OWHB: ttc, fertility, baby loss (P1)

Miscarriage, stillbirth, IVF, ttc, FET, and the gloriousness of having children even when they aren’t alive

Hello, paid readers. This is for you. For you and me to share between us, because it’s a private thing, my journey. And yet, the hope is that over time more readers will procure paid subscriptions and access this archive and read these words, my innermost thoughts. It’s the “over time” part that makes this okay. It’s the gradual drip drip of the water eroding the walls, because I can’t take them down with a wrecking ball, I can’t dismantle them even a brick at a time because it’s too scary. It has to happen like erosion.

In the last 4.5 years I have tried to have children. I did not realise that this would not be an accurate enough ask. So for the last 2.75 years, since I lost my first baby, I have tried to have living children. I have failed. When I ask my body to try again, I hear a firm NO from the centre of my chest, just above my diaphragm, over the part of my rib cage where there is a mildly protruding nobble I sometimes wonder about. Do other people have this nobble? Please feedback in the comments section.

So I’m giving myself time off. A good stretch of time. I won’t say how much, because it makes me want to cry. But I need it. My body needs it. More on that in a later essay ~ maybe I’ll let my body tell her own story, as separate as we feel these days.

I’ll be writing about my journey in a book. I’ll be writing about how babies are the kind of thing that are promised to us, much like houses and steady jobs and exciting careers and feeling like a grown up and love and marriage. I’ll be writing about how these promises are dangerous, how they can set us up for a shock when they don’t work out, how they can make us feel like failures, how they can panic us into the wrong choices. Mainly, I’ll be writing about how there must be happiness without these things that we are promised will bring us happiness. We must be able to live well without them. Because we have very little control over getting them, and sometimes when we have them, we find all is not as advertised.

Here, under the post with titles beginning “OWHB:”, because this book is going to be called ORDINARY WOMAN HAS BABY, and for paid subscribers to this newsletter only, I’ll be featuring stories about my fertility journey, some of which will likely end up in that book, which is going to be a sequel to the novel I’ve been funded by Arts Council England to write. I’m thinking big. I’m 36. It’s time for an opus. Thank you for reading…