A Month On From Miscarriage

As the title suggests, this article discusses pregnancy loss.

I’m at the end of my first menstrual cycle after a miscarriage. My hormones are, well, who knows really. I seem to be more sensitive to progesterone than I was before, meaning I’ve felt sick and had reflux for the last half of my cycle when progesterone naturally rises, a particularly cruel after effect as it mimics pregnancy symptoms. I’m grieving, I’m trying to navigate the impact of hormonal changes and unpredictabilities on my mindbody, and I’m pretty exhausted all the time.

I’m not ready to be articulate or to tell a compelling story. I’m just going to start talking, because I know it helps, and I like talking to my readers, and I want to keep writing my newsletter. These vestiges of who I am and what I’ve created are some of my anchors in this storm.

In August my nesting partner and I went through IVF. I will write about that experience at some point, but not yet. It was incredibly difficult, and fraught, and there were many points at which it seemed like it would not work. And yet, I stayed hopeful. So when the second line appeared on my pregnancy test, as faint as it was, I wasn’t entirely surprised. When, two days later, the line on the test came up strong, I was overjoyed.