Content note: this article contains references to ectopic pregnancies and baby loss that readers may find upsetting.

“In the summer of 2022 I’d just won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games, and I’d never felt lower. It had been seven months since I’d had an ectopic pregnancy that ended in emergency surgery, and nine months since my first miscarriage. I was in the middle of the darkest period of my life and consumed with want for a baby, but all anyone wanted to talk to me about was racing. All I could think as I left that competition was: why? Why is it that every time I step onto the velodrome and put my body on that starting line it will perform, but it won’t do the one thing I desperately want it to?

The lack of control is the hardest thing to deal with. As an athlete, I’m used to training to get the outcome I want: I rely on my body, and I understand how to look after it and how to fuel it; it’s always been my machine. But suddenly, I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t just train harder. I could have all the blood tests and wee on all the little sticks I wanted, but I couldn’t click my fingers and have the baby that Jason and I wanted so badly.

The losses totally blindsided me and my husband. We fell into the trap of assuming everything would be fine because we’d had one baby, Albie, and that pregnancy had been a dream. During the 2016 Olympics, Jason and I decided we were going to start trying for a family, and the day I left the Olympic village in Rio, I stopped taking the pill. Within two months I was pregnant. It felt easy; I flew through that pregnancy, and even the birth was ridiculously fast: in labour for two hours, pushed for 40 minutes and then he was here. A happy, healthy little baby.  

As Albie grew, I fell back into my routine of training for the next Olympics in Tokyo. We had always dreamed of a second child, so we tried again after the Games, and within a couple of months, I was pregnant again. We were just as excited as we’d been with Albie, but we held off telling our families so we could surprise them at Christmas. I really wish we hadn’t. The thing about waiting to tell anyone is that when you lose that baby, you feel like the only person in the world.

In November, while I was abroad doing some TV work, I started bleeding heavily. I was in so much pain that I went to hospital, and found out I’d miscarried at nine weeks. It was my mum I was most nervous to call I was afraid of breaking her heart. But when I said, ‘Mum, you were going to have another grandchild, but I’ve just had a miscarriage,’ she told me she’d had one in the past, too. I can’t believe it took her until that moment to say it – she’d raised two daughters. I wish we talked about the ways pregnancies can be different. I understand people don’t want to scare women, but when one in four end in loss we have to talk about the reality.

I’m so sick of people saying ‘At least it was early on.’ It doesn’t matter; in your head, your family is changing. It had never occurred to me to dampen my excitement. Jason and I were talking about baby names and what Albie would be like as a big brother. And now I was lying in this hotel room with this overwhelming feeling that I just wanted it gone; I wanted it to be over. And then I wanted to try again. 

On New Year’s Day in 2022 we were having a celebratory meal in a pub near home when I started bleeding and assumed it was my period. So I wasn’t pregnant, I thought, but don’t lose hope. I cycled home from the pub, which was a bit unpleasant because my stomach was really hurting, but didn’t think much more of it.

A few days later, Jason got Covid and we had to isolate. I also started to feel really crap and, weirdly, I started bleeding again. I guessed my cycle might just be haywire after the miscarriage. I became really ill: I could barely stand up without feeling like I was going to collapse, I was being sick all the time, and the only thing that made me feel better was a bath so hot that the pain of the water distracted me from the pain my body was in.

It was a battle to get a GP appointment at that time, but eventually I got one and went while Jason took Albie to the park around the corner. We talked through my symptoms – bleeding, stomach pain, sickness – and I even told him I had shoulder pain, which I had no idea was a symptom of ectopic pregnancy at the time, but I thought I’d just mention it. He said I’d probably just had a miscarriage and should come back for a check-up in 12 days. If I had listened, I would have been dead by then.

I just knew from the dark, strange colour of the blood I was passing that this wasn’t like the miscarriage I’d had before, and something wasn’t right. I couldn’t look at my phone or even lift my head without feeling like I was going to pass out, so I asked my midwife friend for a second opinion. She told me to go to A&E immediately.  

