'People often say our kids won’t remember this and while that may be true, we will forever remember Audie wheeling his cars around the Acropolis and learning to swim in the Aegean.' ✍️ Simone Rogers writes for MetroOpinion
As I looked around at my family swimming in the crystal clear waters of the Adriatic, framed by mountains and the beautiful old town of Korcula, I could not stop smiling.
We had told our family and some of our friends, and were starting to think about where we would move to – as we were living on aI had a small bump and felt extremely protective and happy about the baby. We went for the scan, excitedly waiting to be called.She carried out an external ultrasound and after a minute of checking me, she turned the screen from us to herself and advised we needed an internal check.
It is something that is really difficult to discard – we were upending our lives and preparing and then suddenly it was over.We waited three months and tried again but unfortunately we miscarried at 10 weeks. It was especially hard because, as we were scan wary, we had gone to the early pregnancy unit and seen a heartbeat at seven weeks – were so excited.
Blood tests were ordered to try and understand why this kept happening, but everything came back showing normal levels.The miscarriages were labelled as ‘unexplained’, which brought relief and hope, but also confusion and guilt. I couldn’t help whether the losses were the result of something I had done.
I still remember myself and James walking out of the waiting room – we were just laughing and holding the sonogram. We had waited for so long to have our own little printed out scan picture. I barely slept for the first six months as I had to obsessively check he was breathing every 20 minutes. If I slept longer than that I would wake up with such dread, fearing the worst.
Instead of spinning plates trying to manage everything, I decided to give in to the chaos. We researched month-long stays in Europe for less than half the price of our rent and decided to give it a go and use the year long maternity leave.