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EPISODE 12: Miscarriage, Grief and Pregnancy After Loss with Sarah Davidson
1.2k Plays1 year ago
Today we share a deeply moving episode featuring the incredible Sarah Davidson, known as @spoonful_of_sarah on Instagram and host of the @seize_the_yay podcast.
Sarah generously opens up about her experience, navigating the challenging terrain of early pregnancy loss and her current pregnancy after loss. Her story is a testament to resilience and hope, offering solace and encouragement.
This episode beautifully explores themes of grief, communication, and moving forward as a couple, offering valuable insights for anyone on a similar journey.
At Pink Elephants, we recognise and validate the diverse experiences within the realm of pregnancy loss. Whether you’re facing recurrent losses or embarking on the hopeful journey after a single loss, this episode aims to foster empathy and understanding.
Get in touch with Sarah: https://instagram.com/spoonful_of_sarah?igshid=NGVhN2U2NjQ0Yg==
EARLY PREGNANCY LOSS SUPPORT
If you or someone you know has experienced miscarriage or early pregnancy loss, please know you are not alone.
- For crisis support, please call Lifeline - 13 11 14.
- Access all our support
- Connect with Peer Support
- Join Online Communities
- Emotional Support Resources
- Follow @pinkelephantssupport
STACEY JUNE LEWIS
If you’d like to reach out to Stacey for counselling she is currently taking new clients. Find out more via her Website or Instagram.
You can also follow her personal Instagram account where she shares some of her lived experience.
JOIN THE MISCARRIAGE REBELLION
Pink Elephants believe everyone deserves support following the loss of their baby.
We have been providing support to many ten's of thousands of people for nearly 8 years, raising funds through generous donors. We now need ongoing Government support to empower our circle of support.
We are calling on the Government to provide us with $1.6million over 4 years to help bridge the gap. Sign our petition.
Early pregnancy loss is not just a private grief, but a national issue that requires collective empathy, awareness, and action. By recognising and addressing this, we can make meaningful change in the lives of 100,000+ women who experience early pregnancy loss every year.
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Transcript
Introduction to Early Pregnancy Loss Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Miss Coach Rebellion. I'm Sam Payne, CEO and co-founder of the Pink Elephant Support Network. And I'm Stacey June Lewis, counsellor, psychotherapist and broadcaster. This podcast is where we share stories of many Australians who have lost their babies to early pregnancy loss.
00:00:21
Speaker
With evidence and empathy, we unpack the shame, blame and stigma and the lack of support that many face. This is a loss that has been silenced for too long. We deserve better. We are here to normalise the conversation. And we're here to make lasting change.
Sarah Davidson's Journey with Pregnancy Loss
00:00:37
Speaker
On today's episode of the miscarriage rebellion, we have Sarah Davidson, as some of you may know from at sees the A on Instagram. She really is so beautiful and generous in her sharing. We want to acknowledge upfront that within the space of a year, Sarah has gone through an early pregnancy loss that was drawn out over a period of weeks, which not many of you have gone through. And then she moved into a subsequent pregnancy after loss, which she's still in now.
00:01:03
Speaker
This may not be the episode for you if you are someone who is going through a recurrent pregnancy loss after loss. But for those of you who've gone through pregnancy loss and are currently in that trying to conceive again or early stages of pregnancy after loss, this really is a beautiful episode to listen to.
Understanding Miscarriage and Resilience
00:01:21
Speaker
I think it's important that Pink Elephant that we share that the majority of you that experience a miscarriage will go on to have a healthy full-term pregnancy in that subsequent pregnancy after loss.
00:01:33
Speaker
And it's not to compare journeys. They're all incredibly individual. Some of us will have recurrent pregnancy loss, like myself. We'll be in that unlucky 1% where we go again and again and we lose another baby and the heartbreak and the grief of that and the resilience to pick yourself up again and to go again.
00:01:51
Speaker
need to be validated, need to be supported and need to be empathised with. Similarly, we need to balance that by also sharing again that the majority of people that we support will have one miscarriage, which they are very entitled to grieve the loss of that baby being met with all of the empathy, validation and support that you truly deserve.
Conceiving: Initial Hopes and Influences
00:02:10
Speaker
They will go on and they will have a healthy pregnancy straight after and that pregnancy will lead to a baby in their arms. I want to acknowledge that this is a journey that we share where we've got a loss and a subsequent pregnancy after loss within the time frame of a year. It's a really beautiful episode. Many themes will be shared through this episode around how a couple decide to navigate this grief together and how they move forward, how they communicate outwardly what's happening to them.
00:02:36
Speaker
And I'd think that you'll get a lot from it. So I'll leave you. And without further ado, we'll get started with Sarah Davidson from at CCA. I'm incredibly grateful to have you here today, Sarah, to share your experience of pregnancy loss and your current experience of pregnancy after loss.
00:02:52
Speaker
I know how hard it can be to share these experiences, but I firmly believe that the more we do, the more we break the silence and we remove the shame and the stigma that we know is still commonly associated with miscarriage or early pregnancy loss. So what I'd love to do is just get started and if you can give the listeners today an overview of your experience of your loss earlier this year.
