Talking about having a miscarriage can be excruciating. Opening up and telling someone you lost a baby isn't an easy thing to do, and much of that has to do with the responses that many women face when they do try to open up. Many people will try to be comforting and to say the right thing, but sometimes the right thing doesn't come out the way it's intended.

So here's a short list of things never to say to a woman who has suffered a pregnancy loss. Some of these might sound obvious but believe me, they will have been said either to me or to other women I know who have been in the same awful situation. 

1. Maybe you shouldn't or should have... Don't go there. Chances are the person is already blaming themselves for one reason or another - I blamed myself for a long time because I got excited and bought a babygrow at seven weeks. Reinforcing those thoughts is dangerous. 
2. Well, it was only early days, wasn't it? Yikes. Yes, it may have been a first-trimester loss, but from the moment most women find out they're pregnant, they begin to plan and see themselves as a mother. 
3. I've heard a lot of women miscarry. Have you? So have I. Unfortunately, that fact doesn't help because nobody wants to be a member of the 1 in 4 club and other experiences don't help heal the pain of our own. 
4. At least you know you can get pregnant. No. Hard no on this one. You don't know how many times someone has been pregnant, if they needed IVF to get to where they were, if they have underlying health conditions that make conceiving a child incredibly difficult. Just don't go there.
5. You'll be a mum one day. Nope. I get why this sounds reassuring, but women who have miscarried are still mothers. They just never got the chance to hold their babies.
6. It wasn't meant to be. Don't say this. Because for the parents, it was meant to be. 
7. God wanted them back. Did He? Well, He should have waited. Because in the majority of cases, nobody wanted that baby more than the parents themselves.
8. You're not upset, are you? Holy shit. I had this one said to me and I almost throttled the person who said it. A woman might not seem upset as grieving a miscarriage, especially an early one, can be incredibly complex but you have no idea what's going on behind the eyes. 
9. At least you already have children. This is usually said to couples who already have a child, and is incredibly insensitive. It implies that the baby they lost is somehow worth less to them than their living children. 
10. Have you considered adopting/IVF/surrogacy? Unless you know the person is happy to discuss this, this is private information and shouldn't be suggested. And even if you do think they'd be happy to talk about it, tread very carefully. It can leave women feeling like they don't have a chance to have a healthy pregnancy.
11. Are you trying again yet/already? This can be said in two ways, and neither is pleasant. The first implies a 'well, what are you waiting for?' attitude while the latter is loaded with judgment like you haven't grieved for long enough. Keep your questions about a couple's sex life to yourself, okay?

Lockdown. It's a horrible word, right? I just felt you shudder. 

If you're a parent, especially a working parent, you've not been having a good time overall during these last few months. Lockdown in the UK came into force in early January, and has meant that across England, Scotland, Wales and NI over 66 million people have been asked to stay at home and only venture out for a few essential reasons. Schools across the country closed to all but key worker children, although nurseries stayed open. And parents nationwide heaved a heavy sigh as the dark nights took hold and the weather went downhill. 

Being a parent can be stressful at the best of times, but at the moment everything is amplified. Every little difficult moment feels huge, and the situation we're in can feel neverending. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and we've all made it this far.

Here are some things you can do today, now to help alleviate some of the stress and pressure you might be feeling as a parent.

The 5 Things Lockdown Parents Need to Stop Worrying About:

1. What Other Parents Are Doing.

Comparison is the thief of joy. Theodore Roosevelt is right: when we compare ourselves to others, especially to those little squares on Instagram or to someone's positivity-saturated tweet, we look at our own life in a different way and can feel like we're failing. Especially if you're comparing apples and oranges. 

Your 1-year-old can't be expected to undertake the same tasks as a 3-year-old, no matter how advanced they are. So stop worrying about the finger paintings and the baking and little Jessie doing cartwheels at the park. Turn that focus inwards and find the joy in your own home. 

2. Insta-Mums.

Speaking of Instagram, if your feed doesn't bring you joy then it's time to curate it. Are you following parents who only post glowy staged photos of their little ones in gorgeous clean clothes playing with toys gifted from beautiful companies? That's great - if you enjoy looking at that content. I do, but for a lot of parents it can produce a huge amount of pressure. 

So unfollow the perpetually perfect parents and follow the ones who post the 3am reel about how their toddler is having a dance party and they Just Won't Sleep, or the mum who's worn the same pair of leggings for a week because the pile of washing is looking scarily tall (hello!). Or follow a good, healthy mix. But cultivate your social feeds so you enjoy what you're consuming, not so you feel judged by it.

