My journey in trying for a baby - part two!

So as I said in my last blog we had our first miscarriage in October 2008 and then waited for three months (Doctor's recommendation) before trying again.  So we started trying again in January 2009 and each month nothing happened. I spent a fortune on pregnancy tests... the one's you can use '5 days early'!  Desperate for the positive line to show but each time disappointed and only to find a few days later my period started.

It was a long year with knockbacks finding out other people were pregnant... whether that was colleagues, friends, relatives etc.  Hearing how they'd been so lucky when they'd only started trying that month was very hard to hear!  One of the difficulties is that trying for a baby is such a private thing that people don't realise what you are going through and so say things that really cut deep.

We got to 2010 and we still weren't expecting a baby.  On a walk in February when I was feeling particularly low about it (and there seemed to be families with young children everywhere), we decided that we would wait until June to see if I got pregnant and then we'd make a decision about what to do - whether to look at medical intervention or into adoption etc.  2009 had been a difficult year with lots of stresses for both of us at work and so some months we felt we'd maybe not given it our best shot! so we'd try for a few more months.

We prayed God would bless us with a child and thought our prayers had been answered when in April 2010 (the day before my wedding anniversary) I found out I was pregnant.  I was SO excited, as was my husband!  I was even more excited when I realised that the due date was the first of January 2011!  I just felt that God was giving us this child and taking away all the hurt from the previous miscarriage.

It makes me cry just typing this as it still really hurts that yet again this wasn't meant to be!  This pregnancy seemed very different to the first pregnancy.  My body felt healthy and I didn't have any painful twinges like last time.  I felt pregnant and loved the fact that it seemed to be ok.  Yes, I still had anxiety from my previous loss but deep down I felt that this time would be different.

I had my first appointment with the midwife and as she remembered me from last time and wanted to put me at ease she offered to book me an early scan at the Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit.  I would be able to have this scan and then one at 12 weeks so she told me we'd be able to see the baby twice.

At six and a half weeks we went for our scan.  We were both nervous and as we waited for our appointment time we sat outside in the sun trying to stay grounded as we knew the pain of things not being ok from our last pregnancy but equally I was a little bit excited about maybe seeing our baby doing somersaults on the scan :-)!

We sat anxiously in the waiting area for the scan and saw people coming out from their scans so happy!  I went in for mine and they couldn't see anything externally so I had to have an internal scan.  As the sonographer moved the camera I could tell from her face that everything wasn't ok, she asked if I wanted to look at the screen to explain what was maybe wrong.  I starred at what looked like a blob on the screen, not the moving shape of a baby but a blob inside a sac.  I was told that maybe I'd got my dates wrong and to come back in a week's time to see if anything had changed.  Our world fell apart... one thing you know when you've been trying to conceive for a while is your dates!  We knew everything wasn't ok and we were devastated!  We were also told to consider what intervention we would like if the baby had died - would I prefer an operation, to take a tablet or to wait for nature to take its course.  This was another confirmation to me that they knew that everything wasn't as it should be.

We had a week of waiting which included going to my best friend's birthday party where lots and lots of families with small children had been invited.  No one knew what we were going through but we were totally breaking on the inside.

We went back for a scan the following week and nothing had changed.  We discussed the options with the nurse and we were told that at this stage in the pregnancy the least traumatic option on the body (not on my emotions I might add) was to wait for the body to miscarry the baby.

The hospital kept monitoring me at weekly appointments and I was told that when I actually miscarried if I was in pain to take paracetamol and ibuprofen and if the pain got too bad to go into hospital.  The pain in this miscarriage was horrendous.  I had really bad contractions and in all honesty felt I couldn't get to the hospital.  My husband wanted to ring for an ambulance (as I couldn't get to the car) I didn't want to draw attention to our situation to our street so we stayed at home.  Eventually having passed a large ball (which I presume was the amniotic sac) the physical pain eased but the emotional pain stayed.

I stayed off work for another week, family tried to encourage me to take longer but I just wanted some kind of normality.  What I've found with these type of situations is that I seem to almost go in to shock and the enormity of what I'm feeling hits me a few weeks later which is what is happened in this situation.

I don't like to end a blog on a negative... but I think this blog post is now getting a bit long!! so I will carry on the story with another blog in a few day's time.  What I will say though is that if you are in this situation please seek support, don't go it alone and do get professional help if you need it!  Also, I am writing about what was a very painful time.  It still causes me upset but nowhere near the pain it caused me last year... the saying 'time is a great healer' is generally true so please if you are in a time of pain remember things change and at some point I believe things will improve.  I will pray this evening for those of you who are in a situation that seems hopeless that you will find hope!  God bless x