Early Pregnancy Thrills and Challenges
00:03:15
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. And I absolutely agree. I think it took me a little while to be ready to share and to work out the right words and how I actually felt it all. It's such an emotional roller coaster. But now I have started talking a little bit more freely. The response you get shows just how many women out there feel really isolated or feel
00:03:41
Speaker
just to hear that someone has been through something similar I think can provide so much light in a very difficult and dark time. So congratulations on what you're doing too. I think it's so important and it's a privilege to be here. So we started trying
00:03:56
Speaker
We sort of i came off the pill i've been on the pill for a very long time as a precursor i was a dancer when i was younger with the chile belly and you can just get slapped on it very early on and it was only after we got married about four years ago that i sort of start to think well it's gonna take my body a little bit of time i don't even know what my normal cycle is.
00:04:15
Speaker
if i have one so i i came off it about two years ago thinking like let's just let my cycle restore and we weren't not trying but we weren't really actively trying uh for for quite a while my father-in-law got quite sick and my husband was back and forth from tazi so it was probably around
00:04:32
Speaker
the end of last year that we properly started trying to work out when I was ovulating. I had very long cycles that they'd regulated, but to about 50 to 60 days. So we were just stabbing in the dark, so to speak. And very excitedly ended up getting pregnant within two months, naturally. No idea when that had happened, but just sort of we had our background is I'm adopted from South Korea, so I have
00:05:02
Speaker
no biological medical history or information on fertility. And my husband's mum, so my mother-in-law, is also adopted. So we have quite an incomplete background. And because of that, we decided to consult a fertility specialist much earlier, I think, than a lot of people probably would.
00:05:22
Speaker
Just to get the background baseline testing so we booked in for that around november when we thought we were starting to try we couldn't get into january.
Navigating Miscarriage Challenges
00:05:32
Speaker
By the time the appointment came around i thought she's gonna ask if i've done a test or if i am pregnant i'm just gonna take one.
00:05:39
Speaker
And I was pregnant, which is so wild because I was completely not expecting that to have been so quick and so possible in such a short amount of time without knowing any of the information. So went along to the appointment. It was incredibly exciting. We were very, very early at the time. Didn't we sort of had a preliminary scan and it was about four weeks. So couldn't really say anything.
00:06:05
Speaker
Then two weeks later, we had our dating scan. That was around six weeks, and we couldn't see a heartbeat, but the specialist was sort of like, that's very normal. It's very early, but the gestational sac isn't growing as large as we would like for this stage, but it's very early days.
00:06:26
Speaker
come back in a week. So at seven weeks, we came back, and by then, they'd sort of expected a lot more growth than they saw. Again, we didn't have a heartbeat, and they had sort of changed the chances of a viable pregnancy to around, I think they'd changed it to 70, 30, that it wouldn't go ahead, but not certain enough to call it a day.
00:06:50
Speaker
And by eight weeks, so we then ended up just having ultrasounds every seven days, and it was so harrowing, so difficult. Time has never gone more slowly. And eight weeks, they changed it to sort of 80-20. And no, actually, sorry, by eight weeks, it was 90% not going to be viable because we never did get that heartbeat.
00:07:16
Speaker
The really difficult part then was I had continued to grow, but.
00:07:24
Speaker
there was no chance that it would actually become a viable baby. So the advice was if you want to wait until a natural miscarriage, you have that choice, absolutely. But there are just some people's bodies who kind of hold on for a little bit longer and it could be another month. And by then I'd had a lot of nausea symptoms. I started to have quite disruptive
00:07:48
Speaker
indications physically of pregnancy and was not coping very well with that because often the symptoms are much more justified by, I'm growing a baby, but because by then we knew that it wasn't going to be viable, it was very difficult to sort of have this open-ended, you could be sick without an actual viable pregnancy for maybe a month and then it could just hit you at any time. So the advice we were given then is to have a DNC operation.
00:08:14
Speaker
And I couldn't get into that for another two and a half weeks. So that was another fortnight and a half of being pregnant and knowing it wouldn't
Coping with Uncertainty in Daily Life
00:08:24
Speaker
go ahead. So it was a particularly difficult sort of two months of just a lot of waiting and a lot of just not really knowing where to orientate your emotions, not really understanding how common it was at that early stage because you just don't hear about it.
00:08:42
Speaker
I think as soon as you open up to other people, they return their stories. But at the time, it just felt very foreign, very scary. I can imagine as well, because before you'd had this experience, you probably heard of the word risk courage.
00:09:01
Speaker
But the society, in a way, describes much courage in movies and what you hear of it. It's quite fast. It's quick. It's something that happens. It's almost like a hot bloody mess. This kind of rap depiction is what we associate with it. So then when you have got this long drawn out process, that's not a narrative that you've maybe had in your head before.
00:09:20
Speaker
and the challengingness of it as well, like holding space for feeling so very pregnant, the nausea, and then knowing that this is not going to end. How did you manage to kind of balance that every day? How did you manage to get through that time?
