Hope after baby loss
After she endured multiple miscarriages and years of heartache before having her son, Laura Buckingham is on a mission to help other women
Laura Buckingham thought she had her life all mapped out... she and partner Scoop planned to get married, buy a house and have four children after enjoying their fun-filled 20s together.
“I always knew I wanted a big family, and by the time I was 14, I had named all my future children in my head,” says Laura, 36, a nurse, who lives in Kent with property manager Scoop, 39.
“So when we started trying for a baby, I was so excited.”
But a year passed and, Laura, then 28, still wasn’t pregnant – and her confidence had evaporated.
“I felt insecure and ashamed of my inability to do what other women could so easily do,” she says. “I couldn’t help wondering if there was something wrong with me.”
According to the baby charity Tommy’s, 20 per cent of couples fail to conceive in the first year of trying if the woman is under 40. Aware that she and Scoop were falling on the wrong side of the statistics, Laura visited her GP for fertility tests.
But on Christmas Eve of 2013, she received the best present of all – a positive pregnancy test.
“We were so excited and agreed not to tell anyone, but my mum noticed I wasn’t drinking on Christmas Day, and suddenly everyone started shrieking with excitement. We spent the rest of the day discussing baby names.”
Their joy was short-lived as only 13 days after her positive test, Laura started bleeding, and a scan revealed there was no heartbeat. Devastated, she tried to be as rational as she could about the loss.
She found out she was pregnant on her next cycle
– but miscarried again.
“I honestly believed I was doing something wrong and tortured myself with all the reasons why I could have miscarried,” she says. “I genuinely thought I was being punished for something.” In September 2014, Laura discovered she was pregnant for a third time, and when she and Scoop heard a healthy heartbeat at an eight-week scan, they were too excited to keep quiet. As reassurance, Laura was offered another scan three weeks later, and decided to take her mum with her as Scoop had to work. “I had imagined us sharing this special magical moment but my dreams turned to disaster because there was no heartbeat. All I remember was my mum screaming. I’d imagined mum holding this baby one day, and I’d even allowed myself to buy a pair of tiny teddy bear booties.”
Those next few weeks were a dark time, especially when tests revealed Laura had had a molar pregnancy – a rare complication where cells growing in the womb are incompatible with life and can turn cancerous. Not only did she need surgery, but she couldn’t try for a baby for another six months because of the cancer risk. “My mental health spiralled,” she says.
Over the next 18 months, she and Scoop took their minds off babies by losing eight stone between them, and getting married.
But as Laura was able to conceive, she wasn’t eligible for IVF. She had numerous tests to try to determine why she was miscarrying but none was conclusive.
Only one in 100 women experiences three or more miscarriages, according to Tommy’s, and the causes are unknown in half of all cases.
Nevertheless, Laura suspected her immune system was destroying her pregnancies, although she was dismissed by doctors at every turn.
In 2016, she had two more early miscarriages, followed by another in
2017, and then an ectopic pregnancy in 2018, which resulted in her losing a fallopian tube.
The repeated losses and ongoing stress completely diminished her once bubbly personality. “I was bitter, sad, angry, traumatised and hopelessly obsessed with babies,” she says.
One of the most devastating aspects of her experience was the “ugly feelings” it generated.
“I was sad all the time, and I felt so much bitterness and resentment,” she says. “People were trying to be supportive, but they couldn’t really understand.”
Instead, Laura took solace in writing a blog and became an active member of the online baby loss community.
It was here she was urged to see a particular reproductive immunologist. After begging for a referral, she was told she had been right – she had a very rare problem with her immune system.
It was then that she discovered she was pregnant again, and she persuaded her doctor to start her on the medication straight away.
After seven miscarriages, she didn’t dare hope this pregnancy would end any differently, but after hearing their baby’s heartbeat at the 12-week scan, she and Scoop cautiously shared their news. “My anxiety was sky-high throughout my pregnancy,” says Laura, whose son Bertie arrived in March 2019.
“It was only when I held him safely in my arms for the first time that I felt the joy,” she says.
Motherhood has been everything Laura imagined. Bertie is now two, and having him has made her determined to help other women struggling with baby loss. While she was on maternity leave, Laura turned her blog into a book called It Will Happen – a warts-and-all account of her story. It also contains research, resources and advice. In addition, she set up the award-winning podcast The Worst Girl Gang Ever, where she runs workshops for women who have lost babies.
Laura has had two more unexplained miscarriages since Bertie’s birth.
But she says: “I feel very lucky to be a mum. If it doesn’t happen again, I am philosophical. I feel my mission is to give hope to other women.”
It Will Happen by Laura Buckingham (Austin Macauley Publishing, £9.99) is available now. For more information, visit theworstgirlgangever.co.uk
I’d imagined sharing this special time with my mum, but there was no heartbeat
This time I’d even allowed myself to buy a pair of tiny teddy bear booties