The moment you realise you are having a miscarriage is the moment your life and your body are likely to never be the same again. Many understand miscarriages as an extremely difficult experience but I believe what isn't widely understood is the trauma it can leave behind for months and potentially years to follow.
Those initial moments when you start to bleed or you go to a scan only to not hear a heartbeat, are moments when your heart completely breaks. What seems to catch you at first is shock and disbelief, disbelief that this is happening and you're losing your baby. I think it's our brain's safety mechanism that tries to prevent the pain that will follow but instead it just delays it. The moment you retest or you get a second opinion and know that the baby is gone is when your whole world comes crashing down.
In this past year as spoken about in previous blog posts, I have experienced multiple miscarriages and in this post, I want to discuss the long-term effect that they can have on both your body and your mind. 6 months after my last miscarriage I am finally starting to feel like myself again, that's a whole 6 months later and the problem there can be is that people provide support and help in those first few weeks but after that, it is often forgotten about, but never is for the mother, or indeed the father.
My personal journey has been a rollercoaster ride, one which I wouldn't wish on anyone. For me, my biggest long-term struggle has been physical. I struggled for months and to some degree still struggle now as it has just taken such a length of time to get back to normal. For months after my miscarriages, my body continued to carry the symptoms of pregnancy, for so long I questioned: "am I still pregnant?" & "did I really miscarry?" which is because it takes a while for the symptoms to disappear and that is what I personally found the hardest. It leaves you almost in limbo because you can't understand why you still feel pregnant. People (myself included) just presume as soon as the baby is gone, the pregnancy symptoms go too, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
The biggest physical battle I had long-term was with chronic fatigue. My coping mechanism after miscarrying was to just keep going and not stop to have time to think about it; so I continued working, training and basically carried on with life as normal. This, however, meant that I never gave my body the chance to rest and recover so my body went into overdrive; when I woke up in the mornings I was so physically exhausted it was nearly impossible to even lift my head off the pillow, and by the time I managed to get myself up, I had to take myself back to bed and would stay there for most of the day. It has genuinely only been in these last few weeks that I have felt my body getting back to normal and that I can get through the day without falling asleep, I have more energy for my work and for the gym & my body has finally stopped feeling 'pregnant'.
Mentally I'm very glad to say that I definitely healed a lot quicker than I did physically, which did surprise me and the only reason I believe I've managed to heal is that deep down I know in my heart those miscarriages happened for a reason. However, that isn’t to take anything away from the pain and damage those miscarriages had in those moments. Hindsight is a great thing. Those times were honestly the most unbearable of my life, miscarriage is a pain that you can never explain and an ache in your heart that will always be there.
The mental challenges miscarriages bring are constant self-doubt. It makes you blame yourself and question every single thing that you did leading up to that moment and even though everyone will reassure you it was not your fault to you, you'll always believe it is. The thing that hurt me the most was the thought of what could have been and after trying for a year, the thing I was so unbelievably desperate for, I was so close to having. It only takes that one small moment for every single one of your plans and dreams to be taken away from you. It's completely and utterly soul-destroying and leaves you feeling numb.
The reason I wanted to be so open up and honest with my experience is to help anyone struggling with the same thing and to help those around them to provide better support. This is not to say everyone will suffer for as long as I did or in the same way I did it's just to show how it can be and that more support is needed in the months that follow. For anyone who may have suffered a miscarriage I don't want you to think the next 6 months will be hell, this is just my experience. I also suffered multiple miscarriages, which probably lead to the length of time I struggle for.
It’s so incredibly important that we talk about miscarriages more as a statistic that will shock many, which is that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. That’s a lot more than I ever imagined and it's because they just aren't spoken about. The whole process of fertility is not spoken about anywhere near as much as it should be, it’s very sad that it’s still a subject we are afraid to talk about. No one should ever be ashamed to share their story and it doesn't make you any less of a woman or man.
The most important message I want to get across is that the suffering doesn't just end after a few weeks. As much as I have a more positive outlook regarding my miscarriages, there's a certain ache in those who struggle to conceive which they will carry around with them every single day. No matter how happy and together they can look on the outside, just like all mental health conditions so much can be hidden behind a smile. Please never forget to check on your loved ones.
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