As Mother’s Day approaches, I don’t feel the same dread as I did throughout the Christmas festivities; I don’t feel the fear of time passing as I did at New Year; I don’t have the same unease I had as my birthday approached – and I don’t feel the need to hide from it either.
This is my first Mother’s Day without my daughter; but Mother’s Day without a child isn’t new for me.
For eight long years I hoped that next year – next year – I’d be a mum on Mothering Sunday. I imagined bunches of yellow daffodils in sticky fingers, our child going on secret missions with Daddy to pick out a card, dried pasta encrusted cardboard crafts brought home from nursery.
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All of it still seems like a dream forever hovering just out of reach.
That’s not to say that I haven’t thought about Christmases and birthdays, family lunches, walks in the park and every other aspect of my life being different with a child in tow. Anyone longing for a baby, at any stage in their quest, spends countless hours wondering “what will it be like when….”
Mother’s Day is just a bit different. It is a day that celebrates the one thing I want to be. It is a day when everywhere I look there are reminders of the one thing I am not.
On Mother’s Day two year’s ago, we had just begun IVF.
Last year, I was a mum in waiting; 36 weeks pregnant.
This year I am a mother – but not the mother I thought I would be. I am a mother who didn’t get to take her baby home. Almost three weeks after Mothering Sunday in 2019, we were given the news that our previously bouncy and apparently healthy baby no longer had a heartbeat. Ottilie Eve was stillborn later that day.
It is fair to say that this year isn’t how I thought it would be.
As I navigate the path of grief it can feel as if the misplaced belief that motherhood is a simple rite of passage that we will all sail through perpetuates the pain. So often, reminders of my loss lurk around the corner ready to trigger an emotional response just when I least expect it. Sorry to the pregnant women whose “Baby on Board” badge caused me to shed a tear on the tube last week as I was thinking about Ottilie, nothing personal.
1/20 Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama revealed in 2018 that both of her daughters were conceived via IVF after the lawyer had suffered an earlier miscarriage.
“I felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were because we don’t talk about them,” Obama said during an interview with Good Morning America.
“We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken.”
2/20 Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan
In 2015, Priscilla Chan and husband Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, announced that they were expecting a baby girl following three miscarriages
.”You feel so hopeful when you learn you’re going to have a child. You start imagining who they’ll become and dreaming of hopes for their future. You start making plans, and then they’re gone. It’s a lonely experience,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.
“Most people don’t discuss miscarriages because you worry your problems will distance you or reflect upon you, as if you’re defective or did something to cause this.
“In today’s open and connected world, discussing these issues doesn’t distance us; it brings us together. It creates understanding and tolerance and it gives us hope.”
Getty Images
3/20 Gwyneth Paltrow
In 2013, Gwyneth Paltrow revealed she lost her third pregnancy, and that the miscarriage threatened her life.
“My children ask me to have a baby all the time,” she told You Magazine.
“And you never know, I could squeeze one more in. I am missing my third. I’m thinking about it. But I had a really bad experience when I was pregnant with my third. It didn’t work out and I nearly died.”
Getty
4/20 Beyonce
Beyonce spoke publicly about the miscarriage she suffered before becoming pregnant with Blue Ivy in her 2013 HBO special, “Life is But a Dream.” The singer described her experience as “the saddest thing” she had ever experienced.
“About two years ago, I was pregnant for the first time and I heard the heartbeat, which was the most beautiful music I ever heard in my life,” Beyonce said.
I picked out names, I envisioned what my child would look like… I was feeling very maternal. I flew back to New York to get my check up, and no heartbeat.
I went into the studio and wrote the saddest song I’ve ever written in my life called Heartbeat.”
Getty Images
5/20 Hilaria and Alec Baldwin
In April 2019, Hilaira Baldwin revealed in an Instagram post that she was in the process of experiencing a miscarriage.
Explaining why she decided to share her story on social media, Baldwin later said: “I want women who have gone through this to know: there is nothing wrong with you.
“You are not alone. I know this didn’t happen because I did something wrong. This is just nature.”
Getty Images for Turner
6/20 Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness
In 2012, Hugh Jackman opened up about the infertility struggles he and his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, had experienced.
“It is a difficult time. The miscarriage thing, apparently it happens to one in three pregnancies, but it’s very, very rarely talked about…. It’s almost secretive,” Jackman said.
