Yellow Light: Proceed With Caution

4 September 2018

Today is one of those days where the blog title is both a figurative and literal description of events. I am well aware that my openness about this topic will likely raise eyebrows and possibly unleash a load of derision and judgement, however it is also the state of my own mind. A topic which I question even being able to pull apart in my head; whether I am right to give it any attention at all. So here we are, pulling gently into the intersection of ideas and feelings, proceeding with caution.

May it be said at the outset that I am not writing this in the pursuit of sympathy. It is my intention to break down the barriers which prevent people from feeling free to speak about these so-called taboo subjects and leave them suffering with the burden of the “unsaid”.

I have talked in depth about miscarriage in past posts, documenting our painful experience in the aftermath of the initial scan in 2015. Three years since the loss of that pregnancy came and went in June this year, that tugging feeling of absence well and truly in place, despite the health and vigour of our now two-year-old son.

What I did not expect to be doing now was unpacking a subject even more taboo than miscarriage, and that’s the awkwardly named “chemical pregnancy”. I have struggled to talk about this at all, dragging along a barge-load of emotions the last few weeks, until deciding that I should do what I do best. Write about it and get the clutter out of my mind, working through it with words on the page instead of performing the endless mental obstacle course.

Chemical Pregnancy. What is it?

A chemical pregnancy is described as one which results in an early loss, prior to five to six weeks. From six weeks, when a gestational/yolk sac is visible on ultrasound, the official diagnosis of loss becomes early-stage miscarriage.

Despite common misconceptions, a chemical pregnancy is still a true pregnancy. Implantation has taken place: without it, there cannot be a detection of the hCG hormone which provides the result on your home test.

After a painful six months, battling the barricades of the NHS and waiting lists up the wazoo to have a scan-guided removal of my IUS because of the unacknowledged cock-up of a GP with its insertion, I was finally able to embark upon the terrifying journey of whether we could give our son a sibling.

Broadly glossing over the finer details, we conceived with eye-watering speed, something I genuinely had not anticipated, even given the rapid conception of the pregnancy which resulted in our loss, and indeed that which followed and was successful.

I was always incredibly sceptical of women who maintained they knew they were pregnant before taking the test.

I openly consume a crate of Humble Pie.

In the week preceding testing, I began experiencing symptoms. I wholly attribute the comprehension of these to the fact that I have had them with my two prior pregnancies, granted not this early. However it is commonly said that you become acutely more aware of your body’s progression in each pregnancy you experience, so perhaps this was why. I woke nauseated and lack lustre every morning for nine days. Each night, without fail, I fell victim to extremely vivid nightmares of a violent nature, something I struggled with every night with one or two exceptions for my 36 week gestation previously. It was safe to say I suspected something was up, even if I was dumbfounded and taken aback that it was even possible.

Being amenorrheic  with the Mirena in place, I had no clue as to the current calendar structure of my menstrual cycle. As the amenorrhea meant I could live pain free, and carefree on a reproductive level, it wasn’t something I needed to consider, until of course you wish to expand your family. I researched the detection and interpretation of Cervical Mucus in my previous efforts to fall pregnant, wanting to avoid temping and minutely charting, and as such I had a good idea of the fact that I could indeed have fallen pregnant and when to roughly test for it.

And this is where things fell apart.

My faint positive. The growing incredulity of it all. The “take a step back and wait a couple of days to see if things intensify” resolve. My confusion when its opaqueness only reduced, before disappearing entirely.

Now. I was the first to question a faulty test. Or tests.

I was the first to consider a false positive. False positives. I had someone else look at the test, to make sure I hadn’t imagined it.

Then slowly, after a week, things began to fall into place.

My amenorrheic status meant I had insufficient lining for any pregnancy to be successful. It had all just happened so fast.

Immediately I began to blame myself. I tested too frigging early. It was my fault. If I had waited a few more days, I would never have got those faint positives. I rushed too eagerly into it.

It was nothing. A loss without being a loss. Hardly even a pregnancy to consider, because there wasn’t time to sneeze at it.

Subsequently I have realised that I poured upon myself the judgements so many other sufferers of chemical pregnancies have experienced: that the “loss” is trivial and nothing more than a delayed period. That actual miscarriages are inherently more meaningful.

As a miscarriage sufferer, I couldn’t begin to compare our loss with this. And yet, it was still undeniably a loss. Even without the tests, I knew instinctively what was going on. I would always have suspected. The argument raged in my head between allowing myself to feel disappointed and glum, and beating myself violently over the cerebral cortex for being such a dickhead in feeling anything at all. Not to mention blaming myself for my own ridiculous impatience in not waiting longer. It was my fault. I was upset over my poor judgement call.

Upset. As if you can be upset so early on.

But you can. Pregnancy tests are sometimes unbelievably sensitive, upon which we can pin the early loss disappointment of so many women.

Should it be their fault?

In the 1980s, my mother had to miss two periods before the doctor would test for pregnancy. With me, she was told when she was 9 weeks pregnant. In complete contrast, 9 weeks in Scotland is your midwife booking appointment. A lot of us know of conception at 4 weeks, bang on the dot of a missed period.

Are we at fault for our impatience?

The tests are what they are. They are readily available, and in the case of my local Big 4 supermarket, a box of two costs merely £3.55 and have never failed me. When you suspect a pregnancy, or are actively trying for one, and tests are like sliced bread in their accessibility, it is obtuse to expect women to wait.

Yet we now face an increasing percentage of women who are acutely aware of very early and early stage pregnancy loss. With that comes the inevitable emotional load.

Sure, I am glum. I feel weird. I’m still angry with myself. I know what happened, and while I am not fixating upon it, I have to acknowledge that it sucks.

But what about all those other women who are experiencing chemical pregnancies in the quest for their first child? The women and their partners who may be struggling through the emotional journey of IVF and continue to have these so-called chemical pregnancies, where by and large the medical community disregard them because of their timely “insignificance” on a gestational scale…

Before now, I shamefully admit that I didn’t see how it could be the same as being told at 11 weeks that your pregnancy had ended.

I was ignorant and selfish in classifying one as worse than another.

Loss is highly subjective. Any positive test hits the switch on the neon-lit rollercoaster “Land of What If”.

I remain positive that our situation will result in the outcome we would like to see. Of course I do. Or I try to, when I’m not busy remonstrating with my body for being so utterly stupid (even my successful pregnancy was ridiculously complicated and not without emotional turmoil and significant concern). Is my son enough if fate determines it so? Of course. He is my world.

However, not everybody is so fortunate as to have another child to focus his or her attentions on.

Grief is an entity abundantly individualised and unable to be neatly classified.

Nobody can truly know how deeply someone’s circumstances can impact on these very early losses, these “chemical pregnancies”.

Let us hold out our arms to anybody who is suffering loss, for it is wrong to box each other into categories of when it is acceptable to feel sad.

Sadness is as sadness does.

It is there.

Be there whilst it is.
It can only help.

Stay afloat - hands will find you
Photo by Alex Blăjan on Unsplash