The fruits of a busy week in November (and a delightful surprise).

In November last year I had a sudden urge to get stuff done. Almost desperately. I booked in a dentist appointment (first in two and a half years), waxing, hair, optometrist (first in five years) and car servicing in the space of three days. That Sunday I found myself removing everything from the pantry for a stocktake. At this point Big Poppa looked at me closely and asked “Are you ok?” I stopped and thought about it and replied the only thing that seemed logical at the time. “I think I’d better do a pregnancy test.”

For those of you that have been following along, the year that followed our miscarriage was really tough. While grieving for our loss we tried month after month to conceive. Some months my period was up to 9 days late and I would have done 6 or 7 pregnancy tests, all negative. I hate to think over the space of a year how many of those little plastic sticks we sent into landfill.

Anyone who has experienced difficulties conceiving will know about the woes of tracking or charting your cycle (something I tried to avoid, fearing I’d get obsessive about it), forcing yourself to have exhausted sex between putting the toddler to bed and doing the dishes because IF WE DON’T DO IT RIGHT NOW IT’S ALL OVER FOR A MONTH AND WE MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP NOW

(deep breaths)

and then the dreaded two week wait where you allow yourself to get hopeful every time you experience something vaguely different in your body (and find yourself Googling ridiculous things like “Is finger pain an early pregnancy symptom?”) and then trying to wait until the right time to take a test, then taking one early and getting a negative result but reassuring yourself that it’s just too early and then taking one at the right time and it coming out negative and convincing yourself that there is definitely a shadow and then taking another half a dozen just to be sure and then stressing yourself out so much your period ends up being late anyway, causing more angst.

Plus, crying in the doctor’s office. Crying in your boss’s office. Crying on the way to work. Crying on the way home from work. Crying in the middle of the night. Crying into your child’s hair. Changing your diet. Not drinking alcohol. No sugar! No caffeine! No additives! No fun!

Convincing yourself there is something dreadfully wrong and avoiding having your scheduled pap smear on time because you don’t want to find out and sending your husband off for tests because you’re afraid to send yourself off for tests, then three blissful months of acupuncture (if you exclude the three months of dreadful mornings and evenings of drinking foul tasting Chinese herbs) and finally you realise you can’t afford to keep that up and something has to give and…

Well – around comes October. We’ve passed the painful anniversaries of our baby’s due date and the date of our miscarriage the year before. I’ve come to an agreement with myself (and a very accommodating Big Poppa) that every new period will result in eating one full wheel of soft cheese, drinking one full bottle of red wine and booking in one full overnight, getting loose, letting it go girls’ night with my friends. We have decided to stop acupuncture and stop focusing on getting pregnant. We’ve started to think about all those other things we could plan for our future that don’t involve having another child. We have (again and again) celebrated the beautiful child we already have and have decided that’s enough. We’re thinking about working in Alice Springs and taking Little Fearse to New York and maybe even Disney Land. Our last hurdle to endure in our conception journey is a fertility appointment, booked months ago and coming up fast. After that we’ve agreed that armed with whatever knowledge we gain we will refuse any invasive tests or treatments and just get on with our lives.

And then, BAM. I’m booking a thousand appointments in a week and emptying out the pantry and taking a pregnancy test and WHAT? Two lines. Two lines. Two tests with two lines. FOUR LINES. This is more shocking than the 300 tests we’ve taken this year that were negative. Three tests, six lines. Four tests, eight lines. So we cancelled out fertility appointment and readjusted our future again.

And here we are. We’re 22 weeks along. It’s been anxious. There have been weeks of bleeding and blood tests, there have been 5 ultrasounds and 8 instances of hearing a healthy beating heart. We are at a stage now where we are finally feeling that this is something that is really happening – that come July we’ll have another Little Fearse (Mini Fearse? Tiny Fearse?) in our lives.

[Cute pic of Little Fearse and the bump to come when I’m…you know…not in my PJs and she’s…you know…not covered in Vegemite.]

Mama xo

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss month.

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss month. Everything is still a bit raw for us, but what’s become apparent is that parents who have lost a pregnancy, particularly in the early stages, rarely talk about their experiences. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the medical profession knows so little about why miscarriages happen. Big Poppa and I wanted to share our story because in our early days of loss the stories of others gave us some comfort.

On the 26^th of September, just one month ago, Big Poppa and I learned that we had lost our second pregnancy. The second off-spring we’d created hadn’t made it. The little heart stopped beating at about 9 weeks and 4 days. Although we shared our sadness with those that were close, we chose not to speak about it more widely. We had only been telling people as we saw them that we were expecting another Fearse. Only a handful of people knew, so in most cases we decided it would just be strange to announce that we’d had a miscarriage, when people hadn’t even learnt yet of the pregnancy.