“But it’s a good thing to talk about. It’s more common and it’s tough, there’s a grieving process you have to go through.”
Getty Images
7/20 Pink
The singer said on a 2010 episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show that she was reluctant to share about being pregnant with her daughter Willow because of a previous miscarriage.
“I was just really nervous, and I have had a miscarriage before,” she said.
She eventually wrote the song “Beam Me Up” about her experience, which includes the lyrics “Just beam me up, give me a minute, I don’t know what I’d say in it. I’d probably just stare, happy just to be there, holding your face.”
Getty Images
8/20 Lindsay Lohan
In March 2014, Lindsay Lohan revealed that a painful miscarriage was the reason she missed some filming for her docuseries, Lindsay.
“No one knows this…I had a miscarriage for those two weeks that I took off,” Lohan said.
“I couldn’t move. I was sick. And mentally that messes with you. Watching this series, I just know how I felt at that moment and I can relate to that girl, which sounds kind of crazy. I’m like, ‘Oh my god, this is really sad. Who’s helping her?’”
(Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for MTV)
9/20 Lily Allen
Lily Allen has spoken candidly about having a miscarriage in 2008 and a stillbirth, losing a baby boy at six months pregnant in 2010.
“It was horrendous and something I would not wish on my worst enemy,” she said of the stillbirth.
“I have dealt with it, you know, as being at one with it. But it’s not something that you get over. I held my child and it was really horrific and painful, one of the hardest things that can happen to a person.”
IBL/REX
10/20 Celine Dion
Before welcoming twin sons via IVF, Dion had a miscarriage.
Speaking of the experience, she said: “They said that I was pregnant and a couple of days after my husband and I were not pregnant again. We didn’t want to feel like we were playing yo-yo. But we did have a miscarriage…I never gave up.
“But I can tell you that it was physically and emotionally exhausting.”
Getty Images
11/20 Nicole Kidman
While married to Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman experienced complications in two pregnancies. The first was an ectopic pregnancy at 23, while the second was a miscarriage and occurred about a decade later.
In an interview with Marie Claire, she said: “I had a miscarriage at the end of my marriage, but I had an ectopic pregnancy at the beginning of my marriage. It was incredibly traumatic for me.”
Getty Images
12/20 Demi Moore
In her memoir, Inside Out, Demi Moore recalled how she became pregnant not long after she started dating Ashton Kutcher in 2003.
Speaking of the loss in an interview with Good Morning America, Moore said: “You could see combination of his dread and it shifting then immediately in to matter of fact, practical, information. Because it was unquestionable. There was no heartbeat.”
Getty
13/20 Kirstie Alley
Opening up about the emotional toll of her miscarriage, Kirstie Alley said: “When the baby was gone, I just didn’t really get over it. Neither did my body. I so thoroughly convinced my body that it was still pregnant after nine months that I had milk coming from my breasts.
I was still grieving, and I had just been told it was very possible I would never be able to have children.”
Reuters
14/20 Tana and Gordon Ramsay
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and wife Tana have four children—but in 2016 they shared that Tana miscarried five months into her fifth pregnancy.
“We had a devastating weekend as Tana has sadly miscarried our son at five months,” Ramsay wrote on Facebook alongside a photo of Tana after she finished an Ironman triathlon.
“We’re together healing as a family, but we want to thank everyone again for all your amazing support and well wishes.”
PA
15/20 Sharon Stone
In 2012, Sharon Stone revealed that she has suffered three second-trimester pregnancy losses.
“The last time I lost the baby, I went into 36 hours of labour,” she recalled. “While we were at the hospital, our adoption attorney called.”
Stone went on to adopt three sons, Roan, Quinn and Laird.
The actor said she was unable to have children due to an autoimmune condition that made it difficult for her to carry a pregnancy to full-term.
Getty
16/20 Gabrielle Union
In 2018, Gabrielle Union announced that she and husband Dwayne Wade had welcomed their first child together, a baby girl, via a surrogate.
The star previously revealed she had suffered at least eight miscarriages and three years of failed IVF treatments.
In an interview with Women’s Health, the actor said that using a surrogate to carry her child made her feel like “surrendering to failure”.
“There’s nothing more that I wanted than to cook my own baby,” Union said.
“The idea of [using a surrogate] felt like surrendering to failure.”
