It’s difficult to know what to write at times like these. My anxiety that something will go wrong with this pregnancy (our fifth) reached new heights this week. It’s been surreal feeling my nebulous, shapeless worries harden into concrete, very real fears in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Will I still be able to have […]
Category: advice
Guest monologue: Miscarriage and pregnancy in the shadow of a pandemic
When this post from a reader landed in my inbox this week, it could not have been better timed…It said so many things I have been thinking and feeling, but haven’t been able to process properly yet. As you probably know by now, I am pregnant for a fifth time (you can read more about […]
Defence against the dark arts
The clocks have rolled back and they seem to have taken the easy optimism I’ve felt all summer with them. The middle chunk of this year has flown for me – one minute we were heading off on a spring holiday, the next it was baby loss awareness week again. But now the nights are […]
How to be sociable (when you really don’t feel like it)
I’ve got a piece in this month’s Red magazine about socialising – specifically, how to be sociable when you don’t feel like it. I’d pitched it after seeing one too many ‘I’m sorry I’m late, I didn’t want to come’ memes, thinking that it would be interesting to delve into why we’re all apparently so […]
75 ways to feel better after baby loss
All the leaflets they give you after a miscarriage or other kind of baby loss tend to tell you sympathetic but vague things. A soup of words such as ‘profound emotional impact’, ‘bereavement period’ and ‘time to recover’ swim and muddle themselves on the page, while you’re still trying to comprehend what has happened. Just […]
How to beat the miscarriage malgorithms
It’s an internet truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a womb must be in want of a pregnancy test. Or an ovulation stick. Or perhaps some adorable matching mama-and-baby leggings. The internet knows when you’re pregnant. Or, at least, it has very strong ideas about when you should be pregnant. I got my […]