I had to say goodbye to my kid today after they came to visit me for the weekend while I'm away for work for a month.
Rosie Jennings writes in her book, ‘Mothers Who Leave’, that the world has made conceiving of a mother without children like speaking with incorrect grammar...

But, today was the first day I didn’t yearn for the baby I’d lost
I thought about them of course
but today, where I am, without holding a tiny hand

I thought about everything I would have to
sacrifice if I was to have met my baby. 

It’s a metamorphosis, shedding the scales of a reckless child to reveal
the tender touch of
a loving creator.

Today I much prefer being in a beer garden at 9pm surrounded by pissed up friends and laughter
pint in one hand and roll up cig in another.

When I lost the pregnancy
a lot of people told me

felt right.

Being with friends in those early-ish months and holding on to some semblance of my life before my kid
felt more important to my well being
than the risk of loud music to their ears felt.

I have a photo of me with a tinnie in my hand and holding my baby with the other
to breastfeed.

When I got pregnant as a single, young person and without trying to conceive
people responded in a whole heap of ways they wouldn't have if I was in a relationship.

So many of my friends assumed I'd be getting an abortion.

When I told my best friend he said “oh for fuck sake” and that’s the moment I knew our friendship was over.
He saw me in that moment as a chaotic young person

I did let myself explore the option of abortion, mostly just to make sure
I did really want this baby and
I was really ready.

I wonder, if I had lost you, by choice or not,
if
and how
people would have supported me through that.

At my first antenatal appointment, I’d been completely honest when I answered
all the questions.
I’d experienced mental health problems.
I’d taken recreational drugs within the last 12 months.
I had tried to kill myself.

A bad mother. A shameful mother.

A trauma fuelled mental health episode
drenched in drug use
led to the nonconsensual conception
of this baby.

I tried to write about how I got pregnant.
It feels like something I need to exorcise but I probably never will.

“this is a good thing”

It was fucking rough...

how do you make that something people want to read?
Sometimes there is no beauty in the pain of it all.

It's like an obsession.

every day

and it's

years ago

now.

Sometimes you just have to sit in it all and
allow yourself to feel the sadness.

My doctor told me 2 weeks ago to arrange an appointment to get my bloods done and I haven’t done it.
I have dialled the number several times but the thought of going back to that hospital

Sitting in the same corridor and waiting
the same painful wait.

Sitting alone.

I wonder if I will ever be able to get my bloods done
and not think of the day I waited for hours to hear the news

a decision to be

…it just doesn't make sense.

someone who hadn’t longed for this very moment their whole life.

Put that on mumsnet. 

There’s nothing poetic to write about the way I was neglected
by the hospital staff and there’s not
the will to paint a pretty picture of
the grief of it all.

I think I think about it all

I had to say goodbye to my baby.  

I think it was the most difficult goodbye I've had.
I missed them with my whole body.

a mother.