Stylist & Tommy’s Every Loss Counts campaign

I'm proud to be part of the Stylist and Tommy’s Every Loss Counts campaign. Here's my story, or just a small part of it. Not easy to share but important to do so.

"Parenting after loss was hard. I felt like I somehow I wasn't a natural mother.

In 2015 I had an ectopic pregnancy, which is when a fertilised egg implants itself outside of the womb. I’d had a bit of bleeding but thought it was normal. It was only when my friend suggested I get checked out that I went to a clinic.

That piece of advice saved my life. I was rushed into emergency surgery because my fallopian tube had ruptured – it was treated as a cold, clinical medical situation without any care for the fact that I’d lost a baby.

My next pregnancy ended in miscarriage and I absolutely crashed: I had PTSD, anxiety, and could barely leave the house or see people. A few months later, I had another ectopic pregnancy and by this point I was angry. I don’t even feel like I really grieved, I was just so pissed off that this was happening. The cherry on the cake? When I said to my GP that I was ready for investigations after losing three pregnancies, they told me the ectopic pregnancies ‘didn’t count’. I thought, how dare you tell me my babies didn’t count.

I then went to a private fertility clinic and after very intensive IVF, I was lucky enough to have my son. Parenting after loss is really hard. I felt like I somehow wasn’t a natural mother – a weird link between not being able to carry my other babies to full term and needing so much medical intervention to conceive and give birth, then not being able to settle my son. We now have a wonderful relationship and I feel very much recovered, but those feelings can still crop up.

I found work a real haven during my fertility struggles. It became a place where I could be more than just ‘a woman having miscarriages all the time’; where I was good at something. It’s why I trained to become a coach, so now I help companies become fertility-friendly and advise women who are working through pregnancy loss. It feels like I’m doing something positive with my pain
– coaching from the scar, not the wound."

The Every Loss Counts campaign, and the women who support it alongside me, will
💔 offer free, expert-led advice and real women’s stories to help you navigate pregnancy loss or support a loved
🇬🇧 encourage the government to reintroduce the Miscarriage Bill
🗒 strive to record all losses
🤝 create more empathetic work places

You can read the stories of the other wonderful women who are part of the campaign here.