** Warning! This post contains an experience that may be difficult for some people to read **

My Easter sucked. It was meant to be 4 days away camping as a family, becoming grounded, breathing in that beautiful, clean air, getting back to nature and sleeping on the ground. Instead, I had a miscarriage.

I was supposed to be 10 weeks pregnant, but by the time the first big blood clots arrived, I knew it wasn’t good. I had been spotting for a week by the Thursday before Easter and after a chiropractic adjustment, the flood gates opened. With pain in my lower back and lower abdomen that grew so intense over the next 5 days, I was in awe of all the women who had miscarried before me. The pain was so intense, at one point I was meditating in my dreams to be able to get through the night. I would take labour any day and not because of the beautiful prize at the end, but because at least with labour, there are breaks. I had contractions that lasted for hours, where I could barely walk or I couldn’t sit. And the blood. My goodness, the blood. So much blood. So many clots. All of it so surprising and all of it a constant reminder of the loss you are experiencing.

Of course, I understand the emotional side to miscarriage, there are no words to express the loss of a human being that is created by you. This can affect people for many months and years afterwards and I have helped women through this pain a many number of times. And to be honest, by helping those women, I found that I had developed a protective mechanism where I didn’t form a bond with my pregnancy. I had seen too often the impact of such a loss. I had witnessed the pain on my table. And with my MTHFR gene defect, I know all too well the increased risk of miscarriage if I’m not religious about taking my supplements and looking after myself.

But before now, I had never given much thought to the actual process of a miscarriage. The physical pain. The constant reminder. The relentlessness. The examinations. The hope. And the loss of hope. It happens over a number of days and weeks. In total, I bled for 3 weeks – a long time to be reminded of what was not to be.

Fortunately, I was able to miscarry naturally. Not so fortunately, a friend of mine died that same week, so the grief was amplified. Combined with not having mum here to support me, I climbed into my shell. I switched off to the world for a period of time, I accepted help with my son and I just stayed in bed, watching ‘Call the Midwife’ of all things! I cried, I slept, I rested and I indulged. And when it was time to come back to the land of the living, I embraced what I still have. My beautiful, loving family and my very caring and supportive friends.

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