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The Uterus Monologues: Miscarriage, motherhood and me

The Uterus Monologues: Miscarriage, motherhood and me

Life after recurrent miscarriage

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Category: Miscarriage

September 20, 2018September 19, 2018Uterus Monologues

To the girl who is about to be 30

Dearest, Don’t worry. I know how you are really feeling about this birthday. And it’s neither of the answers you tend to give people when they ask – and they will ask – how you feel about turning 30. It’s not the faux, what-am-I-doing-with-my-life angst that everyone half expects, and which makes for easy self-deprecating […]

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September 5, 2018September 5, 2018Uterus Monologues

This was us 

I think I’ve cried at every single episode of This Is Us. But the latest was something else altogether. Because, this was us. If you’ve not watched it (you really should) it’s about an American family, the Pearsons, spanning about 40 years of their lives, zooming in and out of their stories, hopping and skipping through […]

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August 23, 2018August 23, 2018Uterus Monologues

Is it too late?

I’m often late. Not by a lot, just by five or ten minutes, usually. Enough to make me sweat and feel like everything is a disaster. It’s something I really dislike about myself and I’m never quite sure why it happens, because I’m a pretty organised person at heart. Perhaps it’s eternal optimism. Trying to […]

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August 2, 2018August 6, 2018Uterus Monologues

Making space for a life

Not long after my first miscarriage I interviewed a brilliant psychologist, who specializes in pregnancy loss and infertility, for an article I was writing. I think I will always remember that conversation – how she managed to send some splinters of light through what was otherwise a blinds-drawn, shutters-down kind of time in my life. […]

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July 12, 2018July 15, 2018Uterus Monologues

Together for change

This week Tommy’s launched its Together For Change campaign, which – if you haven’t seen the videos on social media already – is all about ending the silence and stigma around all forms of baby and pregnancy loss. Along with lots of other brilliant people who talk and write about this subject, I am in […]

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July 5, 2018July 4, 2018Uterus Monologues

Reasons to be grateful

Is it heresy if I admit that before our miscarriages I never really thought about the NHS – which is 70 years old today – that much? It’s an odd thing for a health journalist to say, I realise. In an abstract, political sense of course I was glad it was there. And as a […]

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June 18, 2018June 17, 2018Uterus Monologues

Normal heart: A fourth miscarriage

There is a print on the wall of the ultrasound room in the unit where they run our recurrent miscarriage clinic. It’s of a red heart, drawn in a swirly, slightly abstract way. Possibly it says ‘amour’ underneath in faux-romantic script. When I’m there, I always think I should make a note of what it […]

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May 23, 2018June 2, 2018Uterus Monologues

The negatives of positive thinking

Stay positive. Just relax. Don’t stress. How often do you hear these things in relation to pregnancy or trying to conceive? I know they’re words well meant. But, actually, I find this always-look-on-brightside philosophy supremely unhelpful when it’s foisted upon me. In fact, nothing is guaranteed to fill me with more rage and general ill […]

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Jennie, The Uterus Monologues, LLHM, half marathon, Tommy's fundraising
April 11, 2018April 10, 2018Uterus Monologues

The finish line

And just like that, the due date for pregnancy number three has passed. In my head this was a big milestone. That somehow once it was behind us it would feel like freedom. Release. A neat conclusion to this over-long, unhappy chapter. The end. Fin. But, of course, there is no finish line to this […]

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Want more? Say hello on Instagram...