00:09:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question because I definitely did have this idea of miscarriages as a natural thing that comes on often as a surprise, which is of course absolutely devastating and can throw your world upside down. But I thought you'd experience it sort of out of the blue and then you would know that your body was not pregnant anymore and then you could start building back towards
00:09:58
Speaker
some light, maybe with the reassurance that my body can start a cycle again. I thought there'd be a bit of a line in the sand and then you could move on. Not that that makes it any easier or better, but that's what I had thought. If I had a miscarriage, that's how it would go.
00:10:15
Speaker
I almost think in the earlier days because we did have so many scans and the percentages were kind of laid on us gently like it started at fifty fifty then it went seventy thirty then eighty twenty and it was agonizing but at the same time.
00:10:30
Speaker
We never sort of had one really positive scan that was like, yes, this is a viable pregnancy. And then suddenly it was all taken away. It was a gradual information sharing process. So that, it was very, very difficult, but that helped us process it in those stages. I think it was once I had decided it is absolute, you know, medicine was like, this is absolutely not going to go ahead.
00:10:54
Speaker
and you've booked in the surgery but you can't have it yet that was when it was just everyday just felt like a waste nothing was towards anything that we didn't feel like there were any steps that were left i just was in this weird waiting game and because at that time we hadn't shared it with anyone.
00:11:10
Speaker
That's when I think the true isolation of the experience really comes out. Time has honestly never gone so slowly. I just, I honestly don't actually recall much of how I made the time pass. I think I just threw myself into work because I knew that the only choice I had was just to get through it as quickly as I could. And sitting around, I wanted to give myself the space physically, but mentally that
00:11:36
Speaker
sitting in stillness was actually not very good for me. It's almost like I want to distract myself. I need to keep busy. I need to do because as soon as I sit still, I think about this and I'm not ready to think and process just yet. We see that a lot. Yeah. Keeping busy. And there's often again, another misperception that we straight away need leave from work. Okay. And some people do. And that's where we fought for lethal loss and got legislative change. We want to, but what we need to actually see is flexible policies from workplaces.
00:12:05
Speaker
so that meet the individual's needs. Because some people, and I would be more like yourself, I wanted to carry on. I needed just to kind of get through it. And that for me was to keep busy and keep myself distracted. And I think a lot of people resonate from that. Again, this perception of society that we sit around and a lot of us are intuitive grievers where we're outwardly crying, not always. A lot of us wear brave faces and carry on with things because it's the only way we can get through it.
00:12:30
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think I didn't even reach the stage of crying. I honestly don't even think I cried until after we'd had the procedure. I had the closure of, okay, it's actually happened. My body has a chance now to recover from this and we can build towards, you know, whatever. I didn't let myself have that moment of release because there was no release yet. I was still pregnant. I was still stuck in this
00:12:53
Speaker
chapter that wasn't going ahead and for someone who's quite a control freak and even when I'm relinquishing control it's often surrendering to fate. I had neither. I was neither controlling the situation nor was there any chance that fate would do anything different so it was just limbo. I think a lot of women who have since read our story and reached out limbo is the word that comes up when you're in that
00:13:16
Speaker
It hasn't happened yet but i know it's going to and what do i do with my life and it really is just a day by day minute by minute what gets you through it's a survival strategy and on the inside i was just a shell of a human but on the outside it helped me to seem normal and for people to treat me normally so that i didn't have to really. Think much about it and could just suddenly get to the end of that two weeks ago i made it this is gonna be awful but at least it's some kind of closure that can allow us to.
00:13:46
Speaker
to let out our feelings and then start to rebuild.
Returning to Work and Finding Strength
00:13:50
Speaker
So in the end, I actually didn't make it to the end of the two and a half weeks because I was just so unwell. And I think I ended up, I ended up going to emergency and just saying, I've got a procedure booked in. I think it was in a week's time. My body is not, my body and mind are not okay. And they actually ended up doing it a week early.
00:14:10
Speaker
And it was a day procedure. I didn't even stay overnight. It takes 15 minutes. It was the actual surgery part. I felt very clinical about it. I think as a protection mechanism, you just sort of like, let's just heal physically. And then I had a couple of days of
00:14:26
Speaker
physical concentrating on my physical being and then I knew the mental part would sort of hit me and it was International Women's Week so I went back to work like two days later with a nappy on I went straight into back-to-back speaking gigs and again looking back I'm like oh did I really need to do that but I actually think
00:14:47
Speaker
It allowed me the space to distract myself just enough, but also, it was the most significant International Women's Week I've ever had, because in my brain, I was just like, women are warriors. The shit we go through behind closed doors, nobody knows. Yeah, 100%. I remember reading your Instagram post. I don't know what it was post, but you said it was about, you have the really beautiful dress, which to me, you're like, I had a nappy on here. Oh, yeah. Surgery.
