Pregnancy After Loss

I’ve been pretty open about our miscarriage and subsequent troubles conceiving but this month is baby loss awareness month and I want to look at a slightly different angle. I am currently 31 weeks pregnant and I couldn’t be more thrilled (despite pregnancy being super weird), but being pregnant after a loss is also really difficult. 

The months between losing our first baby and getting pregnant with this one are a bit of a blur of heartbreak, hope and peeing on sticks. When we found out we were pregnant again it was so bittersweet. Would the same thing happen again? One thing I was really worried about is that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the pregnancy at all – I felt like I had been robbed of that. 

Thankfully, I have enjoyed it and every week that goes by I allow myself to feel a little more excited. Well, until the past few, and now the closer we get to the due date the more worried I am that something might happen to him in labour. When we hit twelve weeks, it felt like a weight had been lifted, but at the same time every time we buy something for him, I am hit with a sudden panic that he might never get here to use it. It’s a constant worry. 

Another thing I’ve been struggling with is the knowledge that if we hadn’t lost the first baby, we would have a 2 month old by now, and this little boy in my tummy wouldn’t exist. It’s such a strange feeling because I am heartbroken for the loss of our first baby, but if we had had them, we wouldn’t be having this one and that feels like another loss in itself. 

People seem to assume that being pregnant after a miscarriage sort of negates the pain that you felt before. Why would we be sad about the baby we lost now we are pregnant? In some ways it does help heal the wounds a little as we are able to focus on the little life I am carrying inside me, but at the same time, it doesn’t change the fact that our baby died. I won’t ever forget that fact and it won’t ever be okay. 

But in some ways we are so lucky. I can’t ever imagine having a stillborn baby, or losing a baby and never being able to conceive after that. In 8 or so weeks time I will be able to hold our baby, longed for and wanted so dearly and that is such a blessing. 

I feel like he has been a little shining light in a truly shit time. Being pregnant while dealing with my Mum’s death has been really bloody hard, don’t get me wrong, but I also think it has saved me in a way and I owe him a lot for that. Had we never lost our first baby, I would have been weeks away from birth when Mum died and I would be navigating my first baby at the same time as planning my first funeral. I would be driving the 4 or so hours back home, having to stop every half an hour as babies can’t be in their car seats for too long, and working out how to feed and change this brand new life, while dealing with the end of my Mum’s. It seems like the timing just wasn’t right. 

Even now, as we get ready to welcome baby Wright into the world, we still think about our little angel baby, and I think that loss has made our love for this baby even stronger. We know how lucky we are and we are going to love the heck out of this baby. 

But I am still the 1 in 5 and it’s truly shit.