The trouble with pregnancy loss.

“…anything less than medical intervention was ever going to have the power to alleviate the debilitating and exhausting anxiety that had its firm grip on me”.  

Lyndsey Morritt

The above is a quote from my book which I wrote when exploring the difficulties with returning to work following the loss of a pregnancy.

Unfortunately, after my second pregnancy loss, my mental health had spiralled so out of control it made a long-term return to work impossible.

The lack of concern for parents following pregnancy loss within the medical profession and society as a whole has its repercussions. Just waking up and showing up for myself each day was a huge undertaking in itself. To then go out into the big wide world and function soundly and effectively took every last bit of strength I could find.

But once the vicious cycle of anxiety has started it can gain momentum very quickly, leaving the parent spiralling out of control. Unless the parent is able to stick their hand out of the cycle to grab a solid, supportive object in order to steady themselves and break the cycle, they can be left spinning until they are left as little more than a crumpled shell of heartache and grief.

The anxiety I experienced changed the person I was. I don’t recognise the person that I was then. I am far more capable of life now than I was at that moment. Sometimes I wish that I could call the people up who only knew the ‘anxious and grieving me’ and explain to them that the person they knew then wasn’t me, it was someone different. That someone looked like me, shared my name and claimed to be me, but that wasn’t me.

The person I am now is me. The person who knows that pregnancy loss is hard, it’s traumatic and it’s ok to feel sad, hurt and lost. That it’s ok to ask for help. Anxiety itself is a form of pain that is often dismissed as just a word. It’s not just a word, it’s a state of being that should always be taken seriously and never dismissed.