person, and as already mentioned, I was not going to wait any longer than necessary before having sex again. In the end, I managed to wait for two weeks before I took a test, but by that point I felt normal and was confident of a negative result. It was positive. Back in the EPAU, I was told that the miscarriage was incomplete, and being asked my preferences for removing the remaining tissue.
This was the point where I lost it a bit. I vividly remember thinking “I can’t even miscarry properly”. Even if these thoughts were short lived, the frustration got stronger. Why wasn’t it over yet? I wanted to start trying again immediately and the universe seemed to be saying no.
I told them I wanted to go down the surgical route - it is my general approach to similar decisions to rip off the band-aid and get it done. They consulted with the doctor and came back to say that unfortunately this was not a possibility after all - the remaining tissue was so small that the risk of surgery was disproportionately high. Instead, I was sent home with a small pill and some more leaflets. The pill, incidentally, is designed to kickstart the ‘natural’ miscarriage process. Despite my protestations that my body had already tried that method and it hadn’t worked properly, I was told I had to do this first before they’d consider any other options. Then I was to wait another three weeks (did I mention that I’m not a patient person?) before doing another test.
I took the pill and settled in for a second evening of pain. Nothing happened. I felt vindicated in my assertion that it wouldn’t work. At one point, I went for a wee and a tiny tiny bit of clotted blood was on the loo paper, but it seemed too small to be significant. The next day, I called the EPAU to let them know it hadn’t worked, and to ask for another scan to see what they thought.
It turns out the EPAU doesn’t offer this option: “we can’t offer follow up scans to everybody having a miscarriage because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day”.
This is the fourth problem. There is a huge disconnect between how the medical profession approaches miscarriage, even internally, and how society deals with it. A woman facing her first miscarriage is simultaneously told - directly or indirectly - the following things:
I think we can all see what’s wrong with this combination of things, and it’s really not a separate problem, it’s a combination of the previous three. Firstly, we ignore the existence of miscarriage. Then we tell women that it probably won’t happen to them, despite happening “more often than you think”. When it does happen, we tell women it’s ok to feel like a failure, but not ok to accept it as a thing that sometimes happens and move on. “Mixed messages” doesn’t really cover it, does it?
15 weeks (not) pregnant. I took my second post-miscarriage test within the week (I didn’t even make it to two weeks this time). When you’re trying for a baby, willing a pregnancy test to come back as negative is a strange experience. It’s a bit like an episode of Deal or No Deal, where somebody has taken a deal and spends the rest of the episode desperately trying to find the £250,000 that they were so keen to avoid at the start. The mental whiplash is quite something. But here I was, two and half months after celebrating the existence of an extra little blue line, thoroughly relieved not to see even the suggestion of one. I finally felt like I could move on with my life.
Six months later…
As I type this, I am around 18 weeks pregnant, having conceived during my first ovulation since miscarriage. We are (hopefully) having twins. Nonidentical, which means I ovulated two eggs at the same time. I mentioned that I’m a planner, yes? Nice to know my body still has a sense of humour…
I told a friend a couple of days ago that I am grateful for my miscarriage. This might seem a strange thing to say, but bear with me. I mentioned earlier about society’s decreasing ability to sit comfortably with the uncomfortable. I firmly believe that this has to change. One way of doing this is through mindfulness, which I found almost accidentally through practising yoga. My miscarriage gave me the opportunity to put everything I’d learnt into practice, and it has strengthened my ability to stay present, something for which I am increasingly grateful as I experience pregnancy for a second time. It is very easy to be swept along by planning your future life (marketing built on guilt tripping is a particular highlight of impending parenthood) and if you’ve experienced one or more miscarriages in your past, it’s equally easy to assume that every twinge is a precursor to another one. I have experienced both of these on more than one occasion, but each time there’s a little voice in my head telling me that, whilst it’s ok to think these things, perhaps it might also be good to sit quietly with my bump for five minutes to remind myself what it’s all about…
There were a few main sources of support throughout this whole period, and on into this pregnancy. I am incredibly grateful for a husband who respects the decisions I make and feelings I have about my body without question, because, in his words, my opinion trumps his on such matters. I am (cautiously) grateful for the wealth of information on the internet about these things, and for the services that exist to support women who do feel that they want to grieve or hold memorials. Practically, I owe one particular friend a substantial amount of my sanity - she went through a very similar thing a few months before me, and can always be trusted to be a level-headed source of help and support. When I texted her to tell her I thought I was miscarrying, she told me that if it turned out I was, I’d need at least two packets of super absorbent Always, some painkillers and to cancel all my plans because I wouldn’t be going far from the loo for some hours, and it would likely be a couple of weeks after The Main Event before I stopped bleeding. She also told me that the time between scans in any subsequent pregnancy would feel like a lifetime. She wasn’t wrong.
There is an important point to make here, though. The support I received from that friend was only there for me to call on because she chose to be counter-cultural and share her experience with me when she was going through it. By doing so, she was sowing seeds of support that I didn’t even know I was going to need. This, I think, is the key. Since telling people about my miscarriage, many friends have opened up to me about their historic experiences of it, and this obviously forms an important part of the support process, and one that I’m grateful for. But think about how much more support we’d be providing for each other by sharing these stories before we knew they were needed. Obviously there is a natural spectrum of openness, and I don’t for one moment expect all women to suddenly start shouting about miscarriage from the rooftops, but I don’t think that is the limiting factor. I think more women would be happy to talk openly about it if it were a thing that was openly talked about. A nice chicken and egg problem there.
One final thing to mention is the role played by home pregnancy tests, and our readiness to accept a positive result as a guarantee of future parenthood. The home test was championed as a way of giving women greater control over their bodies, and it certainly still serves that purpose, but the test has been developed over time to give earlier and earlier results, without giving the full context of these. The chance of miscarriage at 3 weeks pregnant is pretty high; 31% according to a journal article cited by Very Well Family (see here). If we are to maintain this ability to find out so early, I think we need to be free to talk about pregnancy in the first trimester without anybody making the assumption that parenthood is guaranteed. This can only help the awareness and acceptance of miscarriage, which in turn makes it easier in some ways for those who experience it. To achieve this, I believe we have to gently, but firmly, challenge this assumption whenever we encounter it. I am sure I visibly winced when a work colleague of mine proudly announced that she was going to be a grandmother, a fact she knew because her daughter had just peed on a stick that morning and “was already 6 weeks!” I have thought about that moment a lot since, and the fact that I wanted to say something but I didn’t know what or how. My own dad said the same thing when we told him about the twins - “I’m going to be a grandad”, he said, with a slight lump in his throat. This time I was more prepared: “Yes, hopefully”, I said, “but there’s a way to go yet, and I’m taking it a day at a time”.