00:15:16
Speaker
I couldn't wear pants, I had a suit, and I was like, this is not going on and it's white, so that's not happening. The invisibleness of it, right? The part that, and I think there's that balancing that duality in the complexity of keeping it private when I need it to be private because the thing I'm going through and I almost need my mind and my heart to catch up to where I'm at before I can wrap the language around it, share it with others to then find those connections. You touched on it earlier and I'm going to ask you more around that, the language.
00:15:46
Speaker
that you said you had to wait till you'd found the language to speak about it. What was that kind of process like for you? Yeah, that's a really interesting one because I think I'm usually quite a real-time sharer. Like the nature of social media allows me to share what I'm doing in real time and I find that most of the time that means that my storytelling is more authentic than if I sat on it for a little while and let myself
00:16:09
Speaker
curate what I wanted to say and that's just my personal approach to it that I actually prefer to share things in real time because firstly when I look back I think oh that's how I really felt in that moment but also then I don't look back and think oh I really edited what I thought or I'd forgotten the details and I actually sometimes get people saying you share really vulnerably like does that feel like an obligation is that a burden or you know you don't need to share that much I personally find
00:16:38
Speaker
It a really rewarding way to use the platform. So it was unusual for my response this time to be like, I just am not ready. I wasn't ready to put words to it for my own feelings. I wasn't ready for people to respond to me. I wasn't ready to hear other people's stories. You also, it's funny. It's such a.
00:16:58
Speaker
chapter-based process where you, it's almost like the, well, it is like the stages of grief where there's a chapter where you don't want to hear about it and you don't want to talk about it. Then there's a chapter where you want to read everything about it. Then there's a chapter where you want to talk to every woman ever who has been through it. And you've just got to let yourself evolve through those stages as they come. And I'd usually don't allow myself that much time to process something because I feel obliged to say what's happening, but I needed to
00:17:24
Speaker
Firstly, do some research on what had happened.
Communicating the Experience
00:17:29
Speaker
Why? Whether it was you go through the whole, is it my fault? Or is it our biology? Or is it literally just the statistics? We got the product of the DNC investigator. There was no reason, no medical scientific reason. We both have great fertility test results. So just sometimes the math doesn't math.
00:17:53
Speaker
And so that took a while to figure out. And then I wanted to, before I shared, have sensitivity for people who did indicate an issue. And then there were just so many aspects that I wanted to feel really educated in myself. I wanted Nick to be really comfortable with it as well because he was even more private than I was. And I think that's another thing that can be really hard is two partners are experiencing things in a
00:18:20
Speaker
parallel way but I'm dealing with all these physical symptoms. He feels like any reaction he has is inadequate and not worthy to be spoken because he didn't have to have surgery but at the same time he's grieving the loss of what he thought his year would be like and really he sort of felt like, I hope that I didn't make him feel like this but he sort of felt like he couldn't say anything because
00:18:42
Speaker
I was the one who was ill. And so I think we wanted to sort out that. And I go straight to sharing, and he is the opposite. And he said, I really don't want my friends to start asking me about this. I'm not ready to fill these questions. So we did a lot of research together. And then it took me a little while to share, even with very close friends.
00:19:03
Speaker
And that gradual smaller circle allowed me to get used to just having a conversation about it, even deciding, do I say miscarriage? Do I say pregnancy loss? Do I say I'm sad or do I be stoic? Do I even know if they've had one or not? And how do I broach it? It's so familiar to me now.
00:19:26
Speaker
pregnancy, regardless of how it goes, is a whole new world of, it's like learning a new language. It's a new landscape. And I sort of was dealing with both sets of language at the same time. It's like pregnancy language and unsuccessful pregnancy language together all at once. Um, even knowing how many weeks means what, like it was a lot to sort of sit on. So it took, uh, we had the surgery second of March and I didn't speak about it until
00:19:56
Speaker
May with very close friends and June, July on social media. I think that says a lot as well and I really like your approach. I find it quite balanced actually and quite wise in so many ways. Yeah, I really do. I feel like you kind of gave yourself the space that was necessary to process it but also for you and Nick to come to
00:20:16
Speaker
the same place to be ready and that's something that's really hard with grief because often we grieve differently. We often hear the partner's feelings of inadequacy and inadequacy in their grief because they don't feel like they've been the ones to go through it and that again is a misperception from society because they too do grieve like you said the future that he thought he was having over the next year with a baby in your family.
00:20:38
Speaker
And that was taken from him too. His grief is just as valid and worthy and we all react differently. So I think that it's really beautiful that you kind of acknowledge what you did and I'm hoping that listeners will hear some tips from that as well in ways that you can take time and do it when you're ready and not feel pressured by what society tells you. But I want to flip that a little bit now and spin forward a little bit to your current pregnancy.
Cautious Optimism in New Pregnancy
00:21:02
Speaker
which I'm so thrilled. Now that we reached out to you before you're pregnant again, and then I remember just seeing that news and just doing that happiness, that joy that we can carry because we know that what you've been through and there's so much love for this new pregnancy for you. How has this second pregnancy been for you and you talk about talking and sharing, how has that felt with this pregnancy for you as well?
