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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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Tag: pregnancy envy

September 6, 2019September 5, 2019Jennie

Sharp objects

It’s back to school season, and that means running the daily social media assault course of first-day-of-school pictures (I can’t be alone in thinking of it in these combative terms, can I?). A week-long parade of other people’s babies – and they do often look like mere babies, play-acting in their Big School uniforms – […]

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December 20, 2018January 15, 2019Jennie

Comfort and Joy (Pregnancy announcements: A how-to)

I was going to write a different post for the week before Christmas. About how Dan and I are trying to wring every last drop of joy from the festive season this year, my first not working – not on Christmas Day, not on Boxing Day, not on any of those surreal, time-passing-slow-as-treacle days in […]

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June 18, 2018June 17, 2018Jennie

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

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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Say hello on Instagram...

Hello, if you’re new around here (and if you’re not, of course 👋). I’m Jennie. I was going to do one of those ‘about me’ posts you’re supposed to do when you get a little influx of followers. But then I couldn’t find a decent, recent picture of me without Edward in too, so I thought I’d talk about that instead: how much baby content is OK to share after loss(es) and/or infertility?
After months of staring at my screen, writing things, then deleting them, I’ve finally got a new blog post up. It’s about the transition from being a person trying really hard to have a baby to being a parent at last - and the tricks that plays on your brain. It includes some thoughts about the conflicting demands on your empathy, and also how your perspective and ability to relate to people who are still trying changes, as much as you may not want it to.
For anyone logging on after Mother’s Day weekend, who found yesterday hard, let me say this: well done. I’ll say it because no one else will. Well done for making it through the weeks of build-up, the constant reminders in the form of marketing emails and TV ads. Well done for getting through the deluge of social media tributes, the baby photos, the breathtaking insensitivity from some, and the thoughtful, well-meaning memes from others that you’re grateful for, but which don’t necessarily make you feel any better either. Well done for getting on with it, picking yourself up, and carrying on. Well done.
‘It is only kindness that makes sense any more.’ I shared this poem in full on my stories earlier in the week and I felt it deserved a more permanent home here. It seems fitting to me after the news cycle we’ve just had - and with Mother’s Day approaching. Kindness is the only thing that makes sense any more. (Try to include yourself in that this weekend). ❤️
How do we talk about the difficult parts of parenting a longed for baby? Spoiler alert: I don’t know. This picture is an outtake from one I shared a couple of months back, when Edward turned 6 months, and which I immediately felt guilty about sharing because it was so un-representative of how my life looked and how I felt on the inside. This picture is marginally more like it. A bit less polished, less cropped, less filtered. You can see the weeds pushing up through the cracks. A plant in the background that needs to go to the tip. My squashed, awkward smile; smiling through internal chaos. (I’ve still got clean hair, clean clothes, and make-up on though, which is absolutely not the norm).
Oh the absolute truth of this. I’ve been thinking about this quote for a couple of weeks now, and since my Grandma’s funeral especially. There has been so much to grieve this past year - so many people and also many other smaller life losses - and yet I feel like the true weight of it all is being held at bay for now, while we’re still stuck in survival mode. Being locked down has done strange things to grief for me, amplifying the surreality of it, and making it impossible to feel the full force of how much you will miss someone. Because at the moment you miss everyone, everything.

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