In most cases miscarriages seem to happen without any warning. In our case, I had never felt 100% certain about this pregnancy. The first pregnancy test came up negative. After a few more weeks, and a few symptoms, I took another test and it came up positive. In fact, it was so positive the second blue line showed up within about 10 seconds rather than the usual 2 – 3 minutes. At that stage we looked at our dates and it seemed that I was about 6 weeks pregnant.

I booked in to see my doctor. We told our parents and a few close friends. We asked Little Fearse if she thought Mummy and Daddy should make her a little brother or sister. She said ‘no-no’ every time. We read articles about preparing older siblings for a new baby. We worried about the time and energy we would have to dedicate to our new baby, and wondered how Little Fearse would cope. We borrowed baby name books from the library and started negotiating names. Big Poppa went the usual route of trying to slip in obscure Muppet or wrestler names, to see if I’d notice. I usually did. We wondered how we’d fit yet another Fearse in the bed and started to think about offering Little Fearse her own bed. My body was starting to subtly change.

At the doctors appointment, at 9 weeks and 4 days, the scan showed us a beautiful little bean, its heart beating strongly. The size, however, suggested the little one was only 8 weeks and 1 day. An earlier blood test had backed up that we should have been about 9 weeks pregnant. Our dates were 10 days different from the dates our doctor was telling us. I did all the calculations, but it just didn’t seem right. At that stage I began to wonder if the foetus wasn’t growing at the proper rate. Was something wrong?

Two weeks passed. I had felt nauseous from a little before the second pregnancy test. I hadn’t wanted to eat anything, really. I was much more nauseous than I had been with Little Fearse. Suddenly, a week after our scan, the nausea stopped. Hey, so maybe I was 12 weeks pregnant, as matched my dates. I felt so much better.

We left for a family holiday a little before the official school holidays began. On the Tuesday, a few days before we were due home, Big Poppa had to come back to the city to play a game of basketball. I took the opportunity to invite a friend and her son to visit. We spent the day at the beach. The kids explored all the different types of rocks and branches and seaweed and paddled in the small waves.

That night both Little Fearse and her small friend decided to go to bed at the same time, which was all kinds of awesome in terms of having time to hang out with my girlfriend and catch up on months’ worth of half conversations, interrupted by the needs and noises of our little people.

After putting Little Fearse to bed I went to the toilet and discovered that I was bleeding a little. I tried not to panic. I sifted through the catalogue in my mind of people who’d told me they’d had some spotting during their pregnancies. I didn’t want to ring Big Poppa, so far away, and worry him. I tried to put it aside. If this was happening, if my pregnancy was ending, there was nothing I could do to stop it. I told myself all the sensible things I could manage to tell myself. I tried not to worry. I didn’t really believe anything was wrong…well, except for all those misgivings I’d had since our first scan. They niggled away at me all night.

The next morning I wasn’t bleeding anymore. Big Poppa returned and we talked. We agreed that nature would decide for us. If this wasn’t meant to be it was probably for the best, it was probably because this little one wouldn’t arrive healthy. We tried to remain calm, we decided not to go home early, we decided to put off learning for sure.

The next day I was bleeding again. Not much. Not enough to have me really worried. I was sure it was nothing, but I was also becoming anxious to find out for sure. We came home from our holiday and I rang the obstetrician. They asked me to come in immediately. With no one to look after Little Fearse we took her with us. We had the scan straight away. Little Fearse was saying ‘baby’ and ‘car’ the whole time. I tried to focus on that instead of the concerned look on my obstetrician’s face. He showed us our perfect little bean. Its heart wasn’t beating. I could see it straight away, but I tried not to. I tried to unsee it. My doctor touched my shoulder and said he was sorry. Big Poppa and I looked at each other and had no words.

I had a D&C that night. We wanted it to be over and behind us. We tried to be philosophical about it. We knew it was better for this to happen now than later in the pregnancy. We knew it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. We knew it could happen to anyone, we knew it wasn’t anything we had done. We knew all those things, but what we didn’t know was that in a few days the grief would hit us. We’d both cry and neither of us would want to get out of bed for days on end. Little Fearse would be the one thing that kept us moving and we cherished her and held her close. No one knew what to say to us, except the Mums and Dads who have been there, too. And there were so many of them, people who we never knew had experienced miscarriages came out with their stories. We realised it was like a secret club, a club of parents who grieved in silence because it happened during the first 12 weeks, before we are supposed to share our joy.

But maybe it doesn’t need to be like that. We decided to share our story, so maybe others can share theirs, too.

Mama xo