Libby always wanted to be a mum but the path to motherhood was paved with heartache

For as long as she could remember, Libby Trainor Parker wanted to be a mum. The Adelaide-based performer, comedian, journalist, and author dreamed of a big family, like the ones she saw on the sitcoms she watched on TV.

“Even when I was a kid, I wanted to be a mum. I always envisioned having a house full of kids,” Trainor Parker told nine.com.au.

“I wanted to be one of those sitcom mums with lots of kids; biological kids, foster kids. 

“I thought the neighbour’s kid would come and all help themselves to the fridge and we’d have lots of fun.

“I always pictured myself surrounded by kids. I never imagined I wouldn’t be able to have my own kids. Never.”

Trainor Parker, who became a teacher before realising her true calling was performing and writing, threw herself into her career before meeting the love of her life, Matt, in 2011.

“He had two daughters from a previous marriage,” she said.

Trainor Parker embraced her role as stepmother, before the two decided to start trying for a baby in 2013, and she was elated when she fell pregnant quickly, but soon started to experience worrying symptoms. 

She was getting ready to direct a show at the Adelaide Fringe Festival when she passed out from pain.

“I was in so much pain, I was really ill. I went to the doctor… He had a look at my abdomen and he pushed on it and I nearly jumped off the table,” she said.

“And he said ‘I think this is ectopic and you need to go to the hospital right now.’”

Trainor Parker had suffered a cornual ectopic pregnancy. In her case, the pregnancy had attached to the outside of her uterus, and she was rushed into emergency surgery, similar to a caesarean.

“I woke up in the maternity ward, and it was horrific,” she said. “They said it was going to be keyhole [surgery] but when I woke up there was a big wound across [my abdomen].”

Still, Trainor Parker, who was then 35, had no reason to believe her dreams would not come true.

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“I never gave up hope. I always thought it would be fine. I thought we would get through this and the next one would be OK,” she said.

“Because it was so easy to get pregnant the first time, I thought ‘We’ll be fine. This is just a bump, a blip, an anomaly’.”

Instead, she was racked by severe abdominal pain and after a year of going back and forth to her doctor, he agreed to perform a laparoscopy.

“It turned out I had stage four endometriosis and it was on my bladder, my bowel, my ureters, heading up to my kidneys. He thought he was going to have to cut the ureters and put in a stent.”

After years of being gaslit by doctors about her symptoms, she decided to raise awareness of endometriosis, writing a program for schools, a cabaret show and a book, Endo Days: Life, Love and Laughter with Endometriosis.

She and Matt continued to try for a baby. Each time, Trainor Parker would fall pregnant quite easily and naturally, only to suffer yet another heartbreaking pregnancy loss in the early stages.

“It wasn’t until much later that I found I had something called antiphospholipid antibodies,” she said.

The condition causes abnormal immune proteins to attack your body’s own tissues and proteins, which can lead to recurrent miscarriage.

Despite finally having a reason for her recurrent miscarriages, and learning there were treatment options available, she had trouble convincing doctors to treat the condition.

There were more attempts, and even another heartbreaking ectopic pregnancy, before Trainor Parker made a decision.

“I had found this beautiful doctor… and she said ‘We are going to do it again’, and I said ‘Great, I am ready, let’s absolutely have one last attempt’… and I was ready go and I had the prescriptions and I said ‘I don’t want to do this’ and my husband said ‘Oh my God, same’.”

At 42, after years of trying for a baby, 11 miscarriages and life-threatening complications, Trainor Parker had simply had enough.

“I just thought, ‘I can’t, I’m tired. I’m exhausted’. I had just been at the mercy of my doctors and my uterus and my body for so long.

“At the time, I just kept going. It was always, ‘The next time is going to be the one’. I never lost hope. Even now, I am really shocked it didn’t happen.”

The couple decided to become foster parents, and after an exhaustive process, welcomed a little boy into their home in 2021. 

“The way it happened was quite magical. He came to us and he was the one who was meant to be with us,” Trainor Parker said.

“He even looks like me. We have the same colouring, same eyes.”

In the years that followed, Trainor Parker spoke at medical conferences, where she gave a patient’s perspective. It led to her decision to write another book.

A Common Misconception was released in June and is described as a “practical, compassionate and stigma-smashing guide to surviving miscarriage, infertility and grief”.

Part memoir and part practical guide, it draws on her own experience while offering insights from various medical professionals.

While pregnancy loss is a serious topic, she also injects her trademark humour, including detailing the online shopping habit she sometimes turned to when experiencing moments of grief. Or the bingo card she and a friend, who also suffered recurrent miscarriages, came up with, detailing the insensitive comments friends and strangers often made.

“I don’t laugh at the miscarriage itself. I laugh at the situations surrounding it,” she said.

Most importantly, she wants to help others going through pregnancy loss.

“I don’t want to have gone through all of that for nothing. If I have gone through all of that and can’t pass on knowledge and love and support and kindness to other people who might be going through it or have gone through it, then I have gone through it for nothing, and that doesn’t sit right with me,” she said.

“I want to take away the awkwardness and discomfort of discussing pregnancy loss.

“I want to stop whispering about it and I want us to stop ignoring a grieving parent because they think they don’t want to talk about it.

“I want people to feel less alone because, despite how common pregnancy loss is, it’s one of the most isolating things.”

She also wants people going through pregnancy loss “to understand their grief is valid”.

“You’re not angry that another person is pregnant; you’re angry because you’re not,” she said.

“What they have gained in having a baby is as much as you have lost in losing yours.

“So give yourself a break, because it is hard.”

And while she doesn’t want to take away anyone’s hope, she wants to spread the message that there is life after pregnancy loss, whether or not you end up carrying a baby to full term. 

“If you say you had a baby after recurrent miscarriage people say, ‘Oh good’. They are so relieved.

“They say to me, ’Oh, but you had kids, and I say, ‘Yeah, but I didn’t birth them’, and [people] get so uncomfortable.

“I didn’t get that miracle. I didn’t get my rainbow, but there is life after this.

“You don’t hear about the person who didn’t get the baby, and I wish I had heard more about the people [like me].

“I got turned back by a lot of publishers because it was too grim. But my life’s not grim.

“My life is full, and it’s better than I ever could have expected.

“Yes, I wish that I had a baby, I wish I had 10, I wish I had that sitcom household, but my life went a different way and that’s OK.

“It is full and it’s colourful and it’s beautiful.”

If you or someone you know is struggling after being affected by pregnancy loss, you can contact Pink Elephants, or SANDS Australia  (1300 072 637). The Red Nose Grief and Loss Support Line (1300 308 307) offers 24-hour support to anyone who has suffered the loss of a child during pregnancy, stillbirth or beyond.