3. Being The Best At Everything.

You're doing the best you can in an unfathomable situation. No, we aren't all going to the classes we thought we would be, or playing outside as much as we'd like, and maybe the TV has been on in the background more often than we ever wanted. Perhaps your child ate oatmeal and grapes for dinner because the battle was too exhausting. You know what? Great! They ate! That's awesome. 

The time for competition with yourself isn't now, and if you're not hitting the parental milestones you thought you would then give yourself a break. You can be the mum who makes the best chocolate chip chia muffins for the school bake sale next term.

4. Enjoying the Little Moments For Yourself.

And don't feel selfish about it. 

Toddler tired and went down to bed at 5:30pm? Instead of worrying about an early wake-up call, take the extra time to sit down with a coffee or a glass of wine, a good book or the next episode of Grey's, and relax. Walked past the park and it's quiet? Take ten minutes to let your child burn off some steam and push them on the swings. The fresh air will help and whatever you were on your way to do can probably wait in lieu of a bit of quality time together outside of the house. 

5. Asking for Help.

Oh boy. Us mums aren't great at that, are we? And it's difficult to ask for help at the moment since lockdown rules prohibit mixing of households unless you have a childcare or support bubble. But that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to ask for help if you're struggling. 

A friend might be happy to do the weekly food shop for you, or to take your child for a walk to give you some downtime. Need to vent about the stress of working from home? Call someone up for a chat. Not keen on Zoom calls? That's fine, me neither. But even a WhatsApp chat can take the load off. Got a toy or book wishlist for your child? Send it to a loved one and who knows, they might just send something back. 

Help is there, so don't be afraid to ask. People want to give aid to a friend who's struggling, and one day they might need to ask for the same. 

And a bonus: 6. Taking Enough Photos.

One day, one day soon, we will look back on lockdown life and remember it in a variety of different ways. The good and the bad. But what I'd love us to remember is the quality time we all had with our families, even if it was stressful and hectic and tear-inducing at times. Even if a long day felt like it lasted a week - don't remember that part. You don't need to document your child hating arts and crafts, sulking while you try and bake with them, or moaning as you go for a rainy walk because Fresh Air Is Good For You! 

Take the photo of your beautiful babe cuddled up asleep against you, and remember that moment, even if it's the only one you've taken all week. The moment when you could sigh, snuggle them close, and think of all the things you can do with them when the world opens up again.

Because it will. We'll go back to a sense of normality. But until then, try to take the pressure off. Even Wonder Woman needed some downtime. 

Picture this: you’re 30 weeks pregnant, and starting to think about the big day ahead. Your midwife, doula, friends, family, and the barista at your local coffee shop keep asking you if you’ve thought about the birth, and if you’ve jotted down any ideas yet. You have, but they aren’t exactly well-formed and you’re being a bit bombarded with information from a variety of sources.

One person tells you to write a plan and stick to it, don’t let the midwives or the doctors sway you from anything at all.

Another tells you to go with the flow, let nature take its course and baby will come one way or another.

So, to compromise, you decide to go for a good middle ground: a general idea of how you envisage the birth, but you’re open to things changing if they need to.

It’s important to say at this stage that there are only two main goals when it comes to childbirth: a living, healthy baby, and a living, healthy mother. Everything else can be dealt with in due course. And of course, that’s all anyone wants. Their precious baby, who they’ve lovingly carried for nine months to come out happy, in good health, and to cuddle them for the first time. 

The thing is, that even if you’re lucky enough to tick those boxes and both of you come out of the experience healthy, blissfully in love, and able to walk out of the hospital as a new family of three (or four, five, etc), women are still left with a lot of trauma following the birth which can be extremely hard to deal with and sometimes they can flounder without knowing where to go or who to talk to.

Birth trauma takes many forms but, at its core, it’s defined as lasting post-traumatic stress following childbirth. Many women experience birth trauma following an experience where the fear that they or their baby are going to die, whether that’s from blood loss, an emergency resuscitation, or a multitude of other factors. Most of the time it’s the mother who experiences birth trauma, but fathers, birth partners, and midwives can also feel the effects of it long after witnessing or being involved with a particularly difficult birth.

I decided early on in pregnancy that I wasn’t going to have a strict plan. I would write down some preferences, including a water birth and no medication if possible, but in general I just wanted a healthy baby. But slowly, over time, other things became important to me. I wanted to be the person to pull my baby out, I wanted my hands and my husband’s hands to be the first ones to touch her. I wanted to watch him cut the cord. I wanted to birth the placenta naturally and keep it. I wanted to use my hynobirthing techniques, and I didn’t want internal examinations.

