‘Congratulations!’ my friend whispers, before bear-hugging me and then Dan. We smile and say thank you, but immediately follow it up with: ‘But it’s still early so, you know…’ Of course she knows. We all know the ‘rules’, don’t we? Convention dictates that a pregnancy is not to be spoken of until the end of […]
By Steph (@crossing_everything) I thought my days of crying in work toilets were over. But a few months ago, when an unsolicited scan picture with the cheery caption ‘baby no.2 on the way!’ appeared on my phone, I was right back there. Silently crying in a soulless toilet cubicle, jealous of the simplicity of a […]
I’ve written before about what I did (and didn’t) do differently in my fifth pregnancy, which gave me Edward. The TL:DR version being: I took progesterone, and changed absolutely nothing else/ tried to be as relaxed about all other lifestyle minutiae as possible. More than two years on from that post, the questions I get […]
This is just a short note ahead of Mother’s Day to say that whatever you’re feeling this year, it really is OK. Most of all, whether you’ll be enduring social obligations through gritted teeth, pretending the day doesn’t exist, or joining in and celebrating at long last, please don’t feel guilty. When I asked people […]
Some things should be so obvious they don’t need saying. But apparently this really did. A week or so ago, I wrote a newspaper piece about the creeping trend for manifestation and the law of attraction and why this is a particularly unhelpful train of thought when it comes to fertility. Until the article was […]
Well, it’s been a little while, hasn’t it? I’ve been working on something that’s taken me offline for the last quarter of 2021. I hadn’t planned to return to the blog just yet, but then an email landed in my inbox just after Christmas Day that I found I couldn’t ignore. It was an offer […]
Taboo is an overused word in the media, isn’t it? Miscarriage, in particular, is often described as one of the “last taboos”, although I’ve also seen the label attached to menopause, periods, post-natal depression, finances, pelvic organ prolapse and male incontinence. When Carrie Johnson announced that she and the UK Prime Minister were expecting another baby […]
By the time you read this, it’ll have been more than a year since I was pregnant. This is only the second time this has been true in – what? – five years, now. The last time I could say it was when we took an extended break from trying to conceive after our fourth […]
In the days after my son was born, I would catch myself gazing around our house in wonder. Cards covered every surface, flowers spilled out of every vase we owned, while stacks of gifted baby clothes sat waiting to be put away. After four years of trying for a baby and four miscarriages we had […]
The Uterus Monologues: Miscarriage, motherhood and me 