Content note: this article contains descriptions of baby loss and miscarriage that readers may find upsetting.

It was a hot, sticky day in May 2020 when I was scheduled for my 12-week scan. Due to Covid restrictions, my husband wasn’t able to come in with me, so he and my youngest daughter waited in the car while I ran in clutching my pregnancy notes, aware I was running late and worried I’d miss my appointment. I was so looking forward to getting my scan picture and posting the news on social media.

The sonographer asked if this was my first pregnancy. “Oh no, it’s my fourth,” I said, chuckling when she told me I must be an expert by now. Laying back on the bed, I lifted my T-shirt and she spread the jelly on my stomach. I knew what I was looking for because I had seen it during three other pregnancies. I always found all those little bones and intricate details awe-inspiring. The baby wiggling around inside, even though I wouldn’t be able to feel anything inside at this point in the pregnancy.

When I looked at the screen, I saw an empty black space with a white shape in the middle; my gut instinct knew instantly something was wrong, but I couldn’t read the sonographer’s face – she had a mask on and was completely covered in personal protective equipment. I found myself desperately hoping that my baby was in the wrong place, or my bladder wasn’t full enough.

Someone else came into the room and was asked to have a look. They peered at the screen, heads close, speaking in hushed tones. It was only then I became aware of a noise; low, raw, urgent and animalistic, I couldn’t quite make it out at first, and then suddenly, I realised it was me. My body knew what had happened before my brain caught up. The sonographer looked at me over her mask and I heard: “I’m sorry; there’s no heartbeat.” 

I started to freefall. I lay there, exposed, vulnerable, wailing. After a while, I became aware of the details around me: the jelly on my stomach, the fact my shorts were pulled down. The whole situation suddenly felt absurd. In that moment, I realised that my body was alone: no tiny fingers and toes safely growing within me, no fluttering heartbeat alongside mine. The sonographer patted my arm and told me to come out when I was ready to discuss the next steps.

“I’ve got to move,” I thought. My body went into autopilot. I managed to wipe off the jelly; it was as if I was watching someone else clean it from my stomach, pull my shorts up and push the handle to leave the room. 

I was told my husband could now come in, but when I said my daughter was with him, they said it wasn’t possible for her to be in the hospital. I asked what I was meant to do. “You have three options,” they said. “You can go home and wait to see if the miscarriage happens naturally. Or you can have surgery to remove the pregnancy. Or you can take medicine to bring on a miscarriage.”

I just couldn’t get my head around it. I told them I wanted the fastest option; if I wasn’t going to get to meet my baby, I wanted it over right then. I wanted to go home with my grief.

When I phoned my husband, he kept asking if they were sure the baby had died. It made me second-guess myself. What if the baby was alive and I took medicine that would cause him or her to be miscarried? The whole thing felt impossible to begin to comprehend.

I decided to use the medicine to induce the miscarriage. Rob, my husband, went home to get the children sorted – our neighbours had offered to look after them. I was then admitted and given the medicine to induce labour.

Given that my past labours were quick, they told me this ‘labour’ would likely be fast too. They gave me a cardboard pan and told me to put it over the toilet anytime I went. The midwife said if I felt the need to push, I had to have this cardboard thing under me. I felt completely ignorant at this point. What was my baby going to look like? I was frightened to ask because I thought it was something I should know the answer to. At the same time, I felt ashamed that my body hadn’t done what it should have done. It hadn’t carried this baby to birth.

After three rounds of medicine, with each round lasting six hours, nothing had happened. Once again, my body just wasn’t doing what it ‘should’ be doing: it couldn’t sustain the pregnancy and now it couldn’t miscarry properly. During this time, I received a text from my mum: “Tell your beautiful brave body – it’s OK to let go now.” I was suddenly able to reframe what had happened. My body hadn’t failed me. It was so desperate to be a mum, it refused to let my baby go. I was sent home and told to come back in when I miscarried.

Taking my kids for a walk, because we were only allowed out once a day at this point, I told them what had happened. My daughter, who was six at the time, gave me a cuddle and put her hand on my tummy. “I’m so sad that the baby will never get to see this because it’s such a beautiful day,” she said. It broke me. 

