I’ll start by saying that I’m childless. We (me and my husband) wanted to have a child, but have been unable to – there’s been no choice in the matter.

I was already in my thirties when we met, and we didn’t start trying for a baby until a few years later. And trying. And trying. But sadly, without the result we hoped for.

I did fall pregnant, in my early forties. I was completely unaware that I was. Until I was made very aware. A ruptured ectopic pregnancy is not the nicest way to find out. 

By the time I was wheeled into A&E, my heart rate was over 170 and I had a feeling of my belly being tight, that was the 3.5 litres of blood in my stomach cavity due to internal bleeding. Cue emergency surgery and me being sent home three days later with a c-section incision as my lasting memento.

The physical recovery from this was difficult. The mental recovery will, I think, be ongoing, for life. 

Being in my forties with one functioning fallopian tube, a further pregnancy was unlikely, and has only become more so over time. There are other options, like adoption, but for various reasons, that’s not right for us.

However much I’ve now (mostly) made my peace with being childless, there will always be times when I’ll wonder about what might have been. I find now that the thing that makes me sad is watching stuff like the Great British Bake Off. I love cooking, and baking in particular. I will never have the chance to teach a child of mine what I’ve learned, and tell them about the family cooks who’ve come before them. Crying over someone else’s split ganache is not something I’d ever envisaged for my adult life.

Baby Loss Awareness Week is a difficult time for me and my husband. Not so much because of what it represents, because in our case, the one pregnancy was not viable; there would never have been a baby. The thing that makes it hard is the seemingly inevitable outcome to the coverage that there is: a rainbow baby. 

I can’t think of any stories remotely like ours being mentioned over the last few years where there’s been media coverage of the week. People have gone through horrible experiences, with all the grief and all the physical trauma. But the stories that are covered all have the same ending of a baby after the loss.

It makes the conversations that happen during this week that bit more painful. Because if I don’t say anything, nobody’s going to really think about this still almost taboo other outcome.

So, I write this to make us a bit more visible. Because being childless often feels like an uncomfortable pause in conversations about baby loss, rather than part of it. It’s time for that to change.