Introductions are different now
I’ve tried a few times to work out how to write this first post. If you’d asked me a few years ago, I would’ve started my introductions with my name, my job perhaps, with telling you about my lovely husband or my excellent dog.
But now all I want to say is, I’ve had a lot of miscarriages. Six in fact.
Three that were sort of a relief; two with deeply unsuitable partners at a time when I had been told I’d struggle to get pregnant so was not being careful enough, one with a deeply suitable partner (the man who would be that lovely husband I mentioned) in March 2020. I’m a nurse, but in March 2020 I was in the midst of my training when the pandemic suddenly plunged me into working on covid wards in London while my partner was hundreds of miles away in Cornwall. Pregnancy is a vulnerable business and I was so scared that I didn’t even test. I knew though. The familiar ache, the extreme tiredness, the incredibly late period. I knew.
And then three that were heartbreaking. One in August, while I hiked the coast path with my beautiful friend. A detour to a GP surgery for emergency bloods and then small little weeps in campsite toilets so I didn’t ruin the holiday. One in October, when I’d told my friends on our weekend away that I had “had a positive pregnancy test” rather than saying I was pregnant. I didn’t get in the hot tub, drink the prosecco or eat the brie. I did text my sister in Australia when I woke up at 4.30am for a wee and discovered the bleeding. My text read “I think I’m miscarrying again but I don’t want to wake anyone up”. She sensibly told me that I ought to wake someone.
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I did, poor Lyndsey, who had been with me on the coast path was sharing my bed that night. The beautiful gal who saw me through some of the worst moments of my life, who held me together until I could be delivered into my husbands arms. I’ve promised I won’t be pregnant on holiday with her again.
And our sixth. In a hospital at a reassurance scan which turned out to be anything but. We had seen the flicker of a heartbeat a few weeks earlier, grown hopeful, felt safer. They tested that babe, he was a boy. Our son.
I’ve tried really hard not to open with that because it doesn’t feel very jolly but it wants to burst out of me. Perhaps because it’s fresh, we haven’t made it to the first of the due dates we have to navigate over the next few months, they loom on the horizon. April 21st. June 17th. July 30th.
So yes. Introductions are different now. I’m Catherine. My babies keep dying. I have a great dog. He’s called Seth.