A couple of mornings later, I felt something and ran to the toilet. There was so much blood. I called for Rob, shouting that I was losing the baby. I didn’t know what had happened, whether I’d passed the baby or not, and I couldn’t bear the thought of flushing the toilet. Rob came up to the bathroom with a bowl and a slotted spoon. I watched on as he fished around, not really knowing what we were looking for. When I arrived at hospital, covered in my own blood, Rob wasn’t allowed in and I was wheeled away on a chair, clutching a mixing bowl covered in cling film to my chest – the contents of which may or may not have been my baby. I looked at him through the glass and I just didn’t understand why this was happening. 

Rob was cleared to come in as I was having an internal examination. Holding my hand, his face went white. There was blood up to my shoulder blades. I could feel the wet sensation across my back and in my hair. I genuinely thought I was going to die – this surely wasn’t normal. I thought miscarriage was like a heavy period, not like this. During the examination, the doctor removed the baby from my body. “This is your pregnancy tissue,” she said. I asked what that meant, and she repeated herself, adding “the products of conception”. 

She wouldn’t say it was my baby.

Due to ‘pregnancy tissue’ becoming stuck in my cervix, I had to have an emergency surgery, and I was required to be awake during the procedure. All I wanted to do was go to sleep and for it all to be over. I felt emotionally exhausted and physically defeated. I wouldn’t allow myself to sleep because I was terrified of those waking moments when I’d think everything was OK. While we had initially been told we could take our baby home to bury, suddenly there were complications and forms to fill in – no one knew where the forms were or if it was even possible. It added a layer of anxiety to an already terrifying situation.

After it was all over, I was broken, sad and exhausted. It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever walked through. From the hospital, all I got in terms of support afterwards was a bit of paper with some ‘management options’.

I wrote down everything that happened – every single moment. I just had to get it out onto paper, and out of my head. My only comfort in those early darkest days was speaking to two friends who had been through baby loss. Hearing them share what they’d been through made me feel less alone.

Since losing my baby, and speaking about it so openly, so many of my friends have opened up about their losses, losses that I’d had no idea about. It struck me that we all have that opportunity for connection. With one in four pregnancies ending in loss, most of us will have friends who have been through it, but because societally we don’t talk about it, we’re left alone and isolated in our pain, wondering if our grief is in fact disproportionate to our loss. 

A week after my miscarriage, I took a photo of all the flowers I’d been sent and uploaded it with a post about my experience on a Facebook forum for parents, including my contact details for people to get in touch, saying that they needn’t feel alone.

The post went viral, and within 24 hours, I had received in excess of 2,000 emails. There were women saying they were in hospital going through the same. Women saying they had experienced it decades ago and still felt the pain of it. There was a whole community of women out there who didn’t have a platform to share their stories or a volume switch to amplify their voices.

I wanted to do something about that. Over the next three years, Laura Buckingham, another loss parent, and I set up The Worst Girl Gang Ever, a community for women to share their stories and have their feelings validated. Since then, we’ve continued to grow: we have accounts across all socials, a podcast, and a membership platform. Our book The Worst Girl Gang Ever, A Survival Guide For Miscarriage And Pregnancy Loss is exactly that – we hope it will be a beacon of light to show women that they needn’t suffer in silence, or alone.

Looking back, I realise that by helping to change the landscape of support for women and couples following loss has given my baby a purpose, a legacy, and this has helped my own personal recovery. I still feel the weight of the loss, there’s still a place missing at my breakfast table. I’m so lucky to have gone on to have another baby, but the experience I lived has left its scar. I frequently feel triggered and can transport myself back to that dark hot room without difficulty.

Baby loss is the most traumatic and heartbreaking experience I have lived through, and the ripple effects are long-lasting and far-reaching. I didn’t just lose a baby; I lost my confidence, my identity and my ability to trust a world I thought I knew so well.

If you’re reading this now and you can identify with any of my story, I absolutely see you. We’re here for you. We get you and we’ve got you. 

Images: Getty