I only had one thing on my list that I firmly did not want, to the point that I said I would refuse to consent to it during labour due to past trauma: foreceps.

We all expect that not everything on our birth preferences list will happen. We hope it will, but we resign ourselves to the fact that we may not have our perfect birth, that we might have to sacrifice some things on the list in order to have our child safely. But what happens when none of the things you planned for come to pass?

Backing up a bit, I was a bit of a worrier during pregnancy, but with reason. In 2018, we lost a baby at 11 weeks pregnant and I was hospitalised for blood loss and complications. This meant I was a little bit nervy during pregnancy, to say the least, but I approached the birth confidently, calmly, and with an open mind that it didn’t matter what happened as long as our baby girl arrived safe and well.

And she did, but following a lengthy, heavily medicated labour lasting fifty-six hours, with an epidural that didn’t quite work, and ending up in theatre with forceps delivery. That’s obviously the heavily shortened version of what was the most traumatic, frightening three days of my life, but you’ve got the gist.

The Birth Trauma Association lists the following as potential factors that make birth trauma more likely:

• Lengthy labour or short and very painful labour
• Induction
• Poor pain relief
• Feelings of loss of control
• High levels of medical intervention
• Forceps births
• Emergency caesarean section
• Impersonal treatment or problems with staff attitudes
• Not being listened to
• Lack of information or explanation
• Lack of privacy and dignity
• Fear for baby’s safety
• Stillbirth
• Birth of a baby with a disability resulting from a traumatic birth
• Baby’s stay in the special care baby unit or neonatal intensive care unit
• Poor postnatal care
• Previous trauma (for example, in childhood, with a previous birth or domestic violence)

Any single experience on this list, or a combination of them, can cause women to be left with lasting physical and mental trauma which, if not treated, can last for years and can seriously impact many aspects of life. It can cause problems bonding with your baby, problems with other relationships in your life, problems with your sense of self, and a myriad of other difficulties.

I was lucky that I didn’t struggle at all with bonding with my daughter. But that trauma manifests itself in other ways, which I will save for a later post. 

The point of writing this out is twofold: catharsis, and to let other women know that they aren’t alone in struggling after a traumatic birth. We expect childbirth to be difficult, painful, but ultimately a joyful experience and when that joy is ripped away it can leave us with a skewed sense of the world around us, the experience itself, and life going forward.

I’m now tackling the trauma I experienced at my daughter’s birth using EMDR therapy, but there are many other techniques out there that work well when it comes to treating trauma, particularly following birth. The Birth Trauma Association is a fantastic place to start. 

Just know you’re not alone. It’s okay to look back on your child’s birth and recognise that it didn’t go to plan and that it’s left you hurting. But also recognise that help is out there. You’ve got this. 

My TBR list ('to be read' list for those who aren't obsessed with adding books to Goodreads) is always longer than I care to admit - and unless I read constantly from now until the day I die, I probably won't ever get through it. So plenty of books jostle for the top spot, and this year I'm going to choose a select few each month to get through as a way of actually keeping up with said list and not just adding new books to it and reading those instead.

Who am I kidding, I'll end up doing both.

I'm doing a few reading challenges this year, including setting myself a goal 0f 110 books in 2021, and doing The Book Club challenge, so I've got plenty to keep myself occupied. And I'm sure I've got my own novel to complete and publish, and a toddler somewhere to look after. 

Glutton for punishment, me? Never.

So, without further ado, here's what I have in mind for February - and don't forget to comment and tell me what you're going to be reading!

Why Mummy's Sloshed by Gill Simms

I just wanted them to stop wittering at me, eat vegetables without complaining, let me go to the loo in peace and learn to make a decent gin and tonic.

It genuinely never occurred to me when they were little that this would ever end – an eternity of Teletubbies and Duplo and In The Night Bastarding Garden and screaming, never an end in sight. But now there is. And despite the busybody old women who used to pop up whenever I was having a bad day and tell me I would miss these days when they were over, I don’t miss those days at all.

I have literally never stood wistfully in the supermarket and thought ‘Oh, how I wish someone was trailing behind me constantly whining ‘Mummy, can I have, Mummy can I have?’ while another precious moppet tries to climb out the trolley so they land on their head and we end up in A
Again.

