This is a very personal story – but it’s the beginning of an important conversation. It was written by Tracie and makes your heart weep .

November and December were the best days of my life. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face (even if you had of punched me smack-bang in the front teeth)! After trying to conceive for over 4 years, Adam and I were WITH CHILD (I think I’ve watched too much Vikings…) Boy, were we happy.

It was finally happening for us! All the tablets (so many tablets), needles, tests(!!), doctors, naturopaths, chiros, Chinese Medicine doctors, specialists, internal scans (soooo many internal scans!!), temperature tracking, drinking dreadful concoctions, changing my diet, doing vegetable cleanses, infrared saunas, quitting running, putting on weight, deep breathing and countless tears were all worth it. In fact, none of that mattered anymore because WE WERE PREGNANT!! 

Until we weren’t. 

Enter January. F you, January. The 17th in particular (I actually quite like January otherwise). We were so excited for our 14 week scan!! We had already seen our baby 3 times (6 weeks, 8 weeks and 10 – all perfectly healthy scans and a gorgeous little heartbeat), and this time it might actually look more like a baby than a bean! And it did! I looked at the scan and at our beautiful baby(ish) looking baby. As always, my attention went straight to the heartbeat. The heartbeat. Where’s the heartbeat?! Show me the bloody heartbeat… PLEASE. The heartbeat. And then the words that I can’t seem to forget: “Oh, Trace…” 

“Oh, Trace – it’s beautiful”? 

“Oh, Trace – it’s perfect”? 

“Oh, Trace – you are growing this baby like a boss!”?? 

Nope. 

“Oh, Trace… I’m so sorry” 

Oh. No. No you don’t! Don’t you dare say another word. No. No. No. Everything is fine. I feel great. The baby is great. No. Nope. Don’t. 

I knew straight away what “Oh, Trace” meant. Adam was waiting for the rest of the lovely sentence the Obstetrician was about to say about our beautiful baby. But I knew. The instant he said it. And that’s the moment my heart broke into a million pieces. 

Our baby had only made it to 12 weeks but in that time we had loved our baby deeply. We’d decided on a name (who am I kidding, we’ve had his/her name picked out for 4 years). We’d connected with our baby, and each other, on a whole new and exciting level. We’d imagined our bright future, with our baby a part of every single second. 

Why did the rug have to get pulled out from under us so viciously?! 

One thing I know about miscarriages is that they are really common. Too common. I’ve had two now. But the commonality does not make them easier. It doesn’t matter if you’re 5 weeks, 10 weeks or 20 weeks – it’s frigging hard. It hurts every part of your soul. 

A few of the lessons I learned from my experience (and everyone will be different) are: 

There is nothing anyone can say in those first few gut-wrenching days that will make you feel better. Nothing at all. Knowing people are there for you is wonderful but things like: 

“At least you know you can get pregnant” 

“It happens all the time – it’s so common” 

“I’ve been there, I know how you feel” 

“You will get there”

Don’t help. Don’t get me wrong, these are all beautiful comments and will help eventually but in the raw, thick of it – it doesn’t make you feel better. You just want that baby, not another one! Don’t feel bad if you feel negative towards anything anyone says to begin with. It’s normal. In those first few days I really appreciated people just telling me that they are so sorry and they are there whenever I need them. 

Little gifts or cards are nice. I’m not sure how anyone else feels about this but a few of my friends gave me little gifts, flowers and cards and I thought it was so lovely and comforting. It made me feel like they were acknowledging my baby and my heartbreak and that was special to me. 

It can really bring you and your partner closer, or tear you apart. Luckily we were the former. Our only ‘silver-lining’. Going through our miscarriage really brought out a side to Adam that I hadn’t seen (thankfully hadn’t needed to see) before. He was just there. He was hurting too. We were sad together in our little bubble and that’s exactly where we needed, and wanted, to be.

People around you feel helpless. Mum. My poor Mum. She had to endure listening to me cry with every part of my being. The type of body shaking, breath taking crying she hadn’t heard since I was a newborn. And just like a newborn, I couldn’t tell her what I needed. There wasn’t anything. The helplessness your loved ones feel is torture for them. But, as I said, just being there is enough. And maybe cooking some food… 

You’ll feel like you’ve let people down. Nan. My Nan has been wishing, and praying, and hoping for Adam and I to get pregnant for so long and to finally tell her we were was the best! Every ‘blow-out-your-candles’ birthday wish she’d made and every wish upon a chicken wish-bone was directed at us. She even came to my 10 week ultrasound with me. When I was sitting in that room after the whole “Oh, Trace” situation, the thought of having to tell Nan was one of the first things to come to my mind. How do I tell her after all the joy it had brought her? This is a very normal feeling. My sister has been through some awful miscarriages herself and is always thinking of how it will affect others first.