Getty Images
17/20 Nicola Sturgeon
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon decided to speak about her pain at miscarrying a baby in 2011 in the hope of challenging some of the “assumptions and judgments” made about women who do not have children.
The SNP leader said she was in the early stages of her pregnancy and preparing to share the news when the miscarriage occurred.
“Sometimes, for whatever reason, having a baby just doesn’t happen – no matter how much we might want it to,” Sturgeon said.
“Judgements and assumptions shouldn’t be made about what are personal choices and experiences.”
Getty
18/20 Courteney Cox
Courteney Cox recently admitted that it was “terrible having to be funny” while filming Friends after suffering a miscarriage.
Speaking in an interview, the actor explained: “I remember one time I just had a miscarriage and Rachel (played by Jennifer Aniston) was giving birth.
“It was like that same time. Oh my God, it was terrible having to be funny.”
After marring David Arquette in 1999, Cox had a total of seven miscarriages caused by anti-bodies that attacked the foetus.
After two rounds of IVF she welcomed her daughter Coco in 2004.
Getty
19/20 Mariah Carey
After announcing that she was pregnancy in 2010, Mariah Carey revealed that her first pregnancy with Nick Cannon ended in miscarriage.
‘Unfortunately that was a time where [the doctor] said, “I’m sorry but the pregnancy is unsuccessful”,” Carey said.
“It kind of shook us both and took us to a place that was really dark and difficult.”
Rex Features
20/20 Leandra Medine
In 2016, style blogger Leandra Medine, aka Man Repeller, announced that she suffered a miscarriage following IVF.
Speaking about the loss on her website, Medine said: “It felt impossible to deal with emotionally, but even harder to try and suppress, which I so wanted to.
“Over-sharer that I am, though, if anyone is to ask how I’m doing I can’t help but tell them, ‘I lost a baby last week, but it’s going to be okay.’ Almost as if it’s a badge of honor: I can get pregnant, too, you know.”
Getty Images
1/20 Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama revealed in 2018 that both of her daughters were conceived via IVF after the lawyer had suffered an earlier miscarriage.
“I felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were because we don’t talk about them,” Obama said during an interview with Good Morning America.
“We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken.”
2/20 Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan
In 2015, Priscilla Chan and husband Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, announced that they were expecting a baby girl following three miscarriages
.”You feel so hopeful when you learn you’re going to have a child. You start imagining who they’ll become and dreaming of hopes for their future. You start making plans, and then they’re gone. It’s a lonely experience,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.
“Most people don’t discuss miscarriages because you worry your problems will distance you or reflect upon you, as if you’re defective or did something to cause this.
“In today’s open and connected world, discussing these issues doesn’t distance us; it brings us together. It creates understanding and tolerance and it gives us hope.”
Getty Images
3/20 Gwyneth Paltrow
In 2013, Gwyneth Paltrow revealed she lost her third pregnancy, and that the miscarriage threatened her life.
“My children ask me to have a baby all the time,” she told You Magazine.
“And you never know, I could squeeze one more in. I am missing my third. I’m thinking about it. But I had a really bad experience when I was pregnant with my third. It didn’t work out and I nearly died.”
Getty
4/20 Beyonce
Beyonce spoke publicly about the miscarriage she suffered before becoming pregnant with Blue Ivy in her 2013 HBO special, “Life is But a Dream.” The singer described her experience as “the saddest thing” she had ever experienced.
“About two years ago, I was pregnant for the first time and I heard the heartbeat, which was the most beautiful music I ever heard in my life,” Beyonce said.
I picked out names, I envisioned what my child would look like… I was feeling very maternal. I flew back to New York to get my check up, and no heartbeat.
I went into the studio and wrote the saddest song I’ve ever written in my life called Heartbeat.”
Getty Images
5/20 Hilaria and Alec Baldwin
In April 2019, Hilaira Baldwin revealed in an Instagram post that she was in the process of experiencing a miscarriage.
Explaining why she decided to share her story on social media, Baldwin later said: “I want women who have gone through this to know: there is nothing wrong with you.
“You are not alone. I know this didn’t happen because I did something wrong. This is just nature.”
Getty Images for Turner
6/20 Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness
In 2012, Hugh Jackman opened up about the infertility struggles he and his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, had experienced.
“It is a difficult time. The miscarriage thing, apparently it happens to one in three pregnancies, but it’s very, very rarely talked about…. It’s almost secretive,” Jackman said.