00:21:28
Speaker
It's a really funny process to realize, and I think I was quite prepared for this, but to appreciate how much an earlier loss or an earlier struggle, I mean, some people don't even get to a first pregnancy and a loss, they just can't conceive and it takes them a really long time. But for whatever reason, I think if you've had any hiccups along the way, it does really influence the way that a successful pregnancy unravels for you. It's sort of, you're not as naive and you don't have that
00:21:57
Speaker
innocent excitement of just believing it'll all work out, which is good in a way in that you don't get your soul crushed if it doesn't because, you know, you're a lot more aware of the statistics. And I feel like almost, it's hard to know how to interpret statistics, but I felt once I knew how common miscarriages were,
00:22:16
Speaker
The realism is a sad thing. You don't want to have that in your brain too much, but it also means that you're just more realistic. You're so much more balanced approaching any time you get a positive test or any time anything happens. Whereas the first time, we were just all in. We were like, oh my God, we're pregnant. We told our family the first day I got the test. And I love that I had that experience of the totally unburdened, unhindered response the first time.
00:22:43
Speaker
And i don't i'm not sad that we didn't get that the second time but it's definitely obvious how different we had differently we treated the first. 18 weeks i would even say i think some people really lament that it then makes them quite cynical the whole way along in the second one but.
00:23:01
Speaker
The way i view it is sort of like i should have been cynical that time like i should be in the first time and not in a bad way but just that. There are statistics i wasn't aware of and it would if anything did happen it would have made me a lot more able to cope with that.
Serendipity and a Second Pregnancy
00:23:17
Speaker
having not decided to go and buy everything at week five, like I kind of might have last time. So what was beautiful about it is we, again, very, very lucky in the scheme of things that my cycle came back within six weeks.
00:23:34
Speaker
which was a lot quicker than I had expected. It randomly regulated back from 50 to 60 days to 28 to 30 days. And I think that's quite common after any kind of procedure or miscarriage that your body resets in a really interesting way.
00:23:50
Speaker
So I had three very even normal cycles, which was great. The first one, I just gave my body a break. The second one, we tried ovulation induction, which was because I had never figured out when I was ovulating. And the doctors just sort of thought, if you don't know when your window is, you're really not equipped with what you need to make the most of those 48 hours or whatever the five days is.
00:24:17
Speaker
So we did one round of that and that wasn't successful, but I think again, it was very early and I was very intense about, they said we have to have relations on Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, like it was a bit much. And then we had a wedding overseas and we couldn't take the ovulation induction medication for that cycle on the plane. So we just said, let's just leave it and come back to it. We're being very intense for how quickly this happened. Let's just go to the wedding.
00:24:43
Speaker
And it worked out that i was ovulating on the weekend of the wedding which was also the weekend when the article came out in stellar magazine which was the first time that i had spoken about it. So at the same time as people saying get away from the daily grind go on holiday be warm be relaxed stop thinking about it so much.
00:25:01
Speaker
But also the closure of, oh my God, it's out and it's out in a way that I'm happy with the wording. We were both on board with how it was expressed. We were away from everyone as well, so we could process everyone's responses on our own time. And we were at a wedding celebrating love.
00:25:19
Speaker
like two weeks later we were pregnant. And it just, that timing is so funny to me that it was the closure weekend and a weekend of love and not really kind of overthinking trying. Yeah. It feels like the universe has you back that weekend. Yeah, it was so weird. Um, but from that first positive test, so I was testing every day from eight days post-opulation just
00:25:46
Speaker
Hopefully just being excited because I was like, oh, it was that weekend that I was ovulating. And so we knew very, very early and I knew not to get too excited, but I thought that's a great sign. My body can do it again. Wonderful. Didn't hold too many high hopes.
00:26:02
Speaker
But then the two weeks waiting for the six-week viability scan were, again, destruction.
Sharing Pregnancy News with Caution
00:26:08
Speaker
Had to just pretend. I almost ignored it completely. I just, we didn't talk about it. We didn't use the word pregnant. We didn't use the word baby. We just, we didn't tell any family. We then had the scan and heard the heartbeat for the first time, which was like, because we just never got to that stage the first time, that was a huge milestone of
00:26:28
Speaker
Okay, we've made it past where we did, and this has an inkling of viability, and yet still couldn't lean into it. Very excited. I think I told my mum, but we were just so much more hesitant the whole way along, and even the 12-week scan, which I thought would be our, okay, we've done a trimester. We've passed the NIP test. We've done all the things. We're good. Got to 12, and I was still like,
00:26:53
Speaker
I don't want to tell anyone. I don't want to get too excited. And we ended up, because I have quite a small belly, even though we actually have quite a big baby, apparently, which, again, is wild. I'm learning so much. I waited till 18 weeks to really tell people, because we just
00:27:11
Speaker
Just weren't ready for and and this one was much more dictated by Nick as well he was like I didn't say much earlier but it was really hard for me that we had told so many people and I would prefer that we just wait until we're feeling very very secure.