Mummy has been a wife and mother for so long that she’s a little bit lost. And despite her best efforts, her precious moppets still don’t know the location of the laundry basket, the difference between being bored and being hungry, or that saying ‘I can’t find it Mummy’ is not the same as actually looking for it.

Amidst the chaos of A-Levels and driving tests, she’s doing her best to keep her family afloat, even if everybody is set on drifting off in different directions, and that one of those directions is to make yet another bloody snack. She’s feeling overwhelmed and under appreciated, and the only thing that Mummy knows for sure is that the bigger the kids, the bigger the drink. 

The Housewarming by S. E. Lynes

Everyone is going to the housewarming party.
All the same people who lived on the street the day Abi vanished…
Will her mother finally learn the truth?

Ava only left her daughter in the pushchair for five minutes. The buckle was fastened, and she was sure it was safe. But when she came downstairs, the door was open and Abi was gone – she walked down the road, past the Lovegoods’ house, and was never seen again.

A year later, the Lovegoods throw a housewarming party, showing off the results of their renovation. Ava doesn’t want to go. She can’t bear to look down that end of the road, to see the place where Abi vanished, and she doesn’t want to spend time with people who don’t share her grief. Her husband Matt persuades her: he’s worried about her. A night out might do her good.

But as her friends and neighbours chat, and the drink and gossip flows, Ava learns something new about the day she has re-lived a thousand times. A throwaway comment which could change everything.

Ava thought she knew every last detail of that day.

She’s about to find out she was wrong…

The Disappearance of Emily Marr by Louise Candlish

A stunning story of secrets and scandal, identity and infidelity
 When Tabby Dewhurst arrives heartbroken and penniless on a picturesque, windswept island off the coast of France, her luck appears to change when she overhears a villager repeating aloud the access code to her front door. Hardly believing her own actions, Tabby waits for the woman to leave and then lets herself into the house. And so she enters the strange, hidden world of Emily Marr—or so her new friend introduces herself. Soon, however, Tabby forms suspicions about her new friend, suspicions that lead her back to England, and to revelations that will have explosive consequences for both of them. 

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.

At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.

Because of You by Dawn French

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock . . . midnight.

The old millennium turns into the new.

In the same hospital, two very different women give birth to two very similar daughters.

Hope leaves with a beautiful baby girl.

Anna leaves with empty arms.

Seventeen years later, the gods who keep watch over broken-hearted mothers wreak mighty revenge, and the truth starts rolling, terrible and deep, toward them all.

The power of mother-love will be tested to its limits.

Perhaps beyond . . . 

The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult

Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She's on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband, but a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong.

Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, her beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, where she helps ease the transition between life and death for patients in hospice.

But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a job she once studied for, but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made.

After the crash landing, the airline ensures the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation wherever they want to go. The obvious option for Dawn is to continue down the path she is on and go home to her family. The other is to return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways--the first known map of the afterlife.

As the story unfolds, Dawn's two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried beside them. Dawn must confront the questions she's never truly asked: What does a life well-lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices...or do our choices make us? And who would you be, if you hadn't turned out to be the person you are right now? 

Sounds crazy, right? I read a lot of books while pregnant on how to deal with growing a baby and pushing it out, but my line of thinking sort of stopped at cutting the cord. I'd deal with the ensuing chaos later, and would accumulate a long reading list along the way. I envisioned myself flicking through book after book with helpful tips on bottle vs. breast, sleep training, sleep deprivation, how not to throttle your husband when all he did was breathe a little too loudly... you get the picture. I remember lying in a hospital bed, hardly able to move and with a sleeping baby snuggled on my chest, adding a few random books into my basket on Amazon but never getting around to pressing 'Checkout'. Which, in hindsight, is the best thing I could have done and here's why.

I didn't want any outside influences clouding my natural instincts as a parent.

For me, parenting has been intuitive and when the newborn fog cleared, I realised I didn't want any outside influences clouding my natural instincts as a parent. I will admit that I've had what most people consider an 'easy' baby. She fed well, she slept well, she rarely cried. So that was certainly a good baseline to start with, but I found I quickly fell into a rhythm with her, and that we had a strong connection from the moment our eyes met in the brightly-lit and, quite frankly, terrifying theatre at our local hospital. It was like we both told each other 'we got this' and, it turns out, we did. 

I found my parenting tribe.

