you can't carry me

After I got married it felt like one of the first questions everyone would ask of me was 'when are you having kids'.

Like it was the only logical and natural progression following a wedding.

I had always known that I wanted kids. When I was younger, I made a little map of where that would fit into my life. As I got older the roadmap changed a little and I pushed out those plans because life goes so quickly. Then I got married and of course, now is the time, right?

My husband was ready, he wanted a baby. I spoke to my doctor about it because I was on contraceptive and asked how I made the transition from actively avoiding conception to planning for it. She said it took some women up to two years after their last dose to conceive, so I had my last round and then three months later I was completely unprotected.

If it took me two years from there then I was fine with it, fully aware that once we went down that road there was no turning back. It was daunting, knowing that everything would change for us once a baby came into the picture.

It took a few months for my period to come back, and once it did, I was fairly regular. It made it easier to track in my app, it told me the days I was expected to be the most fertile and I bought myself some ovulation and pregnancy tests. I was onboard, but still a little hesitant. It was a huge step.

I was that aware of my cycle that I would test myself if I was late by just one day. But the tests continued to come up negative, and I wasn't concerned to start with because I knew it could take up to two years. The more time that went on I started to get a little concerned, was this normal? I'd been unprotected for so long, surely, I should have fallen pregnant by now.

And then one Wednesday, when I was only a day late, I watched the second line go dark on the test. I don't know why I was so shocked, maybe it was just because I was just so used to the routine of test-negative-test-negative.

I kept it to myself for a few days, I did another four tests spaced out until the Friday night just to be sure. All five tests came up the same as the first, positive. I was pregnant.

I did the cutesy thing and bought a newborn onesie and left it on the bench with one of the tests on top of it next to my husband's coffee on the Saturday morning.

My god that man has never taken longer to drag himself out of bed as he did that day with me standing by the bench holding my coffee mug, heart pounding in my ears. He did a double take when he saw it, the grin on his face is one I will never forget.

I put my coffee down so he could pick me up and hold me, and I wrapped by legs around him. I heard him breath in and out shakily against my neck. He was so happy.

He would have told everyone then and there if I'd let him, but I told him we needed to wait and get through the first lot of doctor's appointments and scans before we started down that road. I could tell every time we saw friends or family that he was just itching to tell them. He had been waiting for this moment for a long time.

I wasn't sure if I was ready. I still didn't know if this was what I wanted right at that moment. Was I ready to add to our life, to completely change what it looked like from this point on?

I would think about all the things that I now need to give up and the things I would go through. I can't drink, I can't eat whatever I like, I'll get stretch marks and my breasts already ache. I'll tear skin and warp bones. Was I ready for that?

I didn't know yet, but in one moment I knew without hesitation that I was. A moment in a dark room, the gentle pressure of the ultrasound wand against my belly and the words from the technician coming out in slow motion, 'the pregnancy is not viable'.

In that moment I would have gladly taken all those things I feared. I would have taken them without complaint if I could go back to before I heard those words. All my doubt was gone, nine weeks of worry and concern over the life growing inside me seemed silly.

But there was no life in me, I was empty.

We spent weeks planning a future around the idea that my body was building a child for us. We debated names, picked out furniture. We wondered what we would do around a friend's wedding in October, could we bring a 6-week-old? Would I feel ready to leave the baby even for a few hours?

We thought about how we would tell our family and friends, how we would tell my work and how long I would have off with the baby before transitioning back to the nine to five.

And in less than five minutes, all those ideas were reduced to nothing. There was no baby, no embryo growing inside me. So now what now? I saw my doctor that afternoon, I couldn't wait a whole night. Usually such a positive woman, she was mellow and apologetic, she tried to be reassuring. It happens more often than you'd think, twenty percent of pregnancies are failures. I'm still so young, I'll be okay.

All the while I'm sitting there with the tears streaming down my face and trying to contain the heaving sobs threatening to break out of my chest. I was trying not to look at my husband beside me, who just yesterday looked at me like he had never been happier, who was looking at me now like I might crumble beside him.

It didn't feel real. Sitting there talking about what the next steps were to induce my miscarriage and not pencilling in a new scan or choosing between a public or private hospital.

And still, it's not over.

The doctor gave me a referral to the hospital to get medication to force things along.

I couldn't go that day, couldn't face it yet. I was still coming to terms with everything.

It was the thing that I had been most scared of, even before we fell pregnant. What if it happened to me?

And then I had my first scan at 7 weeks and 3 days. They could see a gestational sac and a yolk sac, but no foetal pole. Possibly just conceived late and it was too early to see. No heartbeat detected yet either. Again, there was no cause for alarm, no mention to me that this could be the first sign of a failed pregnancy.

They told me to come back in two weeks to follow up. There I was googling every little thing she said, hoping to find stories where other women had this at a similar gestational mark and went on to have a successful pregnancy.