00:27:27
Speaker
And i was sort of happy given that no one could tell anyway it wasn't like there was any reason to rush. And i think it really is only in this last two weeks since people have known that we felt like we're not pretending like it's actually really happening but yeah a lot of hesitation a lot of worry and anxiety. But almost then the highs are a lot higher after every scan because it's so surreal that.
00:27:51
Speaker
How did it work this time? What? That's an actual child. And just hearing the heartbeat must have been such a magical moment. It was actually the week that our Golden Retriever passed away, which was very sudden, very unexpected. And I mean, if anyone follows him on Instagram, you'll know he was like our son. He's a very human dog.
00:28:12
Speaker
And in our brain, he just waited until we knew we had a heartbeat, and knew we were safe, and then passed on his little heartbeat to our new bundle of joy. I was such a mess that week. But the circle of life there was really, really lovely. Yeah, absolutely. And a grief there as well, right? A very real grief, Steve. I mean, you've had, in Mac, I remember his name, but how long was he with you? 12 years.
00:28:40
Speaker
huge amount of time. Whilst you're going through this as well. I love that feeling of transfer over. Yeah. But another funny symptom or not symptom, but kind of side effect of having a loss before is
00:28:58
Speaker
The more negative side effect is obviously that you're a bit paranoid and anxious and worried, which some couples are anyway, just because it's such a huge responsibility and a huge time in your body, and it's so unknown.
Gratitude for Pregnancy Symptoms
00:29:12
Speaker
But I think one of the really positive things that came out of it is how much perspective we have this time of you don't take a second of it for granted.
00:29:21
Speaker
Every symptom the nausea came back like a truck hitting me. I just didn't bother me as much because I sort of thought this is for something and anytime any discomfort happens it's in this context of but I'm growing a baby so like a who cares or you know.
00:29:41
Speaker
Small things that of course is so natural for all women to experience is so much body change like it's a it's the first time that you've seen your body like this and of course you put on a bit of weight because you're growing a human and Everything changes and I thought that and I haven't been able to exercise I thought that that would bother me or at least be a transition and it just hasn't been because I'm like
00:30:06
Speaker
My body's a miracle. It's got a baby in there. I want to get as big as I can. I want to make the best house that I possibly can. And that's purely because I think the exchange for those things feels a lot more in perspective than it was last time, I think. And that's it. It's perspective. So it's not a silver lining because there's no silver lining with Greece.
00:30:31
Speaker
And the one that you lost deserved to be great, and that experience is valid and unique in its own way. But one of the gifts in a future pregnancy, and when you finally end up with a baby in your arms, is this gift of perspective. Because you know, like, and again, we touched on it earlier as well, and I think it's a nice thread to follow, but the education piece and what you didn't know before.
00:30:50
Speaker
and what you'd like to know. And then there's difference between the two pregnancies, right? That initial pregnancy and that unburdened joy that you talked about. It's absolutely beautiful, and I experienced that as well. And then a subsequent pregnancy that doesn't have the same, but in a different way has more perspective and almost, I don't want to say a higher value, I want another word for that, but I think you know what I mean.
00:31:11
Speaker
you kind of will put up with things like, to me, now I've got a toddler who's 18 months and I'm putting up with no sleep still because she's such a bloody miracle. It's not fine, but it is fine. And it's that kind of context that you kind of end up with. I guess, going back to the education piece, so what you wish you need before about miscarriage and what you kind of knew after going through
Need for Accessible Miscarriage Support
00:31:35
Speaker
it. What do you feel about that? It's a really hard one because I
00:31:42
Speaker
definitely think that the statistics are so under appreciated and misunderstood, which means that the minute you do get thrown into the world of pregnancy loss or pregnancy complication, it hits you so hard because it's so new. But at the same time, I almost looking back, wouldn't wish that I necessarily knew anything differently before for the first time, because I think if it did go ahead,
00:32:11
Speaker
Without complication that it would have been beautiful to not need to know that information so i think sometimes we.
00:32:20
Speaker
In this day and age, the right to information or the need for information is such an entitlement. Like I think we think if there's information out there, we all need to know, we need to spread it really, you know, which we absolutely do. But I think we absolutely do when you need it or when you're in the right headspace to hear it or when you're in the situation. So I think more than thinking every pregnant woman or every trying couple needs to know these statistics upfront,
00:32:49
Speaker
Some people might think that you do need to know so that you're aware of what you're going into. Maybe if you are struggling, it helps to know that it doesn't happen as easily as you think it does. But I think if you do go ahead with a very complication-free pregnancy, it is lovely to not have to engage with any of those statistics the first time if you don't need to. So I wouldn't go back and tell myself all that stuff before the first time, but probably what I would hope is that it was more accessible once I did start to seek it out.
00:33:16
Speaker
Yeah, 100% and we agree with the same thing that when you look for that information that you can find trusted, relevant, credible, evidence-based information. Yeah, absolutely. And we hear that so much from the thousands of women and the partners that we support is that access to information when they need it is so important.
