Meet Just Keep Trying

Not the grief of never. The grief of almost.

I never struggled to fall pregnant. Keeping a pregnancy was the struggle. Over twelve years I lost fifteen pregnancies. One was ectopic, and it ruptured my fallopian tube. One was our daughter, in the second trimester.

When we turned to IVF, I thought we had finally found our answers. Then came egg collection day, and a doctor's voice, gentler than the words themselves: “Sorry, darling. We didn't get any eggs.”

I know these moments, and so many in between. If you're in the thick of it right now, I hear you. I've felt it too.

The things people say

• “Just relax.”
• “You only need one good egg.”
• “Maybe it's not meant to be.”
• “Have you thought about adoption?”

Every one of those comments came from someone who cared about me. And every one felt like another reminder that somehow this was my fault, and left me feeling more alone than ever. When no one can tell you why, you start to blame yourself for not being able to do the one thing so many women seem to do so easily.

And then there was the fear. After enough losses, a positive test stops being good news. You see two lines, and the fear arrives before the joy has finished landing. Then, when the losses came again and again, I blamed myself. It must have been my fault, every time. I even wondered whether not thinking positively enough had somehow caused it.

So many of these losses happen in the first trimester, before you've told anyone. You get the devastating news, and you're walking it alone. Who do you turn to? And when people do know, they often don't know what to say. They don't mean to hurt you. They just aren't sure how to tread.

What I actually needed

I needed loving support, not judgement. I needed answers to my questions, and to understand why this was happening. I needed to know I wasn't abnormal for wanting a baby so desperately that I kept trying. I wanted more than “just keep trying”.

I needed to understand that everything I was feeling was part of a normal grieving process. The fear, the grief, the anger, the jealousy, the disappointment, and slowly starting to distrust my own body. And that when the next pregnancy came along, being afraid was normal too.

I also needed to understand, medically, why this kept happening, instead of being told to go home and try again.

For years the focus was entirely on me: my body, my eggs, my age. But fertility has never been a one-person journey. My partner was grieving too, in a room where nobody thought to look at him as well.

Why it's called Just Keep Trying

“Just Keep Trying” were the words I heard most often. For a long time they stung. They felt like a door closed politely in my face, again and again.

But I've come to see them differently. Those three words also hold something I'm proud of: the quiet strength it takes to keep going. To keep hoping. To keep showing up for yourself, and for each other.

So I chose them as the name, on purpose. Keep trying on your own terms, at your own pace, with your grief given the time it needs. Whether trying means another pregnancy, healing, simply getting through the next day, or knowing when it's time to stop.

This is a place to help you find your answers, so you don't have to walk this alone. A place to come back to yourself, and to start trusting yourself again.