In her diary, Jennie Agg describes what it’s like to live with the dread of miscarriage
WORDS: JENNIE AGG. PHOTOS: TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD
7 WEEKS PREGNANT November 2019
We’re at the recurrent miscarriage clinic – which is where you get referred to after miscarriage number three. Today, what Dan and I are hoping for is a heartbeat. I lie down on the bed covered with scratchy NHS standard-issue blue paper and hold my breath. The gel goes on. And there it is. That all-important flicker of white, on grey, on black. We exhale, though we do not celebrate. When you have a miscarriage, you learn two things in quick succession. One: this happens all the time. ‘It’s really common,’ a sonographer will tell you. Two: no one is going to try to find out why it happened. ‘It’s just one of those things,’ they will say, as they pat your hand and pass the tissues. After the first miscarriage, all I was really certain of was my clawing desire to be pregnant again. I got my wish – and quickly, conceiving three menstrual cycles later. That second time, back in 2017, even when we went for an early ‘reassurance’ scan, and were told the gestational sac was meas ring a little small for even weeks, I still hoped for the best. The bleeding started a few days before the lanned follow-up appointment. We had friends staying, who took themselves off for a walk while we went to the early pregnancy unit. We were seen in th same room, with the same midwife. She tilted the screen away in the same, tactful way. She gave us the same, tiny shake of the head. She delivered the same, half-whispered line: ‘The e is no heartbeat.’ We were handed more leaflets – the same leaflets we still had at home. This time, the misca riage wasn’t ‘complete’, so we went home to wait it out. It was only later, the bleeding having begun in earnest, that reality crept in.
8-9 WEEKS PREGNANT December 2019
I start to bleed – again. When you’re pregnant and bleeding, the internet is a black hole, yet there is no resisting its gravitational pull. For every anonymous story on a Mumsnet thread from someone who bled through their pregnancy and now has a strapping 22-year-old, there are just as many for whom bleeding was the beginning of the end. I know I should phone the recurrent miscarriage clinic, or call my GP. But we have an appointment at the clinic booked in for the following Wednesday anyway – a fortnight on from our last scan. I can see little point in getting an emergency appointment to sit in the same room and be told by the same midwife the same things we’ve heard before. For now, then, Dan and I pretend we know ho
