I think one of the words I associate most with pregnancy loss is wait.
Wait for the scan.
Wait to see if there's been any growth.
Wait another week, just in case.
Wait for the bleeding to start.
Wait for surgery.
Wait for your body to realise what your heart already knows.
There have been moments over the last five years where waiting has felt almost unbearable.
I remember being told to wait over a weekend before one of my losses could be confirmed. Somewhere inside me, I already knew. But still, I had to go home and wait.
There is something incredibly cruel about being sent home carrying a pregnancy you don't know if you're going to get to keep.
You analyse every feeling. Every pain. Every trip to the toilet.
And then sometimes the waiting ends in the answer you were desperately hoping wouldn't come.
I've experienced the horrific physical pain of losing a baby. I've experienced the emotional pain that follows it. And I've experienced something I still struggle to put into words — losing one of my babies on my son's birthday.
A day that should have belonged completely to joy suddenly had grief woven through it too.
But I was still his mum.
There was a birthday happening around me. A little boy who deserved his day. So somehow, as mothers so often do, I carried both.
The love and the loss.
The celebration and the devastation.
And then, eventually, the physical part ends.
The appointments stop.
The bleeding stops.
People stop asking quite so often how you are.
And a different kind of waiting begins.
Waiting for you to come back
I think sometimes after grief, people wait for you to return.
Back to work.
Back to socialising.
Back to making plans.
Back to laughing without that slight heaviness behind it.
Back to being the person they remember.
Perhaps I waited for her too.
But after five years of loss, healing, trying, hoping and starting again, I'm not sure there is a version of me to go back to.
Life changed me.
And perhaps that isn't something I need to fix.
Because eventually, after miscarriage, we decided to try again.
And there it was.
Waiting.
Again.
The two-week wait.
Waiting for the pregnancy test.
Waiting for blood results.
Waiting for the first scan.
Waiting for a heartbeat.
Waiting for the next scan.
And the next.
Waiting to reach the week where you lost another baby before.
Waiting for twelve weeks.
Twenty weeks.
Waiting for the first little flutter.
Then waiting for the next movement because suddenly that becomes the thing that tells you everything is okay.
Pregnancy after loss can sometimes feel like moving from one small milestone to another, never quite allowing yourself to look too far ahead.
And now I'm here.
In my third trimester.
After spending so many years waiting for this pregnancy, you might imagine I'd be racing towards the finish line.
But strangely, I'm not.
I still don't have a plan
I don't really know what the next few weeks are supposed to look like.
And for once, I'm okay with that.
There can be an expectation when life begins to feel happier that you should immediately embrace it.
You can relax now.
You must be so excited.
You can finally enjoy your pregnancy.
And I am excited.
Deeply.
But excitement after loss doesn't always look loud.
Sometimes mine looks like quietly getting baby clothes out when nobody else is around.
Sometimes it looks like putting my hand on my stomach when she kicks.
Sometimes it's imagining meeting her and then gently bringing myself back to today.
Because I've spent years being trained to wait.
I've waited through some of the most painful moments of my life.
And now, strangely, I'm learning to wait through one of the happiest too.
So returning to what other people think I should be feeling right now?
That can wait.
Making plans because everyone else wants to know what happens next?
That can wait too.
I have waited this long for this baby.
I don't need to rush through these final weeks trying to prove that I'm healed, excited or back to my old self.
I can just be here.
Pregnant.
Hopeful.
Still occasionally frightened.
Grateful.
Changed.
And waiting.
Because grief has taught me that life is incredibly unpredictable.
It has taught me that happiness and sadness aren't opposites. Sometimes they sit beside each other.
It has taught me that you can be frightened and hopeful at the same time.
That you can grieve one baby while loving another.
That you can celebrate your child's birthday while your own heart is breaking.
And perhaps most importantly, it has taught me that there is no prize for rushing back to the person you were before life changed you.
I've become very good at waiting.
So this time, I'm going to let myself wait here a little longer.
Not for something bad to happen.
Not for permission to finally feel safe.
But simply because this life I've waited so long for deserves to be lived slowly.
And everything else can wait.
Emma
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