Well. That escalated quickly. I thought I’d show my face for once and say hello - I suspect lovely Elle of @feathering_the_empty_nest might have you sent a few of you my way...? I’m Jennie, I’m a writer and journalist - and I’m on here sharing my story (I refuse to say ‘journey’) about life after recurrent miscarriage. . My husband Dan and I have had four miscarriages so far - one at 12 weeks, the others around 8 weeks - all in the space of about 18 months. We’re still waiting for our rainbow to appear. . I mostly use this account to share thoughts on pregnancy loss and trying to conceive, with bits and bobs from my rambles around suburban Hertfordshire thrown in. Plus lots of cups of coffee and the odd cat picture (I’ve got three, don’t worry if you can’t tell the two grey ones apart, neither can we most of the time). . More than anything, I want to make pregnancy loss feel a bit more normal and a lot less lonely. Whatever brings you here, I hope you find something that helps. (And do feel free to reply with your own story in the comments) 🌱✨ #fridayintroductions #introduceyourself
The algorithms are broken. The internet knows when you’re pregnant. But it hasn’t got a clue when you have a miscarriage, or if your baby dies, or if you’re struggling to conceive. It keeps showing you maternity adverts anyway, even after you googled ‘bleeding in early pregnancy’ or ‘baby not moving as much...’ . Social media sites seem incapable of recognising the ‘loss’ part of pregnancy loss. All my posts are tagged #miscarriage or #lifeafterloss and yet Instagram still suggest I might like posts of pregnancy announcements and mummy blogger memes (‘Tell my husband all I want for Valentine’s day is not to get pregnant... again!’). . I’m sick of it. And I suspect a lot of you are too. So I’ve written a post about what you can do. From changing your settings to some slightly more... nuclear options. Please read. Please share. (Link in bio) #breakthesilence #togetherforchange #sensitivesponsors
You have walked and run this route many times. Sometimes its buildings look desolate - perfect for you, a lonely thing. Or they have seemed beautiful, alive with some other-worldly magic you have wished you could bottle and gift to everyone you know. You have strolled sighing comfortable happy breaths and you have ached and pushed yourself to run on, on, on... on ligaments that weren’t strong enough yet, on fractious fractures. . You have walked this path alone and you have dodged its crowds. Weaving in and out of New Year’s day walkers; the prides and packs of families with their toddlers teetering like knee-high drunks, trailing sullen teenagers doused in stocking-filler aftershave. You have been here, forehead damp from drizzle, or else slick with sweat, pulled from your pores by the midday sun. Your footsteps here have been both mindful and mindless. But however plodding your progress has felt, however many times you have had to stop, lungs screaming for air, for rest, know this: This route, this place, this body - it always belonged to you. And only you. The only home you’ll ever know.
“This was what sometimes gave her a dull ache, like a stomach-ache but not physical: that someone who didn’t yet exist could have the power to create spring, and could then be gone” - Diana Athill. . I am near obsessed with looking out for signs of spring. And when I read this line in Diana Athill’s essay about her miscarriage in the 60s (Alive, alive-oh! published in Granta, 2010, and later in a book of the same name). I decided this might be why. Spring is a feeling. A reminder of just the good bits, the budding and unfurling of love, hope, possibility. That I was pregnant... even if spring didn’t turn into summer.
I don’t often write about my marriage on here. Anything I could say would only ever be one half of the story, after all. But there’s no getting away from the fact that struggling to have children or losing a baby has an impact on your relationship. Statistics around how many couples break up after a loss or infertility are tossed about like confetti - and it is hard not to let a scrap of fear that you could be one of them settle in your heart, however solid you believe you are. . This week we took some time away just the two of us. Away from strategising and plotting what we do next. Away from various coping mechanisms. Away from busy-work (and actual work). Away from ‘talking about it’. . Just time and space (and a spa treatment or two). A reminder that at one point what we’d found in each other was enough. And that it is still enough. . 📷 The gorgeous greenhouse at Limewood
Weekend delivery... flowers, papers and coffee. 💐🗞☕️ Not pictured: an impending deadline that will be keeping me at my desk all day. But let’s not ruin the Instagram fun, eh? Hope you’re all having a splendid Sunday. . #coffeecoffeecoffee
Empty-nest syndrome. Symptoms may include a reluctance to stray far from home. An urgent need to take on projects, re-paint, re-arrange the furniture, rip stuff out and start again, de-clutter - or buy more cushions. Also bittersweet, complicated emotions about the room along the hall that stands empty. I’ve written a new post about the significance of home after loss or infertility and a different kind of need to nest that comes with it. Click the link in my profile to read. 🏠 . And please do let me know what you think in the comments - is the DIY thing just me, for example? (I suspect it’s not from a few conversations I’ve had on here before). . Further reading: Obviously the queen of this subject is lovely Elle @feathering_the_empty_nest who has written so powerfully about how her home was a life-raft after Teddy died (her book is out in paperback next month, FYI) And I’m also really enjoying @home.behind.the.red.door - a renovation project by Laura @twenteasomething #emptynestsyndrome
The pavements are slushy and treacherous. Parkrun is cancelled. So I guess I’ll be spending today reading and drinking coffee. Gosh, what a terrible shame that is. . (As for the reading material in this picture - never let it be said that I don’t know how to party 🤷🏻‍♀️. Though for the record, I have got Valley Of The Dolls on the go, too 📚)
Why do I do this? I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately. Why am I still here writing about my miscarriages - after all, I’ve written several pieces for magazines and newspapers now. There are 40 posts on the subject on my blog. As time goes on, I worry about a perception I am somehow ‘milking it’. Is it necessary to carry on - and, more than that, is it healthy? . And this, I think, is my answer (spoiler alert, I’m not going anywhere). I’m emphatically not here because I want sympathy. Or because I’m dwelling on it endlessly when I ‘should be’ moving on. Or because I think that what’s happened to us is the worst thing that ever happened to anyone. It’s not. (But it’s also not a competition). . No. I write because miscarriage is sadly normal, but it is not yet normalised. If two years ago I’d had a baby instead of a miscarriage, and continued to post about it now, sharing my experience of motherhood, no one would think it remotely strange. Yet somehow writing and talking about the other side of that sliding-doors moment still feels like a statement. An uncomfortable carving out of a space for myself - and the many, many others this affects - that doesn’t currently exist. . We live in a world that can’t stop talking about pregnancy... unless it’s pregnancy that ends in loss (at whatever stage, and whatever the circumstances). Then it can feel like the world doesn’t want to know. . This is the one-sided conversation I’d like to change. Everyone knows the word miscarriage - it’s too simplistic to call it a taboo - but as a society we have not yet synthesised what that word really means. How people live with it. And this is why I’m still writing. . #recurrentmiscarriage #babyloss #whyiwrite

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