Pregnant after miscarriage - Lara's story

Lara’s first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and she found this a very lonely experience with others finding it hard to acknowledge her grief.

'I felt terrified that something bad was going to happen'

She had some counselling through occupational health at work because she was feeling so low about it, and when she became pregnant again five months later she was extremely anxious about losing this pregnancy too.   

“In the first pregnancy I remember being so thrilled and excited when I got the positive pregnancy test, but in the second pregnancy it wasn’t like that at all, I was quite frightened, anxious, tearful and very worried about it. A lot of the triggers were the scans because I found out the first time I had miscarried at a scan. I felt terrified that something bad was going to happen. I felt really anxious just being back in the same hospital, it brought the memories back. It was a really slow 12 weeks. I’d be worried every day, like I’d be worried if I didn’t feel any symptoms, didn’t feel sick enough.”

Although in her first pregnancy Lara and her husband had agreed not to tell anyone until 12 weeks, in this pregnancy she found it helpful to tell her parents and manager right away and to have their support.

She found that talking honestly about her feelings with husband helped too, although it was difficult at first because he didn’t share her anxieties or her constant awareness of being pregnant.

“When you’re pregnant it’s really hard to forget you’re pregnant even for a minute, you just feel pregnant all the time, whereas my partner would go to work and forget about it, it was very easy for him to switch off from it. My husband really wanted to be happy straight away, he wanted to talk about baby names and plans for the future, whereas I just wanted to shut it off and not talk about it.”

At the booking in appointment the midwife asked Lara about a history of depression and she told them that she’d had some counselling but it was linked to the miscarriage rather than general depression.

She appreciated the midwife’s willingness to sit and listen to her talk about this.

After the 20 week scan showed everything was okay, Lara began to relax and she went on to have a healthy baby.

“The nicest piece of advice was what someone gave to me on an anonymous forum: ‘Be kind to yourself’. You need to be kind to yourself and let yourself feel however you feel, because that’s how it is.”