The grief of losing an unplanned baby

he bunched-up white gown spattered in blood rested awkwardly against my sore breasts, while the consultant moved the wand over my now-empty womb. Tears slipped down my cheeks as quietly as my baby’s life had slipped away. The A&E nurse returned to remove the cannula in my arm. ‘ Was it planned?’ she asked. I was numb and managed to whisper, ‘No.’ ‘Oh, well it’s OK then, isn’t it? You mustn’t be too sad?’ I looked at her in shock, and managed to stutter through the tears, ‘But it was my second.’

Unplanned pregnancies happen for a number of reasons, but both of mine were while I was on one particular pill, Yasmin. Despite taking it religiously, there were two times – eight years apart –when I was in the miniscule percentage of women for whom it simply fails. My second miscarriage put me in another small percentage; I was one of the 2% of women who have had two miscarriages in a row.

I was 19 and in a long-term relationship with my first pregnancy. We were both heartbroken when I lost the baby at 10 weeks, but the small amount of negative comments about how young I was, was manageable. With my second pregnancy, I was 26 and an ex-pat living 10,000 miles away from my friends, family and the father, with whom I have a long and complicated relationship, made even more so by my temporary move to Australia with work. But we care about one another deeply, and he found the loss just as difficult as I did – which I carelessly didn’t realise until he told me bluntly, ‘I’ve had a baby die.’

And yet, despite being at a more ‘suitable’ age this time around, the hurtful comments still came. One person told me, ‘It would be so much worse if you’d lost a baby that you really wanted.’ What people don’t realise is that, for many women, as soon as you know there is a tiny life growing inside you, you love that future baby with your entire being.

I have spent whole days stuck in an emotional stupor; hysterically crying one minute and falling asleep from exhaustion the next. I’ve struggled to get out of bed in the mornings, cried from seeing a halfempty bottle of Gaviscon, and shed a tear on every anniversary, no matter how small.

One of the most heart-breaking moments for me was sitting in a meeting shortly after my second loss, where a colleague happily announced her pregnancy. I walked out of that meeting and straight to the lift. As soon as the doors closed I collapsed on to the shoulder of my work friend – uncontrollable sobs erupting from my body and fat tears streaming down my cheeks as she hugged me tight.

The emotions that come with a lost unplanned pregnancy are confusing to navigate. I’ve felt incredible guilt over drinking tequila shots while not knowing I was pregnant and also the split second I considered terminating – before realising that I already loved that tiny life too much to consider extinguishing it for anything longer than that split second. At times I’ve felt like I shouldn’t even be allowed to grieve for my babies, I’ve felt like an imposter for feeling sad, and as such have buried the grief deep inside, only for it to pour out later on. Who am I to be sad when there are married women who deserve children more than I do? After all, they could likely give a baby a more secure start in life than I could.

But then I remember the love I felt for those babies immediately, and all the love I would have given had they arrived into this world screaming. I think of the secure career I have, the stable support network, and the supportive fathers who would have been the very best of co-parents. I think of the hours I spent while pregnant, dreaming of what their faces would look like, what personalities they would have, and what our life would be like, and I realise that my babies deserve to be grieved over just as much as any planned pregnancy.

And, while couples can always ‘try again’ when they’re ready, when you’re very young or single, you potentially have years to wait before you know whether you’ll have a healthy baby in your arms, or yet more losses. That fear of the unknown eats away at you. With multiple losses there are also fewer options for medical testing if you’re not purposely trying for a baby. My doctors have done all of the tests they can, but certain tests – and of course medical trials – can only be done when you’re actively trying.

Navigating these emotions, while being on the receiving end of hurtful comments questioning your ability to be a young or single mother, makes the grieving process far harder. These are women who have had to go through a huge loss, alongside all the societal judgements that go hand-in-hand with teenage and single motherhood. Medical professionals need to provide more specialist care and keep an eye on mental health, and family and friends need to be more understanding and recognise just how confusing and devastating it is.

There are resources out there to help; Tommy’s and the Miscarriage Association are both incredible charities. But, at the end of the day, nothing can replace your loved ones supporting you and recognising the tiny speckle of a life you loved and lost. After all, an unplanned baby does not mean an unloved one. My arms may be empty, but my heart is not.

this morning I did a phone interview with the BBC, spent an hour in a café working on a screenplay and now I’m writing for my favourite magazine. Am I having a fever dream? No, it’s all happening because Irish humour is having a moment and I’ve somehow managed to hoist myself up on to the crest of the wave.

Last year, my best mate Emer and I wrote Oh My God, What A Complete Aisling, a comedy novel that became the best-selling Irish book of 2017 and snagged us a six-figure UK publishing deal. Did I mention we’re also adapting it for the big screen? The world has long known that Irish people are funny, but they’re waking up to the fact that Irish women are particularly funny. I’m talking piss-yourpants, publish-your-novel-in-korea funny.

I’ve been wracking my brains to figure out why, and I think it’s because finding a chink of light in the dark is an Irish speciality – ‘if you don’t laugh you’ll cry’ is basically our national mantra. As comedian Aisling Bea (no relation to our eponymous heroine) puts it, ‘Irish women are almost 98% all laughs.’ And the world today, with its fatbergs and data breaches and Trump’s tiny orange hand hovering over the nuke button, needs a few laughs.

Take Derry Girls, which was set during the Troubles, and became Channel 4’s biggest new comedy for nearly five years. Writer Lisa Mcgee found comedy in the bleakest moments, with lines like ‘I’m not enjoying this bomb. I’ve an appointment in Tropicana at 12,’ and, ‘ You can’t ring Childline every time your mother threatens to kill you.’ Viewers lapped it up and, immediately after the first episode aired, a second series was commissioned.

Sarah Jessica Parker can sniff out talent at 50 paces, which is why she decided to work with Sharon Horgan on her show, Divorce. Who better to write a caustically funny script about the demise of a decades-long marriage than an Irish woman whose ancestors survived a famine? Sharon also brings her razor-sharp wit to Catastrophe, the unromantic comedy in which she stars, and co-writes, with comedian Rob Delaney. The show explores, in equally hilarious and toe-curling detail, the realities of love, married life and trying to have sex while a small child accidentally watches from the foot of the bed. According to The New Yorker, Sharon is ‘prolific to an almost manic degree’ and it’s not hard to see why – the appetite for her sense of humour has reached fever pitch.

Cork-born comedian Maeve Higgins has the same approach to making people laugh. Already a household name at home, she’s currently shooting Extra Ordinary, in which she plays a lonely driving instructor who talks to ghosts. The film has attracted an international cast including 30 Rock’s Will Forte and Love’s Claudia O’doherty, who have left the US to shoot in Tullamore. I hope they brought umbrellas.

In popular fiction, Emer and I have long admired Marian Keyes’s ability to turn darkness into light, from her laugh-out-loud first novel Watermelon ( in which a woman is ditched by her boyfriend while in labour) right up to last year’s The Break, with a special mention for Rachel’s Holiday, which gave us Luke, the ‘hairy eejit’ with the timeshare leather trousers.

It’s largely because of the exceptionally talented women that we didn’t feel the need to dilute our own Irishness, or shy away from dark moments, when we wrote OMGWACA. Because although it’s a comedy, and you’ll almost definitely LOL, you probably should also have a box of Kleenex to hand while you read it.