00:33:34
Speaker
And with their miscarriage belly and part of what we're doing is obviously, yes, we want to tell people stories that sit behind these statistics because we do need people to understand their experiences more. And through that, we'll invoke some empathy, but we want to incite action. So everyone that comes on the pod, we are asking the same thread question if you like. And that is if you could change one thing about the experience of pregnancy loss or miscarriage for others in the future, what would that be? Oh, that's a great one.
00:34:07
Speaker
I think it would just be that the minute you have dipped your toe into this world, that the pathway to learn more about it was a bit more clear, a little bit more accessible, a little bit less whispering here and there to sort of suss it out before you know where to look, the solo googling, the solo crying. I mean, I'm sure immeasurably better than it has been in generations past.
00:34:36
Speaker
There are certain circles where it is so unstigmatized, it's been the easiest thing to talk about ever. I also don't necessarily think that a lot of people's response to us has been, well, I think it's silly that people wait till 12 weeks because you want the support and everyone should just say it earlier. I didn't actually feel like I was pressured to not say it till 12 weeks. That was a very personal thing.
00:35:00
Speaker
That part, I don't mind, that it's nice to have a little secret. Nick and I loved no one else knowing. Both, you know, it was kind of nice to just deal with something through closed doors. I think it's just that when you do decide. So one of the biggest things is I think with.
Role of Health Professionals in Support
00:35:15
Speaker
You know the statistical statistics on cancers for example the reason why it's really useful to know those statistics in advance because often your behavior can change to avoid it so skin cancer it's like. Where sunscreen these statistics are inciting a behavior change that's positive for your future so i need to know about those before i get skin cancer so i can avoid it.
00:35:35
Speaker
I think with miscarriage, ours and so many others, there is no behavior you could have done differently. I couldn't have conceived under a different hour. I couldn't have eaten differently. I was fit. I was healthy. Nick was fit. He was healthy and we'd done all the pre-pregnancy trying tests. There was nothing we could have done differently.
00:35:57
Speaker
I don't think that knowing more beforehand would have helped if anything it would have scared us off too much so I would change that after you do need. To enter this world of information that it was made less scary less hidden yes and.
00:36:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think more normalised. Yeah, and for us at Pink elephants, we often talk about health professionals have a huge critical role to play there. And that is just a simple referral pathway to support. Because being a doctor or a nurse or a health professional says to you, here's where you go to for support when you've left the hospital or the practice.
00:36:36
Speaker
It also validates this as an experience that's worthy of support. And then that means you don't go to Google at three in the morning when you're feeling all these feelings and I'm unsure what I'm feeling. I'm not quite sure. And to your point, people have spoken to me about whispers. I had someone say to me, I've had one too, literally in a whisper.
00:36:52
Speaker
And I was like, hang on, why is it? And then I was like, oh, I meant to speak about this in whispers and we internalize all of those little things, right? Those cues. So I do agree with you that when it happens, if we can be given a clear referral pathway, thoughts and information around early pregnancy loss, then again, it's credible and evidence-based. That can be a huge difference in how you manage to go forward.
00:37:13
Speaker
on your journey. So, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Love that print. I've loved chatting with you today, Sarah, and I am super excited about what's coming for you and bringing your eyes all. It's not long now. We will wait with eager breath waiting for the announcement of baby. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our listeners before we kind of wrap up today?
00:37:36
Speaker
Oh, gosh. I think anyone listening who is earlier on in their journey, I guess, and particularly if it is not as smooth as you might've hoped, just to remind you that, I mean, it's mostly not smooth. It is an incredibly miraculous thing that two humans can make another human by themselves. That is wild.
00:38:03
Speaker
You know, it makes sense that it doesn't always happen straight away or easily. And I think it's really, really hard for people who are used to more effort equals more results to get used to more effort and more time doesn't necessarily equal more results. Like it's just this convoluted wild scientific thing that really will test your patients more than anything ever. But everyone gets there in a different way.
00:38:30
Speaker
There is so much medicine is incredible there are so many different ways just cuz your pathways in a smooth as you like doesn't mean you won't get there so just. Yeah i mean it's so easy for me to say trust it will work out it has worked out very quickly in both situations for us but still i think.
00:38:48
Speaker
There are so many success stories around that have taken much, much longer, much more intervention, and been much more complicated. And it does happen. So I just guess sprinkling baby dust on everybody.
Exploring Non-Traditional Family Building
00:38:59
Speaker
One hundred percent. And I think it's really important that we kind of share that message as well. Yes, there's lots of royally, incredibly complicated journeys, and we've shared a lot of them on this podcast.
00:39:08
Speaker
We don't want to imbalance it because the majority of people will have one pregnancy loss and then go on and have a healthy full-time pregnancy. That is the majority of people. So I think it's really important that that message is shared with an element of hope that if you're here and you've had one miscarriage, it doesn't mean you're going to go on and have more and more and more miscarriages. Actually, recurrent pregnancy loss is really rare. The majority of people will maybe have one loss and then move on and have a healthy full-time pregnancy.
