Honestly Emma

I’ve always been quite a private person, which you probably think is quite peculiar considering I’ve started a blog. But I don’t mean private in terms of what we get up to. I love chatting about the places we’ve been. My memory is rubbish so it helps me to re-live the moment and hopefully swap travel tips with others who’ve been to similar places. No what I’m talking about are feelings. You know the things that niggle away at the back of your mind and make you eat loads of carbs! When it comes to feelings, I’m definitely a closed book, keep your head down and keep busy kind of person. If something’s bothering me, I don’t like to trouble people with my shit, so I tend to pick a project and get absorbed in that instead. That way, I don’t really have to deal with the issue. Previous distraction techniques include;

• Learning to run lots!;
• Travelling around Australia;
• Travelling around Asia;
• Getting drunk in Brighton – ok not the most well sought out project, but ultimately one which led to my underlying goal of;
• Finding a husband;
• Getting fit (* a reoccurring ‘project’) and
• Travelling around America.

You see in the past, I’ve always put my pain to positive use and ultimately achieved something I’ve always wanted to do. The problem is now, at this present time, I seem to have run out of projects. At this present time in 2017, I have Ettie, a husband, a home and have done all the travelling I need to do for the time being. Having a toddler generally puts a stop to all night parties and I’m too exhausted to go out and get fit again so I’m kind of at a loss as to where to place my energy.

Earlier this year we lost our second baby –this time to a miscarriage. Looking back, subconsciously I think that may have been why I started this blog – ‘you know the drill Emma, keep busy and you won’t need to think about it.’ I even wrote a silly blog post about baking a cake the night that it happened. I just needed to keep busy. But ultimately the distractions are no longer a cure and having a second baby is actually all I can think about.

A few weeks after it happened I read a blog post by Clemmie Telford where she shared an account of the feelings she’d experienced whilst trying for a third baby. Her words really resonated with me and could have been taken from my own mind. I felt an enormous sense of solidarity with another Mother who had been through a similar experience of waiting for another baby.

One of the comments on Clemmies’ blog was from a lady asking why she had waited until actually falling pregnant before breaking her silence and sharing her experience with the world? Clemmies answer was that ‘[she] had told friends and family, but wasn’t feeling emotional robust enough to share it with people [she] didn’t know. She wishes she could have, but just couldn’t’. I fully support this decision, in all honesty I’ve had versions of this blog post sitting in my drafts for a couple of months now, too scared to post it on the basis that if I did publish, I’d somehow be jinxing myself by sending a signal to the universe meaning we were destined to never get pregnant ever again.

But why is that? Logically it doesn’t make sense. I’m pretty sure everyone isn’t fortunate enough to fall first time, in fact the comments on Clemmie’s blog demonstrate this, and I know that at least 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, so why is ‘trying for a baby‘ still such a taboo subject?

If you’d have told me three months ago, that I’d be sharing these feelings with you, I’d most likely have squirmed away into a corner somewhere thinking ‘not in your lifetime’ and ran off to book a holiday. But here I am – sharing awkwardly with you a little corner of my mind.

The fact is, no matter how supportive friends can be, month after month you feel like a bit of a failure. I feel guilty when I see Ettie playing on her own, or when I snap at Stuart for no reason. I worry that perhaps the second mc has in someway ‘broken something?’ We’ve always been quite lucky to fall quite quickly in the past, so what’s causing the delay now?… I think perhaps its the worry of not really knowing what is going which is the worst bit.

So why am I sharing with this you now? Well I’m sure other bloggers will agree with me when I say that writing is a deeply cathartic experience. Once you put pen to paper its hard to stop. I’m also at a stage in my life where I can’t keep running. I alluded to the fact earlier that I don’t have time for another project, so I actually have no other place to go, other than to confront my feelings. I’m petrified that by sharing them with you I’ll somehow cast a shadow over myself meaning things won’t change in the future, but I’m also aware that there are many other women going through this, and some of them, like me, may not talk. If talking about my experiences can help one other person deal with what they are going through and feel a little less lonely, then it won’t all be in vain. Clemmie’s blog post helped me, so I’m hoping I can do the same for someone else.

So starting as I mean to go on, here are a couple of little truths the old me would have kept locked secretly away, but I’ll share them with you now in the hope they might relieve the frustration just a little bit:

• Yes we lost a second baby earlier this year;
• Yes it was a lot more distressing than ‘just a heavy period’;
• Yes we are trying for another baby; and
• Yes I feel horrific when I see a single line on those stupid plastic testers at the end of every month;
• Yes I hate working full-time hours knowing I only agreed to work them because I was pregnant so didn’t think it would be for long;
• Yes I feel horrifically guilty about feeling sad when we are lucky enough to have Ettie;
• Yes I realise a couple of months isn’t anything compared to what others go through, of course it isn’t (again more guilt);
• Yes I should probably talk to friends about this more in real life, but this is easier;
• Yes I freak out constantly that by calling this blog ‘Ettie and Me’ I’ve somehow sent a signal to the universe that it will only be Ettie and Me forever;
• Yes I also know that the above point is slightly ridiculous… But still! :/
• Yes I feel F**king angry with the world that this has happened to us twice;
• But no I will not and cannot let it get me down. For the sake of Stuart, Ettie and everyone else we just need to keep trying and so on it goes…

Whilst I am going to make an effort to be more open from hereon in, I’m still very new to all this ‘openness’ so inviting me out for coffee and asking me to bare my soul probably isn’t going to work. I may allude to the fact that we are trying for a baby and anything you can do to make that conversation a little less awkward would be amazing.

Thanks for listening xx