Get the gloves on – anger and pregnancy loss

At 39 years old, I have bought my first pair of boxing gloves. They are red with white stripes down the middle, emblazoned with fierce lions. Lonsdale London is stamped on the wrist and fist. I am ready for the ring – ding ding!

The purchase came after a training session with Dave. At the end of class two, Dave reached inside his rucksack (which is the personal trainer’s equivalent of Mary Poppins’ carpet bag, holding implausible amounts of kit). He pulled out two pairs of boxing gloves and some contender pads. My gut fluttered with excitement. This was an exercise I really wanted to try.

With rain spitting on our faces, Dad 100 and I put on our gloves. We awaited our instructions from Dave, like two eager terriers waiting for a ball to be thrown. Dave demonstrated a sequence of punches. He showed us how to stand for each blow – legs square on for the jabs, one foot forward for the upper cuts and hooks.

“Got it?” he said.
“Yes!”

Dave strapped the pads on his hands and raised them shoulder height. He braced like a defending champion. A group of teenagers were huddled under the pavilion on the green – the crowd for our first big fight.

“Right then,” Dave said. “Let’s have you!”

I stepped up first to whack Dave’s pads – WHAM, BAM, SCHLAM! I powered through my shots. Each thwack on the pad thrilled me. My arms filled with hot blood and soon my lungs were working hard to keep up. I was a prizefighter on the overgrown bowling green. My biceps and triceps and flexors smarted with lactic acid. Finally, the hooks: for anyone who is new to boxing like me, hooks are the money shot, the side-swiping cracker-smacking blows. I pulled my arm right back and swung each punch towards the pad. DOOF! DOOF! DOOF! Five with the left, then five with the right. POW! POW! POW! On my final punch, I spun a full turn to celebrate.

I looked across at my teenage fans under the pavilion, expecting at the least an approving nod, maybe a cheer or shout of “respect!” Instead, their eyes followed a spliff around their circle. I laughed at their indifference to my knockout punches, as Dad 100 stepped up to the pads. He launched into his jabs and hurled his hooks, as I cheered him on – his number one fan.

Straight after the session, we went to our local sports shop. We bought pads and boxing gloves – bright red for me, black for Dad 100. Home they came, bringing into our flat that excitable energy of new possessions. I look at them lovingly as I pass them in their storage bag and whenever the anger rises, we say:

“Right, let’s get the gloves on!”

It does help – to concentrate on the pads, to feel the force in my arms, to hear that sock on the pads. The rush of power and release makes me feel proud of my body. I become aware of a tremendous store of strength inside me, which is great to feel right now.

Anger and pregnancy loss

It is normal to feel angry after pregnancy loss. So many people have said this to me that I have now accepted it. I’m no longer fighting my anger. It comes when it comes and that is all there is to it. There is no need to deny anger or squeeze it down. It’s an expression of the uncontrollable, the incomprehensible. It’s healthy to feel anger and it’s phenomenal to channel it – SMACK into those contender pads!

I don’t always get it right because my anger comes in unpredictable spikes. Yesterday, for example, we were out for an early jog. The traffic lights turned red and we stepped into the road. A cyclist zoomed towards us. My stomach jumped when I saw the bike was whizzing too close. I yelled at him, “the lights are red!” as his handlebars skimmed past me, then I swiped at his rucksack. The cyclist turned around in his saddle, swore back at me. We both had our moment of fury and I won’t lie, it felt good to vent. Seconds later, however, I thought, “actually, he could beat me up now” – so we ran fast through the graveyard gates and didn’t look back.

For Dad 100, the anger is more of a build up of frustration. He gets annoyed when his computer plays up. He gets more annoyed when yet another SEO company phones him, pitching for business. Sometimes, he turns anger on himself, calling himself an idiot for minor mistakes. I tell him he mustn’t do that – he is feeling the loss as much as I am.

Saying this, we are getting through it. The anger comes and goes but there is plenty of love and fun and relaxation in between. And with regular boxing practice, hopefully there will be fewer clashes with cyclists and telesales agents.

Seconds out – round 2

In other news, we have received a letter from our new hospital, after we transferred our remaining IVF funding. Our first appointment with their Assisted Conception Unit is on 1^st September – two and a half weeks away.

We don’t yet know whether to transfer one or two embryos. There is more chance of pregnancy with two embryos but also more chance of complications. I feel very protective over our last two frozen embryos and my remaining fallopian tube. I’m frightened of another ectopic pregnancy, but equally I am hopeful that we did achieve a pregnancy in the first round of IVF, albeit in the wrong place.

Round 2 here we come!