The thing I’ve learned from mine and Sarah’s experiences is that as much as they long for you to have a baby, they are more worried about YOU and how you’re feeling than anything else. They love you and just want you to be happy. 

Let your emotions out. Feel the feels. I didn’t hold back from telling people how I felt. Adam would listen to me cry, cry, and cry, get angry, ask ‘why?’, I even threw something (it felt good).

I was lucky to have a wonderful group of friends and family around me to listen to me speak about how I was feeling and I told them everything when I felt ready to. A psychologist is a great option if you feel like you need some guidance in your grief but please don’t hold it in. It’s an energy that needs to be expressed or I believe it would build into something a lot harder to handle. 

You will blame yourself. I thought of literally everything I’d done within the 3 months so I could find something that pointed all the blame on me. Was it because I laid on my stomach on the beach? Did I walked in the sun for too long? Did I eat or drink something to cause it? Should I have done more? This is both not helpful and utterly untrue. You don’t realise this straight away, and no one can tell you otherwise, but you need to know that it wasn’t your fault. Don’t torture yourself. We eventually found out that our little Bub had triploidy (an extra set out chromosomes) and would never had made it, but in that first month the self-blame game was strong! 

Feeling bad for any touch of happiness. This one was a big one for me. I felt like I was a bad person if I laughed at something or felt any pang of happiness. Just because happy is the antithesis of sad doesn’t mean you can’t feel the two simultaneously.

Just because something makes you smile doesn’t mean you don’t care or have forgotten about what has just happened to you. Embrace the feeling of happiness whenever you can. 

Babies EVERYWHERE. You will feel like pregnant women and newborns are taking over the world! They are everywhere you look and you can’t help but feel sad/envious/jealous/pissed (etc etc). This is very normal. It hurts when yet another person announces their pregnancy – and then you feel bad because you really are happy for them… you just want it too. But to all those beautiful pregnant ladies and Mumma’s out there – please don’t avoid sharing your beautiful news or your gorgeous babies with us. Being avoided is far, far worse. 

Time heals. We’ve all heard this one before but it really is true. Time dulls the pain. You still get sad when you think about it and it’s always going to hurt but as time goes on you will get stronger. 

Then there was a couple things people said to me, pre & post pregnancy, that is mostly said with love but doesn’t feel helpful at the time: 

“Just don’t think about it, relax and it will happen”. If I could have a dollar. For someone who has been trying to conceive and wants nothing more than to become a Mum, this is virtually impossible and, again, kind of implies that the reason they’re not conceiving is their ‘fault’. I totally understand why people say it and I know that it’s generally because they know someone who has gotten pregnant when they’d just “relaxed” (or got smashed on a few too many champagnes…) but trust me I’ve tried “not thinking” and rolling with “what will be will be” and “giving it a rest for now” but my brain isn’t that silly… I do believe that meditation and deep belly breathing helps as they promote good hormone health but “not thinking” about getting pregnant is like telling someone not to look at the massive pimple on the end of your nose (whilst having a 4 year conversation with them).

“Maybe you need to pull back on exercise”. For me this made me feel like people were blaming me for it. I love exercise but I am very smart with it now that I’m trying to conceive. I don’t stress my body out. To help my fertility I went from running 100+km per week to zero km’s and only walking (and I LOVE running). I cut back on the amount of time in the gym to get pregnant and when I was finally pregnant I just did easy resistance training and walking (I wanted do yoga/pilates but it made me feel nauseous). So saying something like this can be converted in sensitive ears to: “you probably miscarried because you were exercising too much” and as I’ve mentioned – women who have miscarried are already looking for every reason under the sun to blame themselves, they definitely don’t need encouragement. 

People often don’t know what to say or don’t mean any malice at all but it’s worth knowing that a woman struggling with fertility or going through miscarriage is often a slightly more tender woman, at least for a while. 

The reason I have decided to share my story (and feel super vulnerable) is that I think it’s important to talk about miscarriage. I wish it didn’t happen but it does. And it’s hard. We need to make sure females (and males) don’t feel alone with their thoughts, feelings and blame and to help the people around them know how their loved ones might be feeling. 

So, to the masses of ladies out there who are trying to create a beautiful little human or have lost their little one too soon, I am here for you. I can’t promise that you will get there but I hope that you have hope. I know it’s so tough because even an annoyingly positive person like myself can feel doubt creep in but hope keeps me going and I hope it does for you too.