00:39:34
Speaker
That's why it's been really important to show your stories. How many of these all, like, oh, well, you've had one, now it's all different, it's all fine because you're pregnant again. But I think the beautiful part that comes from your story is the acknowledgement of the grief of that loss, the way that you process that, and then how you've used that and you have this perspective with a different pregnancy now and a different baby in a different outcome. And I just think that's so beautiful to share. Thank you. I think also it was,
00:40:00
Speaker
hard for me to share before i had before i was pregnant i didn't want to be that person who waited until i had the happy ending before i spoke about it because it wouldn't be as relatable so i found that really therapeutic for myself but i also i can't believe i forgot to add this earlier i'm adopted so i have
00:40:18
Speaker
no preconceived preference to having a child one way or the other. Obviously pregnancy is a beautiful experience and we wanted to try as a first point of call, but I truly believe family is not just purely a blood and genetics thing. I mean, if anyone's met my mum, you would think, we think we're genetically related all the time. It happens all the time. I forget like 99% of the time, even though I'm completely Asian and she's completely Caucasian, it happens all the time. And you know, even small things like,
00:40:48
Speaker
people are so hung up on breastfeeding. I was formula fed, obviously, because I arrived when I was five months old. Like there are different ways to form a family as well that are not even related to pregnancy. So we obviously haven't even explored adoption for ourselves as yet, but it wouldn't have been a hard jump to do that either. And that has led to the most beautiful family for us. So there are, again, many, many ways to find your family.
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's important that we normalize all of and celebrate all of them as well. 100%. Thank you so, so much for coming on today. I'm so grateful. I think the listeners will get a lot of value from all of your wisdom. Thank you for having me.
00:41:34
Speaker
People don't talk about it, but it's happening behind closed doors, hidden behind smiling faces. There are so many people suffering in silence right now, unable to access the support that they need and deserve, simply because they don't even know that there is support available.
00:41:58
Speaker
The pink elephants community is made up of people from all over Australia. Some come from the big smoke, others from the bush. Some of us have heaps of friends and family around. Others have none. Some have lost babies at five weeks. Some had ectopic pregnancies.
00:42:21
Speaker
Some had multiple ultrasounds. Others only ever saw the two red lines on a positive pregnancy test. But we all have something in common. We have all lost a baby. We are all bereaved parents.
00:42:39
Speaker
There are estimated to be over 100,000 of us across Australia every single year. Please help us connect with these people to give them the support that they deserve. No one should have to lose a baby and be left on their own to navigate their grief. Help Pink Elephant support more bereaved parents. Visit pinkelephants.org.au
00:43:07
Speaker
Wow, that episode was truly beautiful.
Conclusion: Hope for the Future
00:43:11
Speaker
It's really important that we shine a spotlight and we share the experiences of all women because we know that all losses are individual. All of our journeys are individual, but they all deserve validation, empathy, and support.
00:43:25
Speaker
And I absolutely love that Sarah is now in a subsequent pregnancy after her loss and looking to welcome that baby in early next year, which is so, so exciting. But I know it may be hard for some of you to hear who are still on your experiences of early pregnancy loss.
00:43:40
Speaker
and maybe in the initial grief stages. But what we want to hopefully hear that you hear is that you hear that hell element of hope, that you know that the majority of people who experience a miscarriage do go on and have a healthy full-time pregnancy. In that next pregnancy, the majority of people do not have recurrent pregnancy loss, which is loss after loss.
00:44:01
Speaker
Most people may have one miscarriage and then they will move on and have a healthy full-time pregnancy. So I think that it's really important that we share many experiences of pregnancy loss and not just the ones of women who have gone through loss after loss and while that shines so much strength, courage and resilience to still put themselves up and go again and again after incredibly heartbreaking journeys. I also really want to validate the experience of women who've had one loss.
00:44:25
Speaker
And I love that with this, that Sarah really held that and she shared that so beautifully in the whole, she validated the experience of grief, the way her and Nikki went through that process to decide how to share and when to share and recognising each other's needs. That's really important. And then also how it impacted this current pregnancy and the perspective that she's been gifted from it. And again, acknowledging there's no silver lining with our journeys.
00:44:48
Speaker
But we can acknowledge the difference in subsequent pregnancies. And yes, there is anxiety. But also in other ways, there's this beautiful perspective that you have of just how precious this pregnancy is. I love that episode. Super grateful to Sarah coming on and shining a spotlight on what it's like to have an early pregnancy loss and then to move into a subsequent pregnancy after loss. Thank you so, so much. And we'll put all links to Sarah and at CCA in the show notes.
00:45:17
Speaker
Today's episode may have brought up some feelings for you that you need some support around. That's totally okay. Head to pinkelephants.org.au to find access to our circle of support, your safe space where you can be met with empathy and understanding throughout all of your experiences of early pregnancy loss. We're here for you. You are not alone. If you enjoyed listening to the miscarriage rebellion, please help us by leaving a five star review wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:45:47
Speaker
The miscarriage rebellion is a pink elephants podcast produced by our friends at three piece studio.