I’m typing this late on my phone unable to sleep, my eyes stinging from tears and tiredness. I need to write this down, to help get the grief out.
Grief, because I guess that’s what it is although I still feel like a fraud calling it that. I’ve discovered it likes to sneak up on you, catch you out in moments of tiredness or moments of awake. When you are alone or surrounded by people, it even pounces unexpectedly in moments of happiness.
For me I know the triggers now and I guess they are probably the same for others who have gone through it too. Seeing someone I know announce the birth of a baby, hearing of someone I know having a miscarriage. It can be as simple as the cry of a passing newborn or seeing a Mum cuddling their baby in a cafe. I still avoid newborn clothes in the shops, not even letting my eyes drift in that direction.
It’s been months now and sometimes the pain is so fresh, so real.
It’s like my heart continuously breaks and then tries to mend itself again.
Sometimes my mind wanders, I’m unable to control it and memories tinged with emotion come up of gazing at my newborn baby, feeling it’s fuzzy head against my cheek, breathing in the newborn smell. Staring at the beauty and the tiny miracle in my arms. I try to shake them away, focus on something different.
I try not to imagine the baby that never was.
Sometimes I manage days without thinking about it and then some weeks it’s constant, every day.
I question wether I should be more over it by now? Wonder if I will ever be able to look back at my pregnancies without sadness, without it leading to a trail of thought I fight to not go down.
I know I’m so lucky to have my children I really do. It makes me feel like I have no right to feel the way I do, but the tears still come in the darkness of the night. I still fight them in the classroom, trying to mark books, not allowing the tears welling in my eyes to drop and smudge the writing on the pages.
They still come in sudden moments, waves of sadness that sweep over me.
A little knot in my stomach that makes me feel sick until I release it in tears.
One thing I am coming to accept it that this is how I feel and I make no apologies for it!
If you want to read about our ectopic miscarriage it’s here.