Creation and loss

Creation and loss is a part of life. This may come across as a weird project. I'm actually pleased with how the work looks considering the feelings behind them.

This is a personal story but it's also connected to my art, so I feel it's relevant enough to share. It’s a tricky one, it's also a long one...maybe I’ve dragged it out a bit, however I also feel the background is relevant to this story.

Covid-19 has been hard on us all, I understand that the NHS is struggling, we are in a global pandemic after all. Early miscarriage and its impact just isn’t taken seriously enough, as I unfortunately found out.

I hope my next blog post after this will be fun, happy, quirky and colourful! I have started planning one, it involves lot's of flowers! This ones a bit deep and intense, sorry!

Again It's a long one! So feel free to just go straight to 'The work' that comes after The story section!

The story

Birth and creation of life is amazing, I find it all incredible. Although it hasn’t been something I’ve put much thought into over the last few years as I have always been in the mind set that my daughter Deryn would be my only child. We had an unplanned home birth, as my contractions where 20 seconds apart as soon as they started and they lasted a few hours, it was all very intense so I couldn’t be moved… but I would go through it everyday for her if I had to. To me she is the greatest creation.

I’ve had a few conversations with people about why I didn’t want another child. However something changed one day, am not sure what. My age maybe or Deryns age perhaps but my brain just decided I didn’t have a choice anymore and that we needed to make our family bigger and Deryn would be an amazing older sister. I tried to fight it, (A LOT) and every now and again the feeling would go away, until it just wouldn’t anymore. Also we are in a lockdown I could spend more time working from home so the sickness would be easier to handle. I knew that I wouldn’t want to take full maternity leave so again knowing that I can work from home when needed made my decision easier. We were excited by the idea, I decided that if we were going to do it there was no point in waiting. It took a little while but I became pregnant, I knew quite fast as I felt my body make really early changes, like it did with Deryn. I had to wait a few more weeks before I could take the test. But when you know you just know, and the love is instant. The day came and it was time for a test, it was positive. I knew I was pregnant but I still couldn't believe my luck I was really happy and a little smug, I was getting impatient so to have my positive tests felt amazing.

On Tuesday the 26th of January I woke up and discovered that I was bleeding, I didn’t know it at the time but it would become the worst experience of my life. The miscarriage itself was earth shattering, but the physical pain I felt was extreme and really unexpected. I wasn’t mentally prepared for what was about to happen. When I noticed I was bleeding I panicked. I didn’t know what I was meant to do, so I rang the doctors and asked to make an appointment. I was asked some questions and told I would get a ring back in a few hours. I relaxed a bit and decided to go to work, told myself it’s probably just spotting, people get that all the time, I’m really healthy and I shouldn’t be worried. So I arrived at work, we were doing a time-lapse and I had been looking forward to this for a while. I set up and we got to work, it was good to take my mind off what was going on.

Then the pain started, It wasn’t that bad at first. Soon after this my phone started to ring, I felt like I could breathe again. I answered relieved that I could make an appointment to get everything checked out, and find out for sure what was going on with my body and my baby. I didn’t get to speak to a doctor despite when ringing for help I explained my situation a few hours before. I had a student doctor, or nurse I can’t remember that day was messy. And I get it everyone needs to learn, she was really nice too, young. She sounded just as much in over her head as I felt, she explained that I wouldn’t be able to have a scan and that a midwife or doctor wouldn’t see me as I wasn’t 6 weeks pregnant yet. Unfortunately the advice was to rest, keep an eye on my self, if the pain or bleeding gets too bad to ring back and take another test in a week to see if I was “still pregnant” I let out a nervous laugh and she apologised. I thanked her for her time and went back to work. I decided to carry on what I was doing. I was wearing a mask so that made not looking gutted easier, maybe I was in shock. I asked a co-worker for advice on how to handle the situation that I had unexpectedly found myself in with needing time off, I wanted as few people as possible to know what was going on. This helped and I felt like I could breathe enough to make some plans, because I really didn't know what I was meant to do. I finished off my work calmly and went home frustrated, sad and angry. When I got home I went to bed. By this time I knew exactly what was happening, as the pain was worse and had spread to my back, so I cried a little and fell asleep.

The days that followed got more stressful, I was not expecting the pain to get THAT bad. After my phone conversation with the very nice but slightly in over her head trainee doctor or nurse I was left feeling that it was “really early” so the pain would be over quickly and I got into the mindset that it will just be like a period and I’ll just deal with it. I can try again next month, get pregnant again fast. This didn’t help in fact I think thats why I ended up in so much discomfort, I didn’t deal with any mental of physical pain, I let myself be a bit grumpy while telling myself it was “just something that happens”. I tried to get on with my 30th birthday, tried to do some of the work I’d been hired to do by a local food company, write a blog post, play with my daughter and just get on with it, this all exhausted me.

By Sunday the pain had got to bad to pretend it wasn’t there anymore, I couldn't keep telling people I was fine because I wasn't. I don’t really know how to describe it. A pressure pushing down on my body, squeezing around my stomach and a burning in my back that throbbed with every movement. I also couldn’t eat anything, I just wasn’t hungry. On Monday morning it was time for me to retake the test to see if I was “still pregnant” it was negative. I wasn