This is the second instalment detailing my journey trying to conceive. You can find the first one here.
March 2021
My menstrual cycle is becoming regular again and we meet with a private fertility consultant to discuss our options. He is keen that we continue trying naturally but that if we want more than one child, we should be considering IVF sooner rather than later to try and bank embryos for future use. We speak with a nutritionist to tweak our diets and start taking lots of supplements. Joe has his sperm count tested. The only range just slightly low is the morphology (shape of the sperm) but we are told the amount makes up for this and that the mobility is excellent. I am in full 'fix' mode and spend hours researching, trying to ignore the terrible statistics.
May 2021
We are referred for one round of NHS funded IVF. I am seen by a Consultant that I trained with when I was studying midwifery. He treats me as a colleague and refers me straight away, although I don’t quite meet criteria as we haven’t been trying for two years. It’s a relief to know our situation has been taken seriously. The picture I always had of how I would get pregnant has been replaced by consent forms, online portals and passwords. We choose from two local clinics. I decide to go to the one that has a few midwives I know working there, reasoning familiar faces will be helpful during an utterly alien experience.
July 2021
Just as we are about to start IVF, I discover I am pregnant again, two days before Joe proposes to me. This is a total shock as I'd continued to have what I thought were periods — so there I was, a midwife with NO idea I was pregnant or how far along.
A scan a few days after the positive test reveals that I am seven weeks but devastatingly, that our baby has no heartbeat.
I work out this means I should have been nine weeks, so we have suffered, yet again, a missed miscarriage a little over a year since our first. I am wracked with guilt, because I went in a sauna and drank wine at a wedding. I'm upset that I didn't have any 'time' aware of this baby when it was alive. I'm angry that the days after our engagement are also tarnished—that we don’t get to feel the full elation of this special time. A new hospital policy means I have to be scanned a further two times (just to be sure). It is an entirely different miscarriage experience, to move through the world for over a week with our baby inside of me, no longer alive, before I am allowed the drugs needed to miscarry.
It is tortuous.
August 2021
I miscarry on a warm summer's day at home. This time, as there was a baby to see I decide that I will look. Because I have a trained eye, I am able to do this quite difficult task. I can't escape the fact this might be my last baby, maybe the only one I will ever see. I experience a jolt of maternal instinct that he is a boy and bury him the next day at a special spot — wrapped in leftover material from making a baby blanket for a friend. I also include a letter thanking him for making me feel, briefly, like a mother and apologies that he didn't get to see this world.
In doing so, there is some peace that I didn't get with my first miscarriage.
October - November 2021
We finally do our first IVF round three months after our second miscarriage. With IVF you have to wait a few menstrual cycles after a loss, so more precious time slips by, with nothing we can do about it as we stop trying to conceive naturally. I am terrified of another miscarriage and further delays to our treatment.
With only two eggs retrieved (the average is normally 8-14), we are over the moon to end up with one embryo good enough to use. We are feeling victorious, but then have to deal with being unable to transfer due to my uterine lining being too thin. We freeze our precious embryo and take time off over Christmas to recuperate ready to transfer in the New Year.
January – March 2022
I decide to not try and transfer our embryo in January, as my due date — if it was successful — will fall around my sister's wedding. It is strange to plan things so meticulously, but IVF affords you the opportunity for control, in some instances.
February and March, bring two heavily medicated attempts to transfer our embryo. Both are cancelled due to a continued thin lining. I am exhausted and at a real low point.
We have an embryo we can't use. Life feels particularly cruel.
I start therapy again because I can feel myself slipping. I hate my body for the first time in my life. Not only that it can't seem to hold a pregnancy, but the side effects of the drugs mean I am struggling with weight gain and fluid retention. I don’t recognise myself anymore. I am overwhelmed by the weight of the decisions we are having to make. It feels like one wrong move could rob us of parenthood.
There is something especially cruel about a missed miscarriage, and having to walk around carrying your dead baby for weeks. This happened to me last year. I eventually decided to have surgery, which then caused uterine scarring and required another surgery and delayed my fertility treatments by another six months. Precious time lost. I’m so sorry you’ve been there too, but happy to know I’m not alone. 🤗