Pregnancy after loss
Danielle shares her experience of what it feels like to be pregnant after a miscarriage.
The constant want/need for a scan to check everything is ok, but at the same time the constant fear of having yet another scan only to hear those same words.
That silence just before the sonographer says “there is no heart beat”, is a silence you can feel in the air. The silence where you could hear a pin drop. The silence where your tears are already running down your cheeks but no sound is coming out.
That gut wrenching cry out that you made when the words “I’m sorry the heartbeat has gone” were said.
Pregnancy after loss really is the hardest thing, that if you haven’t been through it you will never quite understand that constant ache, that constant panic and anxiety that this pregnancy will end like the last. That sicky feeling, worrying you won’t get through this loss like you managed to scrape through the last. The constant want/need for a scan to check everything is ok, but at the same time the constant fear of having yet another scan only to hear those same words.
Personally I feel I haven’t, and never will, get over my loss when I was just over 12 weeks pregnant. The traumatic time I had after I found out, with two D&C procedures and infections and the constant reminder of what will never be is always there. It’s true things get easier as time goes on, but that doesn’t mean it’s ‘ok’. It doesn’t mean you’re ‘ok’, you just learn to hide it better. You learn to talk about it without crying. Instead you cry yourself to sleep, you cry in the shower, you cry when no one is looking. And that is the stigma of pregnancy loss, people think they ‘need’ to be ok within a couple of months or even a couple of weeks, as people wonder why they are still upset for something that wasn’t even born yet.
What those people don’t realise is you’ve planned that unborn baby’s life. You’ve planned their first word, their first bit of solid food, their first swimming lesson, their first day at school, what their nursery will look like and what they will look like. And until you’ve lost all of that and see nothing but a dark hole, no one can ever tell you how to grieve for that.
I worry every day and I feel I’ve been robbed of being able to be excited this time round. Even though inside I am so happy and this is what I’ve always wanted, the anxiety just won’t leave. I honestly don’t know if it was to happen again if I would be able to get past that depression again.
I am so, so happy to be able to have this chance of pregnancy again, there are so many couples out there that don’t get this privilege once, let alone twice. I will always be grateful that even though I’ve lost a baby I’ve got a good chance of having a healthy baby this time and that, that keeps me going every morning when I wake up with complete dread that I’m going to go to the toilet and see blood.