I knew next to nothing about parenting styles while pregnant, and even less before the idea of children came to mind. When my daughter was a few months old, I curiously looked it up and found myself down a rabbit hole of information. Emerging, I had the Attachment Parent banner clasped firmly in my hand and a new network of parents to connect with. Parents who responded instantly to their baby rather than leaving them to cry, parents who didn't feel sleep training was for them, parents who contact-napped and co-slept, parents who devoted 100% of themselves to their baby and spent 99% of their time joined at the hip. I'd found my parenting tribe. 

Many of the big names in childcare have written guides and manuals of what to do in various situations, and for many parents these books are gospels - and that works for them. The last thing I want to be is a Judgy Mum (although we all fall to that trap from time-to-time, I'm sure). But the only thing I ever really sought guidance on was healthcare (I swear I had my health visitor on speed-dial at one point) and weaning, because it turns out feeding a baby isn't quite as easy as feeding the bottomless pit I call my husband, or the four-legged Hoover who loves nothing more than to sit by the high chair in hope. And usually, that help was sought from wise friends who have been there, done that. So yes, three weaning books are sitting snugly on my shelf. But aside from that, we've been winging it.

Now, she's thirteen months old and a toddler in every way possible. She moves faster than I thought any small human could and has the appetite of a hungry wolf. Suddenly, even though our connection is stronger than ever, there are potholes and pitfalls that I need some outside help with, and some large hurdles on the horizon (potty training - where do I even start?) so I've turned to my trusty books to help me out. 

I know by now how I want to parent, I know of authors who will resonate with me, so the books I seek out are in-line with how I parent my daughter and how we connect, rather than trying to shape that connection and that parenting style to fit with the way we 'should' be doing it as instructed in numerous mummy manuals. 

This approach certainly won't work for everyone - nor should it. We all parent differently, and some mums and dads prefer to do everything by the book from the word go. 

But for anyone wanting to trust their instincts, I definitely recommend trusting yours. Don't be afraid to seek help when you need it, but finding our own ways as parents and learning how to nurture our little ones without being given a list of 'shoulds' and 'shouldn'ts' is definitely something I'd encourage any mum to try. It certainly worked for us.

Now, onto the toddler years...

Confession time here. As a rule, I don't read books written by celebrities. 

I'm not really so sure why any more. It used to be some deep-rooted snobbery, thinking that actors and musicians and presenters surely couldn't be talented writers as well, and even though that line of thinking has bled away over the years, the general aversion to celebrity novelists has remained.

Then, last week, I watched Graham Norton talking about his latest novel on the Lorraine show, and I was instantly intrigued. The plot sounded great of course, but the passion with which he talked about it was what really sent me to the Kindle store and, from there, my little reading nook in the living room while the baby slept so I could devour it in peace. And devour it I did, in less than 48 hours. 

Another general rule of mine is that if a book ruins my mascara, it gets five stars. Whether of laughter, pain, solidarity or relief, if tears are shed then you've got me. I'm done. And this one certainly gets those five stars.

*

HOME STRETCH by Graham Norton

It is 1987 and a small Irish community is preparing for the wedding of two of its young inhabitants. They're barely adults, not so long out of school and still part of the same set of friends they've grown up with. As the friends head home from the beach that last night before the wedding, there is a car accident. Three survive the crash but three are killed. And the reverberations are felt throughout the small town.

Connor, the young driver of the car, lives. But staying among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as living with the shame, and so he leaves the only place he knows for another life. Travelling first to Liverpool, then London, by the noughties he has made a home - of sorts - for himself in New York. The city provides shelter and possibility for the displaced, somewhere Connor can forget his past and forge a new life.

But the secrets, the unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind will not be silenced. And before long, Connor will have to meet his past.

*

This one hooks you from the get-go, and I love books like this. I have a huge TBR list, a one-year-old, and a novel of my own in the works - I don't have time to wait for a book to grip me. It's the first chapter, maybe the second, and if I'm not into it then I'm afraid it gets shelved. But Connor and Ellen were captivating and intricate from the very beginning.

What I truly loved about this book what it's simplicity. It doesn't try to dress anything up or throw in any gratuitous romance or drama scenes; everything progresses the story while building wonderful characters who you can't help but fall in love with. There were twists and turns that I didn't see coming, and I found joy in more pages than I can count. And the mascara was definitely ruined by some genuine tears. This is a beautiful, bittersweet family drama that sparks of realism and no doubt will speak to a great many people.

With this novel, Graham Norton has cemented his place as one of contemporary literature's great storytellers and is a serious writer to follow. I'm now going to read his other two novels and subscribe to his updates, because he's going to be one to watch, I'm sure.