I used to think that pregnancy was the straight and exciting road from sex to motherhood, 2013 showed me that that wasn’t always the case.

I’ve always assumed that as soon as I took a positive test I just had to wait another 8 months and out would come a bouncing baby, and in the majority of cases that does happen, but I didn’t even consider that it wasn’t going to happen to me. Infact you don’t really learn about miscarriage until it happens to you and you go looking. It was never announced to me when I walked into my midwife office at 8 weeks, not to get too excited as 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage and that actually, statistically, if I was that 1 in 4, that this would more than likely happen before my fist scan so I would never get to see my baby move… Luckily for me I had both my scans and everything was perfect at both, surely then, when everyone had said everything was fine NOTHING could go wrong. Indeed, the risks are significantly lower after 12 weeks – I didn’t do anything strenuous, hadn’t been in an accident so my baby would be ok, right? Wrong. I lost my baby at 21 weeks. She just stopped moving and her heart stopped beating. Three days later I was induced and did become a mum, but not to a bouncing baby – to a sleeping one who would never open her eyes or say Mummy. I am still a mummy today, just without a child to read bedtime stories to or to rock to sleep. I am still a mum, along with countless other mums who expected to bring home their baby but instead had to leave them at the hospital and return home with empty arms.

Miscarriage is a closely guarded secret by those it has happened to. There are those mums who have gone through it who are trying to get their stories out into the public but they tend to be the later miscarriages and people don’t listen because they don’t think it would ever affect them. I was probably one of those people and the stories passed so far over my head that I don’t even remember them, however every single one now stabs me in the chest and I feel all the pain of being told I had lost her all over again.
Early miscarriages are still as heartbreaking but people hide them, not announcing they are pregnant until 12 weeks so they don’t have to tell people that the little miracle growing inside of them no longer is (Not that you ever believe that you won’t get to announce). I had to. I had announced my baby girl to everyone. I had scan photos all over Facebook and I had to tell everyone what had happened. It was the hardest status I had ever written. I hope that in a way it has made my Facebook friends realise this could happen to them. I don’t know why my daughters heart stopped beating. It could happen to anyone at any time.

Since I lost her I have found places for people to go to learn about and talk about miscarriage. I read all their stories, and miscarriage and stillbirth aren’t as one in a million as you would like to think, as you would expect them to be, with the lack of public knowledge. I now walk down the street wondering who else is a little dead inside because they’ve lost a child. Some of your friends might have and you don’t even know because they lost them before 12 weeks and didn’t want to say. I’ve since talked to people who have lost their babies early on in pregnancy and as soon as they hear I lost my little girl at 21 weeks they backtrack and say it must have been worse for me. I’ll agree, it was terrible, giving birth to my lifeless daughter, but having heard the hurt in their stories, I will never say my pain was more.

Each pregnancy has it’s story, be it one with a happy ending or be a short one. Please don’t hide it away. If everyone told their story miscarriage would no longer be a surprise left to be dealt with by those who have been through it. If everyone talked about it more and made it more socially acceptable then maybe, just maybe, one mother walking out of that hospital with the crushing grief won’t feel quite so alone.