I have a set of candlesticks that have moved with me everywhere I’ve lived as an adult. A trio of white, glossy ceramic with long stems and Hygge pretensions (meaning: I bought them from Ikea as a student). The other weekend my mum was round and as we sat at my dining table drinking coffee she […]
Some of you may have seen this from my Instagram (because, frankly, I would not shut up about it) but here is a piece I wrote for last month’s Red magazine on recurrent miscarriage and best-laid plans. I thought I would re-share here for anyone who might have missed it, or who’s new to my site (hello!)… When […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I thought I would write for this week – it’s Baby Loss Awareness Week in the UK right now – and honestly? I’ve struggled. I feel like it deserves my best ‘content’, my best efforts. Me at my most opinionated, campaigning, vociferous self. But my heart is just […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Nowhere is the dividing line more sharply drawn between women than between mothers and non-mothers. It transcends almost everything. Class. Race. Sexuality. Wherever you’re coming from, so the conventional wisdom has it, there’s a unifier there. A shared conversation. You’re a mum, so you understand. Just wait until you have children, then you’ll get it. It […]