“But it’s a good thing to talk about. It’s more common and it’s tough, there’s a grieving process you have to go through.”
Getty Images
7/20 Pink
The singer said on a 2010 episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show that she was reluctant to share about being pregnant with her daughter Willow because of a previous miscarriage.
“I was just really nervous, and I have had a miscarriage before,” she said.
She eventually wrote the song “Beam Me Up” about her experience, which includes the lyrics “Just beam me up, give me a minute, I don’t know what I’d say in it. I’d probably just stare, happy just to be there, holding your face.”
Getty Images
8/20 Lindsay Lohan
In March 2014, Lindsay Lohan revealed that a painful miscarriage was the reason she missed some filming for her docuseries, Lindsay.
“No one knows this…I had a miscarriage for those two weeks that I took off,” Lohan said.
“I couldn’t move. I was sick. And mentally that messes with you. Watching this series, I just know how I felt at that moment and I can relate to that girl, which sounds kind of crazy. I’m like, ‘Oh my god, this is really sad. Who’s helping her?’”
(Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for MTV)
9/20 Lily Allen
Lily Allen has spoken candidly about having a miscarriage in 2008 and a stillbirth, losing a baby boy at six months pregnant in 2010.
“It was horrendous and something I would not wish on my worst enemy,” she said of the stillbirth.
“I have dealt with it, you know, as being at one with it. But it’s not something that you get over. I held my child and it was really horrific and painful, one of the hardest things that can happen to a person.”
IBL/REX
10/20 Celine Dion
Before welcoming twin sons via IVF, Dion had a miscarriage.
Speaking of the experience, she said: “They said that I was pregnant and a couple of days after my husband and I were not pregnant again. We didn’t want to feel like we were playing yo-yo. But we did have a miscarriage…I never gave up.
“But I can tell you that it was physically and emotionally exhausting.”
Getty Images
11/20 Nicole Kidman
While married to Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman experienced complications in two pregnancies. The first was an ectopic pregnancy at 23, while the second was a miscarriage and occurred about a decade later.
In an interview with Marie Claire, she said: “I had a miscarriage at the end of my marriage, but I had an ectopic pregnancy at the beginning of my marriage. It was incredibly traumatic for me.”
Getty Images
12/20 Demi Moore
In her memoir, Inside Out, Demi Moore recalled how she became pregnant not long after she started dating Ashton Kutcher in 2003.
Speaking of the loss in an interview with Good Morning America, Moore said: “You could see combination of his dread and it shifting then immediately in to matter of fact, practical, information. Because it was unquestionable. There was no heartbeat.”
Getty
13/20 Kirstie Alley
Opening up about the emotional toll of her miscarriage, Kirstie Alley said: “When the baby was gone, I just didn’t really get over it. Neither did my body. I so thoroughly convinced my body that it was still pregnant after nine months that I had milk coming from my breasts.
I was still grieving, and I had just been told it was very possible I would never be able to have children.”
Reuters
14/20 Tana and Gordon Ramsay
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and wife Tana have four children—but in 2016 they shared that Tana miscarried five months into her fifth pregnancy.
“We had a devastating weekend as Tana has sadly miscarried our son at five months,” Ramsay wrote on Facebook alongside a photo of Tana after she finished an Ironman triathlon.
“We’re together healing as a family, but we want to thank everyone again for all your amazing support and well wishes.”
PA
15/20 Sharon Stone
In 2012, Sharon Stone revealed that she has suffered three second-trimester pregnancy losses.
“The last time I lost the baby, I went into 36 hours of labour,” she recalled. “While we were at the hospital, our adoption attorney called.”
Stone went on to adopt three sons, Roan, Quinn and Laird.
The actor said she was unable to have children due to an autoimmune condition that made it difficult for her to carry a pregnancy to full-term.
Getty
16/20 Gabrielle Union
In 2018, Gabrielle Union announced that she and husband Dwayne Wade had welcomed their first child together, a baby girl, via a surrogate.
The star previously revealed she had suffered at least eight miscarriages and three years of failed IVF treatments.
In an interview with Women’s Health, the actor said that using a surrogate to carry her child made her feel like “surrendering to failure”.
“There’s nothing more that I wanted than to cook my own baby,” Union said.