In hospital they gave me a blood test, and within 10 minutes, I was told I was having an ectopic pregnancy: a fertilised egg had implanted outside of the womb in one of my fallopian tubes. In the UK around one in every 80 pregnancies is ectopic, but I was clueless. I knew it was bad when they told me I was next in line for emergency surgery, and that I had 12 minutes to fill out all the paperwork before I was taken into theatre. I could barely read the forms, never mind answer questions like ‘What do you want to do with the remains?’

The staff at Macclesfield Hospital were incredible. I think they could see how terrified I was and probably felt that the GP had let me down. They let Jason smuggle Albie in through the back door to see me minutes before I went under, so we could explain to him that Mummy wouldn’t be coming home that night. When he left, I kept saying to the doctors, “Please don’t let me die.”

The surgeon who performed my operation was so reassuring, and she came to my bedside with pictures from the keyhole surgery afterwards to explain exactly what had happened. The pain I’d felt was my fallopian tube splitting in two and they’d had to remove it, so now I only had one. I know it was treated as a medical emergency because it could have killed me, but all I could focus on was that I’d lost another baby. The loneliness I felt when not one of those people rushing in and out of that hospital room would acknowledge it was heartbreaking. 

In the weeks and months after the ectopic pregnancy, I stopped talking. I don’t throw around the word depression a lot, but it was absolutely the lowest I’ve ever felt in my life. Jason struggled too; we both retreated into ourselves. The communication between us became horrendous; that’s when our relationship was at its weakest. We were arguing constantly over stupid things like not unloading the dishwasher because we were both finding it too difficult to express how we really felt.

One day, I went into the kitchen. I remember it so vividly. He was at the fridge getting some milk, and I said: “We are not in a relationship right now.” We both burst into tears. We had one of the hardest, most horrible conversations we’ve ever had, but everything changed after that. Yes, it was my body and my life at risk, but he lost those babies too. We agreed to plant a tree, a rosebush with a little angel plaque on it, next to Albie’s playroom to try to draw a line under this never-ending grief.

The day after my 30th birthday, I decided to post online about what was happening to us. I wanted to show the world that losing a baby is nothing to be ashamed of and make sure no woman ever felt the loneliness I’d felt. I took hours writing that post, bawling my eyes out while I typed in bed, but it felt important. I have a platform and I don’t want to use it only to celebrate my achievements.

Ectopic pregnancies are the number one cause of maternal deaths in early pregnancy, and deaths are rising because symptoms are being missed. Why are we letting women die? If this had happened to my mum when she was younger, it would have reached the point where it was poisoning her and she’d have just collapsed. I think it’s only because I’m an athlete who is asking questions about my body that I managed to get help in time. That is not good enough. 

I feel privileged that I did manage to get pregnant again after those losses, but carrying my son to term was a difficult nine months. There was nothing good about it, just the constant feeling of terror that something was going to go wrong. I must have spent thousands of pounds on private scans every week to keep checking he was OK, feeling sick with fear that the nurse would tell me there’s no heartbeat. Until, at 22 weeks, I felt Monty move.

Monty was born last summer, and the closer I got to the Paris Olympics, the more I started asking myself that question again: why? Why am I doing this? Why am I going away to training camps and feeling jealous of my mum for getting to spend time with him? This baby I’ve wanted and thought about and wished for for almost two years is finally here, and I’m giving him to someone else to look after. I didn’t want to do it anymore.

I’m lucky that I’m in a position where I can retire from cycling knowing I’ve achieved all I want to achieve and can start thinking about what I want to do next. It’s been a time of massive transition for me, of heartbreak and total joy, and I won’t pretend having two small kids is easy. But when Monty and Albie see each other every morning and their eyes light up, there is no better feeling in the world.” 

The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust’s ‘Think Ectopic’ campaign is dedicated to improving patient and clinician awareness regarding the symptoms of ectopic pregnancy. To find out more about the symptoms, signs and how you can help raise awareness, visit ectopic.org.uk.

If you’ve been directly impacted by miscarriage or baby loss or know someone who has, you’ll find advice, honest stories and information Stylist’s campaign at the Every Loss Counts hub. If you need specialist support now, visit baby loss charity Tommy’s. 

If you’re pregnant and something doesn’t feel right always contact your GP, call 111 or call 999 in an emergency. 

Images: Rii Schroer / Eyevine