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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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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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Every once in a while, a book comes along that you want to press into people’s hands, insisting they read it - urgently. It’s more than thinking that they might like it, it’s feeling that they *need* it, every word and idea of it. Somebody To Love, by Alexandra Heminsley, was this book for me. I gulped it down in about a day and half (there have to be some upsides to weird bouts of hormonal insomnia).
Tomorrow, it will be a year since I announced my Edward pregnancy on here. A year! A little over three years before that I posted my first post-miscarriage post - a picture of a vase of daffodils (the same vase in this picture, in fact). I didn’t mention what had happened, as hardly anyone knew back then, I simply included the rather anodyne hashtag #freshstart. Anyway, every year around this time I have the same thought about daffodils: they arrive exactly when we need them most. Keep going. 🌱✨
Sometimes (quite often at the moment, in fact) everything feels relentlessly grey - and then for a moment something lifts and you stop to appreciate that, right now, the sun is streaming through the window and you’re playing with your son in his nursery. The nursery that you had started to think would never exist. The nursery that you were too afraid to buy a cot for until he was three months old. And so you remember that however hard it is (and it is hard - for everyone, in so many different ways) you are also happy and lucky to be where you are.
A picture of me, plus pram, for no real reason other than I stopped and made Dan take it the other day because the sky was nice. Although I’ve taken more photos of Edward and Dan these last six months than my phone storage can handle, I have hardly any with me in the frame too. That’s partly because it’s always been me who takes the photos, but it’s also - if I’m honest - because I’ve actively been avoiding it as I don’t feel my best right now (and not just because the hairdressers aren’t open). My post-natal recovery has been slower than I’d expected. Not much fits, still. It’s all part of the Edward package though, along with unwashed hair and perma-eyebags, so of course I’m not complaining. But I do still feel vaguely embarrassed and a bit vulnerable about how I look most of the time. Anyway, I’ve been looking through a lot of old family photos the last week or so, and it’s been a reminder that one day I will want these pictures. And if I’m really lucky, other people will want them too. Crap hair, leggings, extra weight and all.
I’ve seen a fair bit of ‘toxic’ positivity during this lockdown. A kind of ‘look on the bright side’-ism that’s intended to minimise and silence. This quote is not about that kind of positivity. I first shared this quote pic back in 2019 - it’s become a bit of a motto for me (and I suspect for my whole family). It’s seen me through trying to conceive after loss (after loss, after loss) my pregnancy with Edward and now parenting in a pandemic. Here’s what I wrote back then:
Grief. It sneaks up on you and taps you on the shoulder when you are looking the other way. Grief. Like stepping through an enchanted waterfall, only to realise - a split-second too late - that a solid wall has sealed itself up behind you. There is no way back. All last week, I’d been composing a different post to this one in my head. About how similar this lockdown January feels to January four years ago, when I had my first miscarriage - the intense desire to feel shiny and new, whole and normal again is itchily familiar. And then at the weekend my Grandma died.

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