“The idea of [using a surrogate] felt like surrendering to failure.”
Getty Images
17/20 Nicola Sturgeon
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon decided to speak about her pain at miscarrying a baby in 2011 in the hope of challenging some of the “assumptions and judgments” made about women who do not have children.
The SNP leader said she was in the early stages of her pregnancy and preparing to share the news when the miscarriage occurred.
“Sometimes, for whatever reason, having a baby just doesn’t happen – no matter how much we might want it to,” Sturgeon said.
“Judgements and assumptions shouldn’t be made about what are personal choices and experiences.”
Getty
18/20 Courteney Cox
Courteney Cox recently admitted that it was “terrible having to be funny” while filming Friends after suffering a miscarriage.
Speaking in an interview, the actor explained: “I remember one time I just had a miscarriage and Rachel (played by Jennifer Aniston) was giving birth.
“It was like that same time. Oh my God, it was terrible having to be funny.”
After marring David Arquette in 1999, Cox had a total of seven miscarriages caused by anti-bodies that attacked the foetus.
After two rounds of IVF she welcomed her daughter Coco in 2004.
Getty
19/20 Mariah Carey
After announcing that she was pregnancy in 2010, Mariah Carey revealed that her first pregnancy with Nick Cannon ended in miscarriage.
‘Unfortunately that was a time where [the doctor] said, “I’m sorry but the pregnancy is unsuccessful”,” Carey said.
“It kind of shook us both and took us to a place that was really dark and difficult.”
Rex Features
20/20 Leandra Medine
In 2016, style blogger Leandra Medine, aka Man Repeller, announced that she suffered a miscarriage following IVF.
Speaking about the loss on her website, Medine said: “It felt impossible to deal with emotionally, but even harder to try and suppress, which I so wanted to.
“Over-sharer that I am, though, if anyone is to ask how I’m doing I can’t help but tell them, ‘I lost a baby last week, but it’s going to be okay.’ Almost as if it’s a badge of honor: I can get pregnant, too, you know.”
Getty Images
I would be surprised if anyone feeling the pain of loss of either mother or child can ignore the impending arrival of the celebration of motherhood. In the past few weeks I have been heartened by the emergence of brands giving people the option to try and make their inbox less of a game of emotional roulette; taking the sensitivities of Mother’s Day seriously and the potential for pain that their advertising can bring.
Florist Bloom and Wild, through their “Thoughtful Marketing Movement”, gives subscribers the option to opt out of all Mother’s Day messages and are using AdTech to ensure that they don’t serve digital advertising to those that take the option. They are encouraging other brands to join in and have an impressive list of those that are signing up to the movement.
Astrid and Miyu, a London based jewellery brand, sent a similar message. In line with their marketing strategy that presents them as much more than a provider of shiny things, the email presented a company that genuinely cares about the wellness and welfare of their customers.
For these smaller digital companies that have the agility of a relatively new business and seemingly predominantly female staff, the decision to support those struggling is an important but reasonably easy one to take. I salute the person in the Tesco marketing team who raised their hand and suggested something similar. For a marketing juggernaut like Tesco to consider opt out messaging on Mother’s Day as a viable option gives me genuine hope for a future when it is much more comfortable for parents like me to be able to talk freely about their children.
Mother’s Day is a sensitive day that heightens feelings of loss and longing for people with a variety of stories to tell. Against this new and unprecedented backdrop of isolation and distance, even those with the seemingly “perfect” set-up are separated from loved ones, hugs and kisses replaced by awkward waves through a tiny screen. Among my community of loss mothers, the anxiety is palpable at this strange time. It is hard not to catasrophise when the most terrible thing has already happened.
My plan to surround myself with the love of my mother and mother-in-law can’t go ahead this year, and I know they will feel the absence of their children and loss of their granddaughter on Sunday too. It is my hope that we can all find ways to be kind to ourselves on the days when emotions are at their highest.
I will take time to think about Ottilie, I may visit her in the morning just to be close to her for a short time. I might even take her daffodils – a moment away from the digital marketing I haven’t been able to opt out of – and the reminders of a life I almost had.
To read more about Katie’s story, visit: withoutottilie.com
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can contact stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands on 0808 164 3332 or email helpline@sands.org.uk.
You can also find bereavement support at The Lullaby Trust by calling 0808 802 6868 or emailing support@lullabytrust.org.uk.
