18th July.
Otherwise known as the date my denial started.
This post will be TMI for some of you so you’ve been warned.
I will admit I blocked out this day completely and acted as if nothing had happened. For 3 months.
It is literally only in the last week I have even let myself think this happened to me. And only because one of my lost friends posted a picture on instagram of the super faint positive line of her chemical pregnancy.
I looked at it and I thought. Hang on. That’s a positive?!?
That is what my test looked like!
Forgive me for sounding ignorant/ crazy but my only real experience with pregnancy tests is nearly over a year ago now, linked in with a whole lot of conflicting emotions and a shed load of trauma.
When I had this weird cycle in July I did pee on a stick and I thought maybe there was a line. But then I reminded myself I was on birth control and super paranoid over every. Last. Symptom. Ever. Because of my miscarriage in October 2016, I have been majorly terrified to be pregnant again, while also wanting nothing else and knowing its also one of the worst ideas I have ever had.
So dismissed it (after peeing on a stick 3 times, just in case).
My tests looked exactly like the picture I had been looking at. The same faint but there line that I had dismissed as a BFN because it was nothing like the test results I had with Emmet. (And because of the denial that it could possibly happen to me again. I mean I changed birth control! That sorted it right. Nope. My gastric issues mean when I was taking the tablets at that strength, they were about as effective as taking smarties.)
I had told myself they were evap lines. Not real. Not there. Told myself I was seeing things, delusional, desperate. That it was probably because I want a baby so badly that I made it up. I told myself all these lies and tried to block it so I didn’t have to process it.
What actually happened was after being over a month late for my period I started to bleed. My cycles are irregular though so ‘ehh no biggie’ I thought to myself, and anyway. I had peed on a stick and it was negative right?
Wrong.
Fast forward a day and I start to get bad cramps, worse than period cramps but not the ‘worst pain I have ever felt in my life’ as I was miscarrying Emmet type cramps.
I had got kind of concerned because I was so late, and I’d peed on a stick but like I say Denial.
My cycles are irregular af so I basically carried on blatantly ignoring all the signs of what turned out to be a chemical pregnancy.
Everything got a bit weird from this point on for me.
I kind of thought to myself ‘well at least it’s finally here. Weird symptoms though.’
I started to pass lumps of tissue. A bit like with Emmet but lighter. A lot lighter and a weird brown colour.
I go to my Dr. Worried I had some kind of infection. (Still so firmly in denial at this point that every time my mind even wandered a little bit to ‘pregnancy’ I stamped it down. Nope ‘evap lines and an infection’ I told myself)
She made me pee in a cup and put a stick in. Faint line.
Asks a load of questions and basically tells me it’s a Chemical Pregnancy and that it could either be ‘lighter than a normal period’ or heavier. There’s nothing she can do. Birth control dosage upped. Move on. Take more tests amd tell her when the lime is totally gone.
Weirdly it was lighter and brown which was why I was worried about an infection. The next cycle I had was truely horrendous though but I’ll spare you the details.
So I ask a load of questions and I’m told basically it will just go away eventually and to come back if anything changes or I get a fever etc…
I put it down to hormones, (still in denial, even after going to the doctor’s and being told it was a Chemical Pregnancy.)
I pretended it never happened. Blocked it out. Said nothing to anybody and never told my partner, (like a total suck ass unable to communicate when it matters worst kind of idiot.) because I couldn’t bear to watch him hurt again.
I pretended for the last 3 months it simply never happened. Told myself there were just chemicals so it was just a hormone thing and that really there was no loss etc…
You get the picture. Major denial. To the point where I had so thoroughly blocked it out it was as if it had never happened to me. Every time I thought about it I was all nope. Not going there we are not doing this again.
And then I see this post.
Suddenly everything I had denied happening came crashing back tenfold; and I had a big old emotional breakdown.
I told myself so many times that it was never really there. That it didn’t happen. That my mind had made it up. Despite having a record of my appointment at the doctors. Despite everything. I was in denial.
That’s the only way I can describe the last 3 months.
Just denial. Of everything. I blatantly continued to bumble through life as if I was not in fact internally screaming all summer.
Flash forward to today and it’s still not fully sunk in. I mean. How do you process loss Number Two when you can barely process Loss Number One?
I have had two miscarriages now in under a year. One more (although please God No more of ANY of it) and I will be officially down as having ‘issues’ and I would be eligible for infirtility testing on the NHS.
If nothing else this has cured me entirely form EVER wanting to be pregnant again. Just No.
We named this baby Réalta, and my partner said ‘she’ as a slip of the tongue and that feels right too.
Surviving Miscarriage Together 