Fertility Focus - ELLE explores the myriad experiences of fertility, from surrogacy and miscarriage to hyperfertility and baby loss
I was on a bus when everything changed. A hot, crowded journey at rush hour, a gush of blood. I got off at my stop and walked home in the dark. It might be all right, I thought. It might be nothing. But when I went to the bathroom there it was, a bloom of red. I was seven weeks pregnant, and I was bleeding.
When you experience a miscarriage, you carry it with you into the future. As I sat waiting to be called in for the scan that would confirm what I already knew deep down – an embryo with no heartbeat – I felt the ground shift beneath me. I had entered a landscape I came to think of as ‘almost-motherhood’: a place characterised by not-knowing, waiting, wanting and wondering. And even when you’ve left that place, when your story has some closure, it leaves a mark.
For six years I tried to have a baby. I had three miscarriages, an ectopic pregnancy, and two rounds of IVF before, in May 2020, my son was born. I feel exceptionally privileged to have him. But as my son approaches his second birthday, as I edge closer to 40 than 30 and many of my contemporaries are having second or third children, I have begun to find myself gazing longingly at newborns again. It’s time to consider seriously the question of whether or not to try for another baby.
Whether, in other words, to return to that uncertain landscape of almost-motherhood.
On one level, of course, this question raises the same issues whether your route to parenthood the first-time round was straightforward or fraught. We live in a time of great social inequality, of war and pandemic, of climate crisis. Meanwhile childcare costs in Britain are sky-high, and there are, for women disproportionately, significant financial and career implications around having and raising children – an indication, perhaps, of the value our society places (or doesn’t) on motherhood, in all its forms.
But when you know what pregnancy loss feels like, or the frustration of infertility, the prospect of doing it all over again can also spark visceral anxiety. Pregnancy is a full-body experience, whatever the outcome. I was not prepared, initially, for the physicality of miscarriage, the physicality of grief, the physicality of trying. I gave myself over to a single desire – to have a child – for so many years that after my son was born I was almost giddy with liberation.
Now it seems strange to consider throwing my body back into the fray when it feels I’ve only just got it ‘back’. For the first time in the better part of a decade I’m not trying to conceive, not pregnant, not recovering from miscarriage or surgery, not so sleep-deprived that I can’t see straight, not breastfeeding. Am I ready to relinquish that freedom, knowing what I know, knowing how hard-won a pregnancy can be and yet how quickly it can be lost, knowing that everything that happens, or doesn’t, will be felt and weathered, by my body?
And, crucially: am I ready to do it all over again with a toddler in tow?
For me, another pregnancy is most likely to be achieved via IVF, which means spending thousands of pounds. Even if my partner and I can come up with the money, is it responsible to spend on trying to get pregnant again, when we already have one child to whom we could divert our resources? And what if it doesn’t work, or if I miscarry again? How might I explain the weight of loss, the mess of it? My son will still need my care and attention and energy, whatever else is happening.
Sometimes I feel guilty even pondering these questions. I got what I wanted: should I not leave it at that? This is compounded by a murky combination of maternal ambivalence and the narrative of unqualified gratitude that often surrounds so-called ‘rainbow babies’. When you’ve struggled so long to have a baby, when you’ve put yourself physically and emotionally through the ringer to have one, how can you express your doubts and frustrations? You wanted this: I’ve said this to myself, viciously, in moments of difficulty during motherhood. But raising a child is hard, no matter how you got there. I’ve felt myself drowning at times, exhausted, nerves frayed, my sense of self – and self-worth – utterly decayed by the act of mothering.
You wanted this, I tell myself. But do I want it again?
The truth is that I would like a second child. But I’m intimately aware that I may not be able to have one, and that colours my decision.
While almost-motherhood is a stagnant place, it can be a hopeful one, too. When I contacted our fertility clinic recently to ask, hypothetically, which tests I’d need to arrange if we were to undergo another round of IVF, I felt a familiar thrill akin to homesickness. I know this place, I thought. My body knows this place. It's a space when things can go either way, when your life can be mapped out in different directions.
Looking back, I'm able to see jut how much of my pregnancy with my son was fraught. How I would rush to the bathroom multiple times a day to check for blood. Or how I'd count kicks obsessively, Google every fear, lie awake at night and try to convince myself it would all be okay despite knowing there was so much I couldn't anticipate nor prepare for. But the not-knowing that characterises almost-motherhood characterises so much of motherhood, too.
As I look to the future, I regularly wonder how I'll bear all that unknowing again. I don’t know the answer. But I also know, better than I did all those years ago, that I'm strong enough to try.
Miranda Ward's book Adrift is out now.
The Miscarriage Association offers support to people who have lost a baby. Contact their helpline on 01924 200 799 or email the charity info@miscarriageassociation.org.uk if you have been affected by any of the issues addressed in this article.
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