Instead, I came across the term "Blighted Ovum". A pregnancy where the embryo never develops or stops developing very early on. And it stuck with me. Characterised by the very things noted on my ultrasound, it wasn't exactly uncommon, but there was no definitive known cause.

I tried not to think about it, the last thing I needed was to let Dr. Google stress me out and be worried over nothing. After all, they would have told me if I needed to be worried, wouldn't they? Doubt grew inside me, for two weeks the only thing growing in me was this dark cloud of worry.

So, when the words came out, any hope I had been clinging to was shattered. I was almost not surprised. It was almost a moment of "I knew I was broken". But hope is a funny thing. It defies logic and probability. It can overcome anything if you let it. And I so needed hope to get me through those two weeks that I let it consume me, bury the doubt until I couldn't hold it down anymore.

It was there in black, white and grey. My doubt become my reality. My fears had come to life on a medical screen.

And doubt grows quickly.

Suddenly my future was less than certain.

I sat at my parents' house the morning after. We talked like nothing had changed, though my husband and I sat silently holding on to a new secret.

For a few hours I was distracted, I could laugh and talk and enjoy their company. But the moment we got into the car I broke down again. There was no escaping it. So, we drove to the hospital and sat in the crowded waiting room waiting to see someone. Again, I tried to hold in my tears, and I could mostly keep it together, save for the crying baby three seats ahead of us and the fact that every ad on my social media now reflected pregnancy clothing or baby swaddles, and I had never realised how many friends had babies or children.

Still, I held it together, took deep breaths. Told my husband he didn't need to wait. he could go get some food and come back for me. But he wouldn't let me do it alone.

At least until they had to take me through. New rules disallowed visitors in the emergency.

A nurse came to see me and uttered the dreaded "are you doing okay". I was until she asked me. Then the tears wouldn't stop. She left me to follow up, and I scrambled for a tissue as I sat alone on the bed.

It was almost over, at least that's what I thought.

When she returned, she told me that my files had been referred yet again to another clinic, and I would have to wait for them to contact me with the next steps.

So, I left, support packet in hand and nothing but the name of an organisation who would supposedly be in contact. More time to wait, more time to live with the sickening feeling that I was rotting on the inside. If there wasn't life inside me then it felt like decay, infecting me and blackening my insides to the point where it would spread all the way through me, seeping into my blood, the failure consuming me.

It took them two days to get in touch, and then another two days before I could get booked in.

I had to go back to the hospital, through the OB ward and on to gynaecology. I had to pass heavily expectant mothers and newborn babies on their way into the real world for the first time. I didn't think I was going to make it to the appointment without breaking down, and I was right. I was all but hyperventilating.

I sat there with a gynaecologist and a midwife, and again, we ran through everything, as if I hadn't explained it to enough people. So, your first ultrasound was on this date, and then you had a follow up two weeks later? And they told you then that the pregnancy was not able to progress? Did your doctor give you your options when you saw her?

What option did I have? Two methods to choose from perhaps, but there was no option. I couldn't choose to change this. I couldn't choose to fix it. There was no fixing this.

It was either surgery or medication, and the thought of surgery terrified me just a little.

I think I uttered two words total, ‘um, medication’.

As she prepared the script for me, the midwife asked me how I was coping emotionally, which of course started the tears again. She was supportive, and calm, and explained to me that this was so much more common than many people know. She said the more people I speak to about it; the more women will start putting up their hands to say it's happened to them too. She told me how to take the medication and what to expect when I did.

She was lovely, and I was numb.

There was a tiny part of me that thought, desperately hoped, that the ultrasound was wrong and that there was something inside me. I knew the truth though, I think I knew it after the first appointment, I just wouldn't let it into my mind because this couldn't possibly happen to me. But now it was, and I had to face it.

My husband was on the way to the airport to fly back to work. I thought I could do it alone, but as I sobbed to myself in the car, great heaving wails from deep in my chest, I didn't want to.

I waited to take the pills until he got home. They weren't pleasant.

The midwife said my body would start to contract a few hours after, but everything started faster than I expected. I took a shower to help calm my nerves, not that it worked. I paced, rocked from one foot to the other and stood under the scalding water taking deep breaths. And already I was bleeding.

I came back out to see my husband. I sat on the couch and asked him to sit with me. The tears were almost a constant stream at this point, every blink cleared my eyes to make room for more.

This was really happening.

I went from the prospect of having a baby, a squealing little squish, to nothing.

It's such a conflicting feeling.

And all the while I was simultaneously thinking that I needed to move on and that I wasn’t done grieving. I couldn’t quite decide which.

Do I have the right to be as upset as I am about this loss? There never was a baby, I never saw anything on the scan. My body was pregnant but there was never more than some failed cell division inside me. So how can I be this upset? There are women out there who lose their babies in the second or third trimester and have to deliver that tiny baby into the world, their bodies still preparing milk for a child who will never drink it. How could my loss compare with that?

