Skip to content
The Uterus Monologues: Miscarriage, motherhood and me

The Uterus Monologues: Miscarriage, motherhood and me

Life after recurrent miscarriage

  • Follow me on Instagram
  • Follow me on Twitter
  • Follow me on Facebook
  • About me
  • Contact
  • Useful stuff
  • Fundraising
  • Miscarriage
  • Things that help
  • Trying To Conceive
  • Pregnancy after loss
  • Books

Tag: Christmas

January 6, 2022January 7, 2022Jennie

Guest monologue: ‘Please don’t ask me how my Christmas 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 […]

Continue Reading "Guest monologue: ‘Please don’t ask me how my Christmas was’"
December 21, 2020Jennie

The trouble with Christmas songs

We are both crying so hard I start to think we might have to pull the car over. It is Christmas Eve 2018 and we’re driving to my mum’s. It’s been six months since my fourth miscarriage. To brighten up our 40-mile pilgrimage up the A1(M), we’ve had bakery coffee, cinnamon buns, and Dan’s annual […]

Continue Reading "The trouble with Christmas songs"

Say hello on Instagram...

For anyone feeling stuck or lost right now, this is a post for you (as much as it is also a reading recommendation). I read the first book in this series, The Cazalet Chronicles, three years ago on the holiday we took during our year-long break from trying to conceive. I loved it so much that, in an attempt to spread out the pleasure of it, I decided I would read the rest of the series at a rate of no more than one book per year. This meant I ended up reading the second volume in the final weeks of my pregnancy with Edward and then in the hazy first weeks of his life. (Please don’t ask me to recount any plot detail…)
When I was pregnant for the first time, the 12-week ‘rule’ seemed little more than a fun tradition to me. We didn’t tell many people ‘in case something happened’, but without really believing anything actually would. Whether you tell people early, or whether you wait, either way, this enduring social convention starts to feel like a big cosmic joke after you lose a pregnancy.
Hi, I’m Jennie - and this is what the back of my hair actually looks like in real life. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I wasn’t going to share this picture. I’ve been having a kind of Instagram stage fright - it often happens when I’ve been posting reasonably regularly for a bit. I start to feel over-exposed, I annoy myself, I worry and question everything I start to write. I tell myself that if I’m going to share my awkward selfies and snapshots of my rather quiet life, I better have something powerful and important to say. So I end up saying nothing for a bit and feeling rubbish. But do you know what? Life’s too short.
This is from an old post, which I re-shared on my stories earlier this week. Judging by my inbox, it seems to have struck a chord so I thought I’d post it here too. Because I think there’s a still an anxiety around talking about abortion or being pro-choice as someone who desperately wants to become pregnant or who has grieved for a miscarriage - as if these causes are completely separate or even at odds with each other. As if by declaring one thing you are invalidating your own feelings about the other: your right to grieve, your imagining of what you lost as a life, or what could have been a life.
I am personally very grateful to this week’s guest post author, as it’s helped me appraise and explore my own feelings about this particular topic - whether and when to try for another child after a ‘rainbow’ baby. In this post, Steph @crossing_everything reflects so honestly on the prospect of trying again, after a miscarriage, a tfmr, and then after finding the newborn phase with her rainbow girl difficult. I found it helpful and - ultimately - hopeful, too. (Tap the link in my bio to read).
✨ Am I making the most of it? Am I cherishing our time? Is this ‘special’ enough? ✨ These sorts of questions have buzzed around my brain basically ever since Edward was born. Mostly, they existed as nebulous guilt; a panic I couldn’t yet articulate. Time was running out. I wouldn’t get these ‘firsts’ again. This was it, the moment(s) I had waited for for so long. Was I making it special enough?

Click to get the latest updates from The Uterus Monologues and receive new posts by email.

Follow The Uterus Monologues: Miscarriage, motherhood and me on WordPress.com

What I’m reading…

Website Powered by WordPress.com.
  • Follow Following
    • The Uterus Monologues: Miscarriage, motherhood and me
    • Join 348 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Uterus Monologues: Miscarriage, motherhood and me
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar