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

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

Somewhere inside, I already knew the worst had happened. Call it women’s intuition, but the day before our early 10-week scan I had told my husband that I’d be more surprised to hear a heartbeat than not. He looked at me as if I was going mad. After all, everything seemed to be ticking along nicely. But ‘knowing’ didn’t lessen the pain of learning I had lost my baby.

It’s funny: we always knew we’d have two kids, but we’d never discussed having more than that. It became clear to me when my youngest was about 18 months old that I wasn’t done. I felt a strange ache I couldn’t shake.

I pushed hard to get my husband on board. Eventually, after he’d reviewed the finances with multiple fine-toothed combs, he said yes, and we agreed to start trying in September 2023. It was all mapped out: we wanted a three-year school gap, I was hellbent on being 34 and we had a trip to Australia planned in February that I didn’t want to be in the first trimester for. We even discussed how we’d amend our childcare situation, how we’d secure a nursery place shortly after conception and brainstormed how we’d spend my husband’s new 10-week paternity leave allowance, which would land over the summer months – perhaps a month away in Lisbon? 

After becoming pregnant on the first attempt with our two daughters, sailing through both pregnancies and experiencing uncomplicated births, we were quietly expecting things to fall into place for us again. But as we started trying, I had a strange sense that something was different this time around. In the run-up to September, I had the unpleasant sensation of treading water as I waited for my ‘fertile window’, and when it came to the dreaded two-week wait before you get a reliable test result, I found myself manically peeing on plastic sticks even though I knew it was way too early. I did one in the grubby loos of a train back from London after work, and one in a department store toilet in Tunbridge Wells, where I live, on the walk home from the station. Despite knowing it was too early, I would still feel depleted when the second line didn’t show. It was exhausting and felt compulsive. Finally, at home with my husband at 6.15am, we saw the second line faintly appear on the test. We’d managed it after only one attempt for the third time, and I was both relieved and thrilled and hoped my nerves would finally dissipate.

And they did for a bit. The first few weeks were great, but the feeling didn’t last. Around week five, my anxiety bubbled up. At six weeks, nausea and food aversions kicked in. But I couldn’t shake the niggling thought that something wasn’t right. At nine weeks, I went to the toilet and saw a smear of blood on the tissue – not much, not even enough to have left a stain, but I was sufficiently worried that I went to the GP, dragging my daughters with me.

That was on a Friday. The doctors said they couldn’t tell me anything without a scan, and booked me in for one on Wednesday before sending me off with a pamphlet about miscarriage, printed on greying NHS paper. 

In the days between, I tried to ignore that pamphlet. I told myself everything would be fine. Finally, the day of the scan arrived and I headed to the hospital alone – my husband had to be in Margate for an interview, and I assumed it would be fine for him to miss such an early scan. On arrival, I filled in a form, oscillating between hope, confidence and preparation for the worst. I imagined the call I would make to my husband to tell him everything was fine… and the one I’d have to make if it wasn’t.

I lay down on the bed, braced for the cold of the ultrasound gel and waited to hear a heartbeat. Nothing. The sonographer noted the measurements of the foetus at seven weeks, so perhaps it was too small for the heartbeat to be heard using this method. But at that moment, I knew. We did an internal ultrasound regardless, only to hear more deafening silence. Finally, the sonographer said it: “I’m so sorry. There’s no heartbeat.”

I was told it was protocol to get a second opinion, so a second nurse repeated the test. To hear that silence, followed by the confirmation that there was no heartbeat, not once but twice was agony. I lay there sobbing. I’d had what’s called a missed or silent miscarriage, where the foetus dies or stops developing but there are no physical symptoms. According to What To Expect, a pregnancy advice website, one study estimates that fewer than 3% of pregnancies end in a missed or silent miscarriage. The odds were so low, yet there I was.

When I called my husband, I didn’t know how to say it, so I went with: “I was right.” And when he didn’t quite understand what I meant I followed it up with: “There’s no heartbeat.” 

I have never experienced crying like I did then. I sobbed in the toilet as I put my clothes back on, then in a quiet room where I sat on my own for an hour and waited for my husband to pick me up. I’ve never seen my face so swollen, crumpled and red. I didn’t look like myself anymore.

During that hour, I got in touch with my friends. I told my best friend that I didn’t want the doctors to take my baby out of me, the obvious next step. I told her that I felt I had failed. She did all the right things: she didn’t try to make it better, and just said how awful it was, how unbelievable, and that she was as broken by it as I was – the exact validation I needed. Another friend immediately went into ‘mum’ mode and told me she would pick up my eldest daughter from school and bought us sandwiches and snacks so we’d have something to eat when we arrived home. It hit me in that moment that my friends are truly heroes.

Just over an hour later my husband arrived, red-eyed. There we were, together in the god-awful quiet room with lavender and butterflies crawling up the walls and an inexplicable lava lamp in the corner. Waiting. Crying. Talking. It’s one of the few times in as long as I can remember that we have had the chance to really talk to each other; life is hectic all the time and at the end of the day we just want to turn into TV zombies and forget the stresses. I told him that maybe we were meant to be a family of four. I had said previously that if this pregnancy didn’t work out, we wouldn’t try again – something said flippantly by someone with the quiet confidence that all would be fine. He surprised me by saying that this had made him realise he wanted to be a family of five. Sometimes it takes a huge loss to help you realise what it is you truly want.

A doctor came in to explain our three options: to wait for my body to expel the tissue naturally, to use a pessary to soften the cervix and induce contractions (I was horrified to hear that sometimes not all the tissue passes and surgery is needed, and other times it doesn’t work at all) or to undergo surgery under general anaesthetic. 

I opted for surgical management, known as a dilation and curettage procedure (D&C for short). We were having our kitchen done and downstairs floors put in. We were living in chaos, with workmen coming in and out. No kitchen sink meant we were washing up outside in a basin and you had to crawl over boxes to get to the sofa or a pan. It was a lot on its own with two small children, but going through a physical miscarriage at home, with the pain and the blood, was unfathomable. We were booked in for the following Monday, the earliest they could do, and after almost five hours in hospital, we finally went home. I am so grateful to that friend who bought the sandwiches and snacks.

The next few days were a mess of more crying and absolute exhaustion. My body had been trying to tell me for months how rundown I was, but I hadn’t listened, ignoring the eczema on my face, the small fissures that refused to heal, the overwhelming anxiety. Now, it all seemed to be piling on top of me at once. I found myself crying at random intervals of the day because everything felt pointless. I kept carrying the mental load of maintaining the house, despite the monotony of daily life seeming futile.

On a particularly difficult day, the day I had my pre-surgery swabs, I raged at my husband and jumped out of our slow-moving car to get away from him, spitting some of the cruellest things that have ever come out of my mouth. At the time I very much meant it, but of course my hormones were raging, and I just didn’t know how to cope.

The surgery went well. I had been terrified that it would start naturally beforehand but it didn’t. I cried right before I was taken down for the operation, struck by the realisation that when I woke up I would no longer be pregnant.

Two weeks later, I had to take a pregnancy test to make sure my body had responded. All those times I had stared at tests searching for that second pink link – it felt like a cruel twist to now be hoping for the opposite. 

It’s now months later and I have used this immense low as the urge I needed to make some radical changes to my life. I took the entirety of December off work to recalibrate, quitting my job and going freelance to have more control over my hours. I’m prioritising myself more, ensuring I have non-negotiable time alone carved into my week. My husband and I are communicating better. I’m letting go of my passive aggression and being more direct with what I need. 

The biggest change for me, though, is accepting and asking for help more readily. I’ve found this hard to do in the past as I have felt like a failure if I can’t do it all. But my experience of miscarriage has taught me I can’t do it all, and people really do want to help. These tiny, incremental changes have helped in mammoth ways. My anxiety has been tempered, my eczema has cleared, my shoulders have descended back to where they should be, I’m less angry and I’m only crying at appropriate moments. 

Aside from these smaller lifestyle changes, I have also started therapy and I’m even working with a life coach, something I never thought I’d do. I’ve learned that I can’t look after anyone properly if I’m not looking after myself. You really do need to put your oxygen mask on first before helping others.

Out of that dark pit of despair, I am hopeful that one day in the not-too-distant future I will look back and be able to say that if the miscarriage hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be where I am today, and I will smile in thanks to that baby who never was. 

Despite most people knowing that one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage, for some reason it is still a taboo subject. And once the dust has settled, there rarely feels like an appropriate time to bring it up. How do you drop the topic of baby loss into a conversation? Despite this, over the past few months, I’ve mentioned my miscarriage and, in turn, I’ve heard the stories of others. It doesn’t make it hurt any less, but it has felt cathartic and has removed some misplaced shame I have felt. I want women – and men – to be able to talk about their experiences more openly, so if one day someone finds themselves going through it, they don’t feel alone.

Images: Freya Bugeja; Getty