This story is part of The Wall of Wombs, our 2024 exhibition sharing honest, deeply personal journeys of motherhood.
What you’re reading is a direct transcription of a spoken story — shared bravely, in the speaker’s own words.
Listen to this story and explore others at wallofwombs.com.
My journey to motherhood started just after I got married. My husband was really keen on starting a family. For me at the time, I wasn’t ready. I still had one foot in my old life and one foot in my new life as a wife. I always knew that was my destiny, but I wasn’t ready at the time.
And then my husband really wanted to start trying. So we did, and I fell pregnant. Instantly. I didn’t think that was going to happen. Maybe subconsciously I was a little bit nervous because I’ve suffered endometriosis for many years. And people always tell you it’s going to be a lot harder for you to conceive.
So in the back of my head, I always thought it was going to be really hard for me. So when I fell pregnant straight away, I was shocked. I thought, what the heck? And I was also a little bit scared because I didn’t feel 100 percent ready to make it.
The journey into motherhood and the whole life changes that comes with it. So I feel like I approached that pregnancy, I sort of took it really lightheartedly.
I was so excited to tell everyone immediately. At six weeks or seven weeks pregnant, I told everyone, “I’m pregnant,” chatting it out, at the top of the roof to everyone that I was pregnant.
People questioned, “Why are you telling everyone so soon? You’re only six weeks or seven weeks? Maybe you should just wait a little bit.” But I thought, no, I’m gonna tell everyone. If something goes wrong, the people who I’m telling would know anyway that something had gone wrong.
I was already in that sort of mindset of, “Oh, well if something goes wrong, it goes wrong.” And then I started getting really excited about becoming a mum. I got to 10 weeks of pregnancy and I started experiencing a miscarriage. And at the time I was really confused because I thought, “Oh my God, this is the best pregnancy ever.”
I had no symptoms. I thought, “I feel great. I’m so lucky.” But in actual fact, I didn’t have a viable pregnancy and at 10 weeks, I miscarried. And to be honest, that was the hardest experience. It was like the hardest thing I’d gone through as an adult. I’ve never felt lost like that. I’ve always been a very happy-go-lucky person.
I hate to say it and sound conceited, but everything always sort of worked out. So I never really experienced heartache like that. I’ve never really experienced pain. It was something that I felt so hurt by and it really ripped a part out of me.
And I really struggled with it, and I was really depressed about it at the time. But I didn’t want anyone to know that I was, so I was quite silent about it in terms of my recovery and feeling okay about everything that had happened. And then having fallen pregnant again after that wasn’t so easy for us. It took us about nine months or so; it was actually right when I was due to have my first baby that I fell pregnant again.
Then when I experienced a second miscarriage, I wasn’t aware that I was pregnant, so I thought that I had had my period. I was bleeding at the time, and I thought, “Yep, got my period, super light.” And my mum said, “That’s not normal for you to have really light periods. Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”
And I said, “No, I’m definitely not pregnant, I’ve got my period.” With a history of endometriosis, I’ve always had really heavy and painful periods. So lo and behold, I took a pregnancy test and I was pregnant, and I had about five hours of happiness and then miscarried.
Going through two miscarriages, you’re sort of like, “What’s wrong? Like what’s wrong with me? Why is my body not working?” Like it’s never worked. I’ve never been normal, in a sense, like you’ve always experienced such pain when it comes to your body and your womb. Going through two miscarriages, I was really disheartened. So my husband and I went and did tests and said, “Let’s make sure there’s nothing biological or physiological that we haven’t done or that we are not aware of.”
So we did, and all the tests came back perfect. I had a high egg count. His sperm was awesome. The doctor just sat across from us and said, “Unfortunately, two is not considered abnormal. It’s three or more that is.” So hearing that from a doctor, you’ll think, “Well, I guess scientifically you say it’s not abnormal, but emotionally it’s abnormal to go through two of that and to experience that heartache twice.”
It really hurts.
So then after that, I just took a step back from everything in my life. I quit my job, which was really intense and super stressful. I focused on eating, having a fertility-positive diet.
And then I was scheduled in to have endo surgery because my doctor said to me, “It’s most likely that that’s causing your recurring miscarriages.” So I was scheduled to have it, and they called me, asking me to put through a payment, “You’re going in on Tuesday. What’s the hold up?” and I said, “I’m just waiting to see if I’m pregnant.”
And they said, “Why haven’t you done a test?” And I replied, “Because every time I’ve done a test, it’s always been negative. And I don’t want to jinx myself.” It’s all these superstitious things that you go through. And so I did, I bit the bullet and I ended up being pregnant.
Which was again, a weird feeling because you’ve gone through two positive tests before. So you’re like, is this going to be okay? Is this going to work? Are we going to have to experience the same pain again? It’s just that vicious cycle I think you go through, but I tried to stay really calm and positive.
This sounds woo woo, but I just knew it was going to be. My daughter, I just had a gut feeling that everything was going to be okay. I made it through my beautiful pregnancy and have my daughter, Lucia. And she’s five months old now. When I look back, I just think everything happens for a reason. When it’s meant to be, it’ll be, and you just think, “Oh, shut up.” Like it’s just a load of crock.
But I look back and I think everything was meant to happen. I was meant to go through the experience and I was meant to come out the person that I am now after going through all of that. It made me so much more empathetic towards women and mothers and the process and just knowing that a lot of people are suffering in silence and going through this.
And the more that you talk to people about it, the more you realise, actually, you’re not alone.