I never thought my heart would heal after our first miscarriage.  We wanted that baby so badly.  Then there was nothing but tears.  You know that feeling when you have cried so much your mouth hurts?  Where none of your wails seem to release the sadness and you just don’t know how to get it out?

But slowly you rebuild yourself.  At first there are just fleeting moments where you can smile before the grief rolls back over you.  In time those moments seem to last a little longer.  Then whilst you never go a day without thinking of your baby, you might go a few hours where you interact with the world in a somewhat normal way.  That’s where we were at on our journey.

We didn’t plan to get pregnant again, and yet there I was with a positive pregnancy kit in hand.  I remember looking at the pregnancy test four or five times, desperately trying to do another one, but not being ready to wee. 

The mixture of terror and excitement I felt was just creating a cloud of anxiety that seemed to last for the rest of the pregnancy. My heart only knew two speeds – flat out racing or stopped dead! Sometimes I wasn’t even aware of what was going on around me as I concentrated intently on what was happening inside my body.  I was hyper-vigilant to every change, scared that I would fail this new little life. 

So, what have I learned so far?

Stay away from Dr Google – he sends you CRAZY

Create a relationship with your medical team – they need to embrace your questions, concerns and worries.

A bit of positive self-talk can go a long way.  Let’s face it, you are the only person who can hear the negative voice inside your head so you are the only one who can talk back and put it in its place.

Invest in your support network and expand it to include others going through the same thing.  You need them!

But perhaps most importantly – know you can do tough, hard horrible things.  You have proven this already.