What's next?

For most women 'that time of the month' is a minor inconvenience, a source of discomfort but the perfect opportunity to lay claim to the sofa, remote and duvet and of course the perfect excuse to eat your own body weight in chocolate.

For women trying for a baby it is an unwelcome reminder that yet again the month has passed by unsuccessfully, I once read something that summed it up perfectly, "Aunt Flo is like my Mother in Law, arrives uninvited and stays too long."

For women who have suffered a miscarriage, periods have a much more sinister conotation. As it arrived most unwelcome yesterday morning, cruelly waiting until after I had POAS to rear her ugly head, I was forcibly reminded of how the short walk from my hospital bed to the toilet saw me fill an entire sanitary towel!

By now I should be 17 weeks, I have an unhealthy addiction to reading baby books, baby development websites and a masochistic habit of checking in on the 'Due in September 2009' forum. All of these tell me that my baby should be dreaming and sucking his/her thumb by now, I should start to feel fluttering movements and I should have a recognisable bump.

Instead I have nausea, stomach cramps, backache and granny pants! Every unpleasant trip to the toilet is a dark reminder that I am not nearing the half way stage of my pregnancy but instead nearing my 6th month since starting out on this journey.

During my reading I often come across the phrase, "If this is your second pregnancy..." It makes me wonder, would my next pregnancy be my first or second? I am loathe to pass off the loss of my baby and discount it as not a real pregnancy. I had sore breasts, I had nausea, I had scans and worst of all I had a heartwrenching operation to remove the remaining product of it. If the above expression refers only to complete pregnancies I resent the implication that my very real pregnancy 'doesn't count'!

However being realistic I understand that a miscarriage at 9 weeks would occur long before I would be expected to feel my babies movements and I can't expect to feel movement earlier as a result of it being my second pregnancy. Nor can I expect my labour to be shorter and less likely to go over my due date because it's not my first pregnancy. I wish the expressions used would be a little clearer and more sympathetic to the fact that a lot of women are in fact in their second and sometimes third or fourth pregnancy but never had the priveledge of having a baby to show for it.

At times like this I am all too aware that for something as common as miscarriage, affecting as many as 1 in 4 pregnancies, there is shockingly little support and advice out there. Out of the two big baby books I have, there is one chapter on miscarriage, providing next to no information.

Although friends and family have tried to support us as much as possible it has been very obvious that they are uncomfortable discussing it and don't really know what to say. For me Baby Expert, and in particular the members of the 'Trying to Concieve after Miscarriage' forum, have been a huge source of support to me. Discussing how I am feeling and reading other people's stories has helped me tremendously. I only wish I had the skills and insight to write a book on miscarriage to help other people in my situation and help them know they are not alone!!

Last week brought with it the devastating news that the banks will not support our bid to save our business and we are to become the latest in an ever increasing list of lives claimed by the reccession. The result of which is the loss of our business and livelihood, the inability to meet our mortgage payments and the unavoidable move from the city we love to migrate back home to the gun crime capital of Europe!

I guess I should thank our lucky stars that circumstances mean we have a house empty and waiting for us to move into. My ever talented Husband has such a strong CV that mere days after the banks rejection dropped into our mailbox he has an interview for a promising, well paid and perfect job. The same cannot be said for my sad excuse for a CV but a little creative elaboration and the combination of my skills and experience have led me to something I think I would be perfect for. Even better my search has yielded an opening in that field. Watch this space.

The silver lining to all of this is the move closer to our friends and family, I have long felt isolated living 300 miles away from everyone I know and love. My phone will heave a sigh of relief when it is finally relieved of its duty of phoning my Mum 2 or 3 times a day.

It will be a challenge for the first few weeks, especially being surrounded by the pregnant people I know 'back home' but despite my jealousy I am genuinly happy for them and I am looking forward to being around more than I was for the other children in our friendship group.

As each month passes I am more and more aware of the expectation our nearest and dearest are placing on us. Regular oh so subtle questions are becoming the norm now, some less subtle than others. I am hoping being closer to home will mean these are less frequent as I see people more often and conversations are less condensed.

As my Husband will bear witness to, I have never been the most level headed of people, my moods can be erratic and unpredictable. I have found this to be more pronounced recently and the unpredictability of our situation causes me to swing violently from surges of positivity to pits of hopelessness. When feeling positive I look forward to the days when we are home near friends and family, have a stable life with good jobs, a nice home and a baby on the way. When in the lowest of my moods it feels as though the world is against us and I wonder what on earth can go wrong next??