On the other hand, how could I be so callous as to ask the midwife when it would be okay for me to have sex again? When would it be okay for me to try and conceive again? Shouldn't I still be grieving instead of thinking of trying again? The loss was so fresh.

It didn't matter which way I thought of it, I felt guilty. When I cried myself to work in the car I was overreacting, being dramatic. When I impatiently wondered when I would start ovulating again, I was crass and detached.

I was the only one putting these judgements down, because no one else knew.

My husband told his mum and dad, but it wasn't really mentioned, we barely saw them for a few weeks after.

I told one of my friends from work, but it's one of those things that you don't just bring up to talk about.

And then after a few weeks is it something you ask about again?

I felt like everyone else started the process to heal and move on from the moment they found out, whereas I was stuck in this nightmare where I couldn't forget about it even for a moment, because I could feel the blood running through me, the uncomfortable rub of the sanitary pad between my thighs. I was still living it, it wasn't a before I knew and after I knew, it was a before, during, and what I could only hope would be an after.

Because of course it wasn’t over after the one batch of pills.

Back to the hospital, another ultrasound, and they weren't content that it was done.

So, I got another round of pills prescribed, booked in for another appointment and did it all over again.

This time it wasn't as bad, and it was over in a few days. Maybe I was almost back to where I was before.

But, another hospital appointment, an inconclusive ultrasound, and I was off to the radiology clinic for another full scan. If they weren't happy with the results and they were still seeing clotting inside me then they were going to recommend the D&C surgery.

They would call me to book me in, another two days of waiting. When I finally attended the appointment, it was the full internal scan, an ultrasound wand and some lube, my feet up and my knees open on the table.

And they still weren't satisfied that everything had cleared.

I sobbed to myself on the drive home. I didn't even really know how I felt.

I was devastated, angry, frustrated, terrified. Why did this happen to me?

It had been more than four weeks since I first found out and I was still waiting because nothing was over until they told me so.

I should be thirteen weeks pregnant and beginning to tell the people I love, instead I’m thinking about it every time I see them and wondering if I tell them that I’m grieving instead?

It was almost three months before everything had cleared, physically anyway. Emotionally I was still consumed by it, sadness, sorrow, guilt.

And I see babies everywhere.

Tiny little curled up newborns who can’t even hold their head up, babies just starting to really smile and laugh, toddlers walking unsteadily to their parents and grinning toothlessly.

I wondered to myself, will I ever stop seeing them and feeling that punch in my gut? That ache in my chest?

Every cramp or tightness I feel in my belly I wonder if it’s my insides going bad and spoiling my body for the next attempt we make. Is all this waiting going to make things worse? Make them harder?

Should I feel glad that my body was holding on to this failed pregnancy so tightly that it’s been near impossible to end? Does that mean next time, if everything goes right, my body will nurture and grow something healthy?

I don’t know. And I don’t know how I’ll be able to be happy next time.

I won’t see those lines and smile from ear to ear like I did last time. I won’t put the onesie out and wait for my husband to sweep me up in his arms. I won’t sleep the night before a scan. I won’t put a toe out of line.

Because what if I’m the one percent?

All I had was questions. No answers.

It felt like so long since I found out, and I thought the waiting would never end. And then I started bleeding again.

I thought maybe this was my period starting again and maybe this would clear out what’s left in me. Maybe I won’t need the surgery after all, and I can start moving on soon.

I have never so desperately hoped for my period in my life.

And of course it came, a clear scan finally let me check this experience off as complete, life goes on.

Even months after finding out, I think about it all the time. It feels like everyone has a pregnancy to announce, and every single one of them kills me just a little bit.

And I don’t know who to talk to about it, because no one that I know really understands, because no one talks about it. If they did then maybe there would be someone in the same boat as me, or someone who’s been through this.

Because I can’t talk about it completely with someone who doesn’t know, I just can’t find the words that make sense.

I remember telling someone that I don’t know how I will be excited when this happens for us again, and she said, ‘of course you will’. I know she was trying to be supportive, but it will never be like last time.

I won’t sit on the knowledge and think of some cute way to tell my husband.

I won’t start making plans and building a future on two fragile blue lines.

I feel like all the good and the hope has been taken away and replaced with fear.

Fear that I might have to do this again, fear that there’s something wrong with me, fear that my husband will never look at me the way he did before that ultrasound.

Because he hasn’t looked at me the way he did in those early weeks ever since.

So, month after month goes by, I wait a week to reach the fertile window, hope and try to make the stars align for a week more, wait another week to pee on the stick.

Another set of empty lines and I sob into my steering wheel hoping that the next month will be different.

And I don't know if I'm terrified that those two lines will never be there, or if I'm terrified that they will.

Because whatever happens, life finds a way.

Or it doesn't.