Jess Quinn had a toddler at home, a new business (The Cyclist) and was just about to launch a second business – supplement range Cadence – when, heartbreakingly, she suffered her second miscarriage. Here, she talks about miscarriage, endometriosis, being your own advocate, and how her own experiences drove her to start a women’s health brand (or two!).
Today is Baby Loss Awareness Day, the final day of Baby Loss Awareness Week. As we close our coverage for another year, please know that although this week is coming to an end, our stories on this subject will keep coming – for those of you who have experienced a loss, we see you. You’re not alone. We hope some of these stories are of comfort.
Every year the week of Oct 9 – 15 is dedicated to Baby Loss Awareness Week and here at Capsule we’re committed to sharing the stories and information about this topic which is SO important, yet so rarely openly discussed.
In NZ we don’t collect data on the number of miscarriages, but it’s estimated that between 13,000 to 15,000 women experience a miscarriage in NZ every year. That means for every four pregnancies, one ends in miscarriage.
Then, there are the babies who are stillborn – who die during pregnancy or in utero after the 20th week of pregnancy. Each year about one in every 200 pregnancies ends in stillbirth.
There’s one thing Jess Quinn wishes she had known before having a miscarriage: just how much of an emotional rollercoaster it really is.
“One moment you are planning what you’re going to name this human and what colour you want to paint the nursery and the next it’s ripped away and you’re just left to pick up the pieces,” she says.
It’s a cruel, lonely experience that Jess has now experienced twice: once before she had her daughter, and sadly, again just recently.
A miscarriage is always something we feel frightened of while pregnant – especially in those early weeks – but having lived through the experience of a miscarriage makes that fear and anxiety all the more prevalent and real. For Jess, in her pregnancies since that first miscarriage she’s had to work hard at keeping a positive mindset.
“I think one of the learnings I’ve had is the anxiety about trying again and the wonder of ‘how long is it going to take’, ‘is the next one going to stick’ and then the anxiety you feel throughout the whole pregnancy because you know what loss feels like and you never want to feel that again,” she says. “Although it’s hard, I just try change my mindset to focus on each day and the odds that it’s more likely to go well than not and try calm my mind in that way.”
She’s found that talking about it – and sharing her experiences has helped. She’d already shared her experience of her first miscarriage, so this time, she didn’t hesitate in talking about it – hoping that by sharing her own heartbreak, she might help other families out there, going through the same thing, feel a little less alone.
“Once I fell pregnant with our now daughter I chose to share my story online and the response of thanks was so overwhelming that I just wanted to help others feel seen,” she says. “Miscarriage is again such a lonely thing to face. Your world stops while the rest of the world continues and you’re left to navigate the grief of a baby you never even got to meet.”
The second time around, she also had her new platform, The Cyclist, which she has co-created with Katherine Douglas (the Founder of BraveFace), to share her news and connect with other women. The Cyclist is a website, community forum and podcast that’s designed to support women navigating their reproductive health, tackling everything from endometriosis, to menstruation, fertility, natural pain relief and more. Jess and Kat were about to launch the other business the pair had been quietly working away on for the last three years: Cadence, a supplement line.
“When I recently went through my second miscarriage it was incredible to be able to share that with The Cyclist community because so many of them had just been or were going through one too,” she says. “Being vulnerable about my hardships in life is something that has always come naturally to me, I just like to help others feel less alone in what they’re going through and miscarriage has been no different.”
Jess, of course, was only eight years old when she was suddenly diagnosed with an osteosarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer, which required immediate chemotherapy and eventually, the amputation of her leg. She was incredibly fortunate to survive. In the years since, she’s generously shared her experience, her thoughts, her ups and downs and her triumphs, becoming a role model to many young women.
In a strange twist, Jess miscarried at the same time as Katherine was delivering her second child – after suffering a miscarriage in the past, at the same time as Katherine.
“Kat and I, unknowingly at the time, went through our first miscarriages at the same time,” she says. It’s part of the reason they ended up creating The Cyclist together.
The pair also have another health-related issue in common – both struggled with intense and crippling pain before finally being diagnosed with endometriosis. For Jess, that meant 14 years of terrible pain before she finally received the diagnosis.
Katherine had quite a parallel experience and had suspected endometriosis, when she says she felt a strong urge to start a women’s health brand, and to start it with Jess – so she got in touch.
“She said, ‘do you want to start a women’s health business?’ and I said yes immediately. I’d already been talking about my endo and I was looking to do something, because it made me realise how big of an issue this is – not even just endo, but women’s health in general. I’m used to being a minority, having a disability, so I was surprised just how many women this affects.”
So, alongside building the platform, The Cyclist (and each having a little baby!) they also started working on a supplement brand, utilising Katherine’s background in pharmaceuticals and supplements, already having the successful brand BraveFace on the market (her last name, Douglas, also may be familiar to many as her grandfather was the founder of Douglas Pharmaceuticals, a hugely successful international manufacturer).
“Both Katherine & I went through long journeys with endometriosis and fertility which really landed us into a world of expensive supplements and A LOT of trial and error,” she says. “We created Cadence using the hero ingredients that we found really helped us on our journey and developed them with nutraceutical formulators and naturopaths to make sure they were efficacious.”
Jess says what sets them apart from many other options out there (does anyone else totally overwhelmed when they’re in the supplements aisle?!?) is that they formulate to therapeutic doses.
“This means we add the exact amount of the ingredient that successful clinical studies have used. Some supplement brands do a sprinkle of this and a sprinkle of that and make health claims but in reality may not have enough of the ingredient in there to really make a difference. We also wanted to make them accessible because we know how expensive these journeys can be so our three launch supplements are each $45 each.”
Getting onto the right supplement can be a gamechanger – but tuning into your body is the first step. Cadence and The Cyclist are both all about listening to your body, understanding what is going on, and advocating for yourself.
“I think learning to be your own advocate is a huge super power so strengthening that confidence muscle as much as possible and learning listen to your body is such an important tool,” says Jess. “I also think yes women’s hormones are complex, but they can be our biggest super power so learn and understand the natural cadence of your body (yes, that’s where the name came from!)”
But bottom line, says Jess, if you’re in pain, she understands exactly what that feels like – how frustrating that can be, how debilitating, and how it can even make you feel like you’re going crazy. If that’s you, she also wants you to know you deserve answers, help and support.
“Your pain is real and it’s not all in your head,” she says. :Unfortunately, while there are many great people working in our healthcare system, there are some who aren’t well equipped to handle women’s health issues and the gaslighting that sits beside that can be really hard to navigate so I always just want to tell people that I believe them and to keep pushing until they find someone who listens.”
