DH and I had a fairytale, romantic, dream-wedding and a wonderful honeymoon in April 2005. I often thought about our first baby, particularly around its due date in October 2004, but reassured myself with the thought that 1 in 4 pregnancies supposedly ended in miscarriage and that it was just bad luck that ours had. We had no reason to think that we could not have a baby soon and started trying the day after our wedding ceremony. As a result, DH and I had a lovely honeymoon imaging that we were making a baby where ever we went. And our honeymoon was idyllic - being in the great wide open red space of the Australian Outback. I daydreamed about the mystical fertile powers that might be emanating from the indigenous women's sacred site marked on my map of Uluru (Ayers Rock) as we walked around the base track.
Within a few weeks of returning home to Ireland from our wedding and honeymoon in Australia, a home pregnancy test confirmed that I was pregnant - we were both excited and delighted. This time all the signs were good - I was very nauseous from the early days. Whilst the never ending morning-sickness was horrible (I got disgusted looks from commuters after puking on the bus on the way into work on several occasions), I found it reassuring; a neighbour had callously told me after my miscarriage the previous year that she knew I would lose my baby before I did because I had not had any nausea and "that was not a good sign".
I craved different food this time - Vegemite and milk, cheese and boiled eggs. I gave up all caffeine, took all the recommended pregnancy vitamins and made sure that I did not work long hours. I was determined that everything would work out this time. I was so excited that I even started buying baby and maternity clothes. I made sure I had private health cover for this baby and booked in early for a scan with a private obstetrician at week 10, but due to my nervousness, paid to go to an imaging clinic and have a radiographer do a scan at week 7. DH and I were warned before the scan that it might be too early to detect a heartbeat and so we were overjoyed when the ultrasound showed a 'strong' heartbeat and our baby measured normal at 7 weeks. We got a print-out of the scan.
A few days before our first obstetrician's appointment, we travelled to London for a weekend to see U2's Vertigo live in concert. I had morning sickness whilst on the bus out to the airport but ate dry crackers to ward it off. In London, I vividly recall the vibrations from the ultra loud bass in "Where the Streets Have No Name" bouncing off my chest, and wondered whether the baby could feel it too. I imagined telling my child in years to come that they had attended a U2 gig whilst in my womb and felt the bass!
I celebrated my 30th birthday quietly in May 2005. A few old friends rang from Australia and asked how I was celebrating - when one heard I was spending a quiet weekend at home she guessed that I was pregnant. It turns out she was too. She was 10 weeks pregnant after a Clomid cycle and we talked excitedly together of how our babies would be close in age as they grew up. We would be able to exchange tips and compare milestones. DH had asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told him I had what I had desperately wanted for over the past year - I was pregnant! (I recall that we got a positive home pregnancy test result a couple of days before my 30th birthday). This baby was due around DH's birthday in January 2006 - another good sign. We did not wait until the end of our first trimester to tell friends and family that I was pregnant as we figured we had already lost one baby and we had now had the first scan, which was very positive. Apparently once a heartbeat is detected on a ultrasound scan the likelihood of miscarrying decreases. I look back now and think how extremely naive (and self-satisfied) I was - I guess I felt that because I had experienced, what I thought, was the dreadful heartbreak of losing my first baby, that I was immune from any further bad luck or loss. I later hated myself for my obvious excitement, purchasing of baby clothes and joyful sharing of 'our good news' and felt that I had inadvertently jinxed it all.
The day after the U2 Vertigo concert in London, DH and I went to see Dr. M for our 10 week scan. She was very friendly and told us before the ultrasound that she did not talk during scans so that she could concentrate on the image on the monitor, so not to be alarmed. I felt relatively relaxed and let her get on with prodding the wand around inside me. She took her time, but then finished and snapped off her latex gloves, but still the silence continued. I looked at her face for a cue and felt my stomach flip. A second later she opened her mouth to say, "I am very sorry but I cannot find a heartbeat...." and continued on talking, at which point I heard nothing further as my mind shut down. DH clutched and rubbed my hand. I started at him and he blinked back looking bewildered and hurt. Whilst I cried the year before on receiving the same news, this time I felt nothing but rage and muttered, "Again! How can this happen again?!" and shook my head. Another missed miscarriage. The baby seemed to have died at 8 weeks, as this was what it measured. It died one week after our last scan, at which time its little heart was beating perfectly. The sales pitch for getting a D&C over and done with was made to me. I was not so sure and mentioned maybe I would let this baby come out naturally. Dr M explained that even if I decided on this course of action I might still end up having to come in for a D&C because "the contents of the pregnancy" might not all come out and I would risk infection etc. We had tickets to see U2 in Croke Park in Dublin later in the week (yes - am big fan) and I desperately wanted to go to their hometown gig . I asked about whether I could still attend that if I had a D&C earlier in the week. Dr M was very nice and said she would do her best to slot me into theatre asap so I should be ok by Friday. I said I would think about it. We were again ushered into a private room and handed the HSE booklet on miscarriage - a sense of unreality and dejavu descended upon us both - but this time, neither of us cried. There was only anger. Grief would come later. Dr M's secretary would not take our money for the consultation. I guess it would be bad form to charge a couple for giving them such horrible news.
Back home we went from the hospital and I took to my bed. I realised that within just 48 hours my symptoms of nausea had abated. The following morning, not long after DH left for work, I started to experience a lot of pain - like very intense period cramp type pain. I squatted on the floor in our small dark bathroom in agony and passed a large dark clot of tissue. The pain was overwhelming and I considered calling a GP friend who had offered to come over and give me some pain relief if and when needed, but held off and I think later that same day I called and booked into theatre for a D&C.
