Moving onto the next stage

I’d been pregnant a second time. I’d told family and friends. I’d started to ‘show’, almost to the point of having to buy new clothes. That was hard, it was cruel. To be reminded of how it felt to be pregnant. Yes, I felt something wasn’t right. But there had still been something growing inside me, that I had made, a part of me.

With the amazing support from friends and family, which we will be eternally grateful for, we found the strength to move on with our lives. By this I mean to continue our attempts to complete our family. It’s a very personal decision, whether to share this extremely difficult and emotional time with those close to you. By telling them, I found it helped me. Because of this, I’d urge other to do the same. Let those close to you in. Let them help you as best they can. Of course they will never truly understand. But they care about you and their unconditional love and support is priceless.

We certainly needed support over the months which proceeded my miscarriage. An ultrasound revealed that my uterus was full of blood, which meant further time spent waiting. The endless periods spent waiting continued. This time for four long months.

I tried to go back to work. As a qualified teacher, I took a part time job in a private nursery. But to be honest my heart was never in it. I was distracted most of the time and remember on occasion clock-watching so I wouldn’t miss the next dose of medication. Unsurprisingly, the job was short-lived.

These four months were succeeded by a further hysteroscopy and laparoscopy. The hospital I was being treated at got to know me. Sad, but with a heavy heart I laugh about it now. Unfortunately what was found was no laughing matter. The D and C I had had was not complete and they found some of the pregnancy remaining inside me. There was still too much blood in my uterus and the scarring, which was dire already, had become worse just as I had been warned might happen.

It was at this point in our journey that the consultant we were with retired and moved his patients to another clinic. Of course, this was unsettling, but trying to see the positive in this, we registered with a new clinic and transferred our embryos to their care. Just to clarify, these were the embryos which we had frozen from our first attempt at IVF. And so it was here, at the third clinic we joined, where the third round of treatment commenced.