**** Trigger Warning****
This article speaks around pregnancy loss. I have been very careful not to emphasize my personal losses when sharing my story in the past, as I hear so many people struggling and dismissing their grief as they did not experience a pregnancy. My journey is so layered that I truly believe that you and your grief is valid no matter what your story and if this article is triggering for you then please protect your heart. And I hope this article is helpful for everyone who experienced a loss and those who wish to better understand this type of loss or support someone who has experienced this.
One of my earliest memories is confidently telling a friend, "I won’t be an old mum. I’ll wait until I’m 25, and then I’ll have two children." Even then, you can hear the belief—that life would unfold in a perfect sequence, that timing was within my control, and that I should not get caught too soon. But life had other plans.
My 20s were spent in a long-term relationship that didn’t feel right for bringing children into, and my 30s were mostly single, spent searching for a partner who shared my vision for the future. At 36, I froze my eggs, to “guarantee” motherhood believing that it was like an insurance policy that I never planned to make a claim (how uncomfortable it feels to write those words now). At 39, I finally got lucky and met my husband. We got married, moved into our family home, and like a fairytale, I became pregnant naturally at 42.
From the moment you see those two blue lines, it feels like a dream come true, a typical Hollywood happy ending. We were overjoyed, filled with excitement and hope. We started dreaming about the life we would create for our child—talking about schools, the values we wanted to instill, and how we would nurture them with love and care. It’s difficult to put into words the sheer and innocent joy we felt.
Even though I was experiencing a “geriatric” pregnancy (more on the terrible labels later), it never entered my mind that I could suffer a loss. After all, my gran had my mum at 40, and my brothers just needed to look at a girl, and she was pregnant… I felt like it was my birthright to have a child, and in my naïve world, my pregnancy would simply result in a healthy, beautiful baby.
But at 11 weeks, I lost my baby, Lucia. That loss shattered me into thousands of pieces and like a broken mirror, recently in hidden places I found little sharp pieces of glass. Like every childless person it wasn’t just the physical loss of my child— for me it was the loss of innocence. It felt like a black hole opened in front of me, and everything I believed about the world along with my dreams collapsed into that. That birthright to have a child was snatched away from me. And, perhaps most difficult and confusing of all, the fear that I had done something wrong, that this was somehow my fault. It was going from 100% innocence and joy to 100% emptiness in a matter of hours.
Let me step back a second and give some context about the loss. At 10 weeks, we had a scan and saw her heartbeat. The doctor reassured us that everything looked great—and the pregnancy was progressing perfectly. The very next day, I started to bleed. I went to the hospital, where they told us it was a false alarm. But they also confirmed that in the event of a loss, there was nothing they—or I—could do. After a calm week where everything seemed normal, eight days later, on a Saturday night, I found myself alone on the bathroom floor, bleeding, cramping, and completely by myself.
When you give birth, you have a midwife. When you lose a child, (at most) you have an awkward husband who doesn’t know what to do. The physical pain at only 11 weeks was extreme, combined with the confusion of what was happening. That night felt like hell.
The next day, we went to the hospital and had our worst fears confirmed. The staff were kind and tried to reassure me that it was for the best, that the baby was too small to grow successfully. But their reassurance didn’t make it any easier. Over the next ten days, my body continued to naturally “dispose” of what was left of my baby and dreams.
The Isolation
Emotionally, the isolation was just as painful. I didn’t help myself much either—I put up a wall. On the way back from the hospital, I sent a text to my family and closest friends, explaining what had happened and asking for time. The thing is, all this stuff about 1 in 4 pregnancies resulting in a loss, and how 20% of us are permanently childless—none of it is shared or heard until you walk this path. Even in what I thought was my really fertile family, there were buried and forgotten stories of pregnancy loss and stillbirths.
For me there was a vicious cycle of blame and shame. Had I done something wrong? What had I eaten? Did I sleep on the wrong side? Could it have been the scan? When was the last time we made love? Maybe our dog sat too close to me on the sofa… A torture of trying to find an answer and desperately hoping that I wasn’t the cause. The word miscarriage really does not help here either. It implies that I wrongly carried my child... So where ever possible I try to avoid using that term
Six months later, I faced a second pregnancy loss, of my son, Leo. And two years after that, the IVF cycle with my frozen eggs failed, and I became permanently childless. Fast forward 18 months and my husband could not face the emotional heartache of having more losses so chose from a loving place to have a vasectomy which closed the door to any lingering hope or the chance of a "miracle".
How Did I Heal?
I’m not sure this is something we ever fully heal from, it is an ongoing and evolving journey. At first, I threw myself into work, burying myself in busyness to avoid the pain. I didn’t know how to sit with my grief or nurture it. But grief has a way of making itself heard. At some point, my passive aggressive anger was leaking out of my pores, the silent scream inside me became a loud one, shouting into my poor husband’s face, “I feel so fucking empty inside.” Just expressing how I really felt, was a first release…
I had a therapist, but it wasn’t really working for me…. Between my pregnancy losses and starting IVF, I felt the need to bring some joy and purpose (or perhaps more distraction) back into my life. I decided to pursue an ICF/postgraduate in life coaching, and I absolutely loved it. At the end of the course, I had a deeply moving session with my tutor. He created a space for me to speak to my children, to say goodbye to them, and to honor their brief existence. That moment was profoundly healing and beautiful, opening the door for me to feel ready to try IVF.
But a few months later when IVF wasn’t successful, I felt adrift—lost, empty, and alone, not knowing where to turn, I was not offered any pregnancy loss groups and my doctors did not know of local groups of women like me.
Three years after my first loss, a cancer-surviving friend suggested I look for support groups online. A Google search led me to a World Childless Week video with Karin Enfield and Sarah Roberts, and for the first time, I felt relief, there were other people like me out there. That moment led me to find Facebook groups, The Full Stop Podcast. And of course lead to my own support groups and what would become childless.life.
New recent triggers
Healing perhaps finds us when we are ready... While I have done so much healing on my childless self, I have not focused so much on healing my pregnant self...
Last summer, I had an unexpected trigger—sitting in a hospital waiting room where others were experiencing pregnancy loss. I tried to hide in my phone, but it was a deeply triggering moment.
Then in Sept, at Childless Storyhouse, the amazing Stella Duffy shared how she felt like her body had become a graveyard for her dead children. She referenced microchimerism—the scientific concept that explains how the cells from a pregnancy remain in the mother’s body after a loss or childbirth. That statement was so impactful that half the audience was "floored" including me. (Later, I reframed it. Those cells are still with me, and I choose to live for all three of us.)
Then I was invited to share my pregnancy loss story on the The Full Stop Podcast I believe that our collective healing continues by sharing our stories which also evaporates some of that shame. That you to Michael, Sarah, Berenice and Lori for responding with empathy and such a deep level of understanding...
Brené Brown : "Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot survive empathy. If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive."
Healing Continues
Five years into my childless journey and seven years since my first loss, healing is ongoing. With self love and community support it’s like I’m ready to find those first pieces of broken glass, smooth them off and make a beautiful mosaic with them.
If you’ve made it to the end of this, thank you for reading. And for those of you who never had a pregnancy—an extra big thank you. I know it takes courage to witness this (as it does all our stories). While I wish we had all experienced pregnancy, I wish even more that our stories had ended differently, yet I am glad that we are here together supporting each other on this unexpected and profound journey.
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