The One With The Texts | Part 22

What is the best way to get bad news? Hint: it isn't a text message.

We woke up on our honeymoon, after having the absolute greatest night of our lives at our wedding, to a text message that our surrogate had miscarried our baby at 10 weeks.

Devastated is an understatement.

I was sad, I was shocked, but mostly – I was furious.

I was FURIOUS that this agency would dare to give us such news over a text message. I was FURIOUS that the news was given to us on our honeymoon. I was FURIOUS that they had filled us with so much false hope, asking if we had booked our tickets, and for making us feel foolish enough to feel excited. I was FURIOUS that our lives had gone from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in a matter of hours. And I was FURIOUS that again, we were stuck not knowing what to do.

We tried our best to not let it affect the honeymoon. We had come with our best friends from the UK, and tried to reason that being sad on the trip was not going to help anything. We were in the sunshine with our best friends in a beautiful hotel, so while we weren’t burying our grief, we just tried to… delay it. While we did alright all things considering (and managed to pull out of getting drunken angry grief tattoos), when we came home, it was a different story.

Instead of relishing in wedding recaps with friends and family, we were wallowing, finding it hard to get through the day. The day I needed to return to work, I was barely functioning. I cried big, heaving sobs in bed. I cried in the shower. I cried hyperventilating in the car. I cried at the station. I cried on the phone to my family and friends, making them cry too. I cried on the train, and I cried in the office. I was absolutely not coping with the loss of another baby, especially after a heartbeat and really thinking this was it, and I was not well.

I ended up taking leave from work for a period to regroup and figure out our next move. We still had an embryo left. I also made it very clear to the agency that we did not want to be notified by text message of such life-altering news and wanted this done by video or phone call. Again, messages went a long time without response or had curt responses back. It’s very difficult having your life at the mercy of others, feeling you have to hold back on areas that deeply affect you out of fear of the repercussions. Would they just sell our embryos on the black market? Will they just run off with our baby? Will they purposely make it fail if they think we were rude?

During this time, I decided to make a job change, and took the week in-between to get away with my mum to Bali to help me get over yet another miscarriage.

On day five of the seven-day trip, I received another text message.

The final embryo transfer had failed.