Pregnancy After Loss

“Is this your first pregnancy?”

I found myself asking this question in a pregnancy yoga class recently and felt so frustrated with myself immediately after.

Well… this is my first pregnancy until this point replied my student. But it’s not my first pregnancy.

I remember feeling so frustrated and at a loss with this question myself when I was pregnant with Lucca. Having had an abortion at 13 weeks in a previous pregnancy I had answered this question in exactly the same way many times.

Is this your first pregnancy?

No it’s not my first pregnancy…but I hope it will be my first baby?

No it’s not my first pregnancy I’ve been pregnant before.

I lost the baby. I had a termination, an abortion.

No follow up. No acknowledgement of how this previous pregnancy may affect this current pregnancy. I wonder if the person who asks me judges me. Do i judge myself still. No room for nuance. No room for a story, an explanation. Do I need to explain myself. So little understanding or empathy anyway and so many assumptions. And yet I do want to be heard.

I could say ‘yes’ it’s my first pregnancy. It doesn’t seem to change the way in which I am treated afterwards regardless. But I feel like it’s too important. I need to witness and have my other pregnancy, my other baby, heard and seen.

Pregnancy after loss can be so challenging. The first trimester a particularly lonely place. Every time I wiped I checked for blood. The 12 and 20 week scans a place of anxiety - knowing now that things could go wrong when previously I’d just been excited to see the baby on the screen. Feeling nervous to buy anything for the baby and sometimes feeling alienated from those that have never experienced loss in pregnancy before and how blithely they seemed to go through pregnancy. I even felt at times that my anxiety or concern wasn’t welcome, I couldn’t talk about loss without fear of distressing the person in front of me or that it might only be welcome in certain spaces. In reality 1 in 3 pregnancies end in loss. Can we talk about loss and life? Can we hold space for both and at the same time?.

So what could be a better question? Perhaps just ‘have you been pregnant before?’ I’d love your thoughts. let me know. xxx