I felt sorry for DH who did not get the luxury of lying in bed all day crying and feeling sorry for himself. He looked miserable as he went off to work each day of that week that we received our bad news. In some ways, miscarriage is harder for men. Whilst women are discouraged from talking about miscarriage, it is unheard of for men to express their sadness and frustration (or to take any time away from work after they have lost a baby through miscarriage).
The second D&C was not as uncomfortable for me due to the fact that I was not given oxytocin. I got rolled into the same theatre as the year before and a nice anaesthetist told me she was sorry for my loss. I looked forward to being knocked out with the general sedation (I wish I could have been knocked out for a few months). My private obstetrician turned up just before I entered the twilight zone. Afterwards I was kept in the recovery area of theatre for quite a time longer than previously. My hazy mind registered that the nurse attending me was heavily pregnant. She was pregnant and I was not anymore. No longer pregnant. I asked her when her baby was due. She looked uncomfortable. I was told that I had to stay in recovery for a while yet, as I may require a blood transfusion, having lost quite a lot during the procedure. I said - I think not! (Ireland had been involved in a Hep C contaminated blood fiasco years earlier and I worried about things like this). When I was eventually let out of theatre, Dr M encouraged me to stay the night, but I wanted home. I asked whether I could arrange a private burial this time and she said she was sorry but they did not recover 'the foetus' in tact and there was nothing to bury. This bothered me a bit as I had already planned on getting a proper headstone this time and memorialising both babies on it, as the regret for not organising a burial the year before had set in.
Two days after my D&C, feeling very weak and still cramping and bleeding, I attended U2's concert in Dublin. What a difference a week had made to our lives. At the beginning of the week I thought my baby was listening along to Bono inside me and by the end of the week - there was no baby anymore. I returned to work the following week and life went on and on. Various colleagues had heard rumours that I had lost a baby but of course no one said anything and did not even acknowledge I had been away for a week. One male colleague actually used his knowledge of my pregnancy against me in the following weeks when arguing why a good piece of work should not be given to me; 'as all my focus was on having a baby and sure, I would be going on maternity leave soon anyway'. That stung. I felt that everyone was now watching me, having the unfair advantage of knowing that I wanted a baby. Not long after that, my supervising partner tried to sell to me the idea that I might go and work for another partner in a different area of law that I had no interest in. I took this very badly and let HR know I objected. I felt a failure as a woman after losing two babies and now, disrespected and not taken seriously at work. I was and still am, professional in my attitude to work and being a solicitor is a role I take seriously. I had been working long hours prior to the second missed miscarriage and felt very angry about it; I suspected overwork may have contributed towards the baby dying so suddenly. I obsessed that work may have cost me my baby and to top it off, the hard work was all for nothing as I was now being shoved in the corner. My state of mind at this time was not good; I was paranoid, on the defensive, worn out. It is hard to have perspective when you are grieving.
Summer rolled on. We attended a family member's wedding and I was embarrassed to find myself openly weeping during the church ceremony - not out of happiness but profound sadness during the priest's sermon, which I think was about something benign like faith and God's love. I was sitting next to my sister-in-law who was holding her baby that was the same age that our first baby would have been. She passed me some tissues.
I had a follow-up consult with Dr M who was a bit obtuse but told me there was no reason to wait to start trying again - we already had been. My bloodwork after the D&C showed that I had neutropenia - to do with your white blood cell count and indicated I had fought off an infection. I was depressed, weepy, tired and anaemic and was put on high doses of iron due to blood loss. For the first few months following the D&C I thought that my body just needed time to recover from losing all that blood and the trauma of it all. But as September rolled into October and Autumn appeared, I began to truly despair. Most of my friends and family knew DH and I were wanting a baby and told us reassuring things, like sometimes it could take a while to conceive again after a miscarriage and that I just needed to 'relax' and 'not think about it'. Deep inside me, I had a powerful premonition that something was seriously wrong. I speculated that maybe I had developed an infection after the D&C that was affecting me somehow - I noticed that my eyes were always dry and my periods were light. Every month that my period arrived was devastating. I was becoming more and more fearful and remember a particularly depressing period arriving around Halloween. I could not believe that I still was not pregnant. I was counting days and we were constantly having sex - poor DH was half demented. I had bought a thermometer at this stage and had started charting my cycle. I was only 30 years old but in the back of my mind I always thought of my mother telling me that she had started menopause at 39. Surely I still had time?
I tried to be positive. At the end of 2005, DH and I put a deposit on our first house, which DH was building, along with others - it was an exciting distraction. We now had many things to plan and organise and I visited the half completed house on the weekends and hoped that it would be full of our children in the years to come. I started doing yoga to relieve stress and keep me relaxed and going to an acupuncturist who supposedly treated women for infertility (he seemed a bit of a jack of all trades after a while). I felt like I was actively trying everything possible. DH stopped drinking coffee and decreased his alcohol intake. Why could I not get pregnant anymore? Christmas arrived and still - nothing. It was now 6 months since we lost our second pregnancy. It was our first Christmas as a married couple, we were still in the first year of our married lives together, which should have been light and happy, but everything just seemed dark and heavy. Our first baby would have had its first birthday, two months earlier in October and I should have been heavily pregnant with our second baby by Christmas, but we were still no closer to becoming parents at the end of 2005
