My heart goes out to everyone in this thread and to anyone who has ever gone through this. The fact that it’s more common than you realise does nothing to ease the pain of it. And the effects can be longer-lasting than you realise once the initial grief has faded.
Me and my missus got married in 2006, both in our mid-30s and fully understood that statistically we were getting on a bit to be starting a family, but by no means past it. Unfortunately, since then we’ve had one pregnancy that went six weeks, which was difficult enough, then a second that went right up to the 12 week milestone after which the risk of things going wrong begins to drop significantly apparently.
That second one was much worse. Absolutely slayed us. We were so happy and excited, then terrified when some bleeding appeared at around 10 weeks, then so relieved when the scan which followed an excruciating wait at the hospital showed a healthy heart beat and everything normal. Then two weeks later, devastation. Up down, up down. Bang.
The emotions really caught me off guard. God knows what a psychologist would make of it, but it can rip the strongest of relationships apart. My wife was devastated. We both were of course, but her pain was more acute. I hated seeing her hurt, couldn’t stand it and just wanted to make it all better again, but too soon. Her pain broke my heart more than the loss of the baby, and eventually because I couldn’t make her feel better, I got angry. Not at her, as she thought, but at the perceived injustice of it. Here was something that was supposed to make our little life complete and instead left us in despair.
I wanted to get on with life. She became angry that I wasn’t grieving as much as her, but she was my priority, always has been and always will be. I just wasn’t very good at seeing her so upset and letting her go through it her own way, in her own time.
Still, you do get over it and get on with life and try again. She became pregnant again about three years ago and we were nervous from the start. This time it was 11 weeks but again it ended abruptly and painfully, this time starting as we were wandering around the peace and tranquillity of a cathedral! What little faith I had left in a higher power met a swift and cold end on that day.
The reaction this time was different again. More like me and her against the world, both angry, both confused, both tired. For a while, when one of our friends had another child (and christ, didn’t they suddenly seem to be popping out all over the show!) it was difficult to be around them. That’s a terrible thing isn’t it.
On a positive note, we’re fine and happy and have been for ages. For those in despair, it doesn’t last forever and I wish you every success next time. You’ll always get little reminders, all the time in fact. Little stabs of regret and moments of imagining what it would’ve been like, but there’s no bitterness anymore. And it didn’t break us, not a chance, and our relationship is probably even stronger for the experience.
I’m 44 now and she’s 42 and we still feel like we’ve got a lot of love and security to offer a littl’un that needs it somewhere. So we’re going off down the adoption route. It’s early days (we’ve only been to one information evening which was a real eye opener) and we’re moving house next week which all needs to be sorted out before we go any further, but we’ve made our minds up, so we’ll see what happens next. Exciting times to be honest.
Sorry to go on. I think it just suddenly needed to all come out. Thanks if you got this far and good luck again to anyone who goes through a miscarriage. You can’t predict how either of you will react, so just let time do its healing as it always does and just be there for each other. And if you feel angry, don’t feel guilty about that. I can promise you it’s perfectly normal. Try not to bottle it up and make sure you talk things through when you feel up to it.
