When my husband and I started trying for a baby, I got pregnant the very first time, lost it and then it took a whole year (almost exactly to the month) to get pregnant again. Just as I was about to arrange tests etc. to see what was wrong I got pregnant for the second time and lost it again, which felt like a real slap round the face: not only had I lost a baby again, at the same time of year and after the same duration but it had taken a whole year to get pregnant again - what if this just kept happening and the years slipped away?
I went to the GP but the NHS regards anything less than 3 miscarriages in a row as perfectly normal. I suppose this is comforting as you feel your chances are still good but it also made me feel a bit like I just had to wait for a third miscarriage to happen so I could get some help... not the best feeling. My GP said (I think she meant well) that I should try and 'relax' - this was not the most helpful advice!
So these are a few things that did help me, in case they help anyone else: in no particular order -
- Plan to Get Pregnant by Zita West, a straightforward book which looks at every aspect of getting pregnant and gives helpful advice.
- Acupuncture with a lovely acupuncturist, Justyna Gorska at Neal's Yard Therapy Rooms, Covent Garden. I went to her and said just try to help me relax (I had a stressful house renovation going), never mind about getting pregnant right now. I needed to feel I was doing something and not just waiting for a third miscarriage to happen. She did some amazing things - I thought I had a pretty regular period but she got it to 29 days exactly, even changed recurring dreams so they became gentler versions of themselves and one day stuck a needle in a 'heart' point (I never ask what she's doing, she told me afterwards) and I burst into tears instantly and lay there sobbing with huge grief for a few minutes. I'd never had acupuncture before but heartily recommend it. Later, when I did get pregnant, she did a lot of treatments to support the pregnancy which I found very morally supportive.
- Allowing myself to imagine a life without being able to have children - would we go for IVF? Adopt? Would we just accept the situation and enjoy a child-free life? I think this helped because if you imagine 'the worst' actually it's not such a terrible future as when you don't allow yourself to imagine it at all. It frees you up.
- Having different people to express emotions to. I had a great friend who also had issues getting pregnant and discussing it with her was wonderful because she totally understood the emotions without having to spell them out. Equally, though, another friend was trying for a baby (and had one very quickly and successfully) and with her I talked about having babies, without discussing my issues - just the excitement of trying and what it would be like, names, clothes, toys etc. Later she told me she had felt a little guilty for having a baby so easily when I was still trying, but only ever talking to her about the exciting possibility of children (and not the difficulties) was truly helpful because it made me feel I really would have babies one day.
- And finally I have to mention... the fertility chair. I think a lot of offices have them but no-one admits to it because it sounds silly. I used to work for a major retailer with four thousand employees just at Head Office and we had one there - six women in quick succession got pregnant sitting in it. Our boss got to the point where he said no more women were to sit in it ever again. I don't know if it went on to work for the men... But my new (much smaller) company also had such a chair. The first woman in it had twins. Her maternity cover replacement got pregnant and when she left we all joked about the chair and it sat empty for a while. I eventually took it (not with the deliberate intention of getting pregnant from it) - and got pregnant (and kept it) within a month after a year and a half of trying. When I tell this story to people they often admit there is such a chair in their office too. Got to be worth a second thought...
It might seem odd to start a blog about being a mother with my miscarriages. But on the first day of my son's life I wept because he was so lovely and I suddenly saw what the two lost babies might have been like. I recently read a poem in How Mothers Love (by Naomi Stadlen). It was written by Alice Meynell, who lost her baby at birth. She went on to have eight more children but it took her ten years to write about the first one:
But oh, ten years ago, in vain,
A mother, a mother was born.
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