Pregnancy after loss has you saying; don’t ever let me do this again, if I never have another baby it’s fine I’m just so lucky to have this one… you get the gist. Then you hit the dark hole of parenthood which is another very different challenge to those before which yes you are so so grateful for but it doesn’t mean it’s not hard and that you have to enjoy every moment of it. Anyone who says they do is a liar, but when you have been through infertility and or loss you feel that you can’t say when your struggling because people will think your ungrateful, I get it I’ve been there.
Then I reached about the 18 month postpartum mark and started to think and feel, maybe I could do it again, I mean it’s totally worth all of the trauma and ptsd because they are absolute miracles that bring so much to your life, so why wouldn’t you?
Well mainly because it’s opening yourself back up to that world again, to hope tainted with fear, to that vulnerable crazy woman that seems a little bit in the distance right now but your potentially going to bring her back to the forefront again. Surely though it won’t be as bad the second time?
For me with the help of a few other peoples opinions etched in my mind I had convinced myself that my son maybe was a fluke and was the roll of the dice that the NHS kept telling me about, keep rolling the dice and it will happen for you, it’s all chance and bad luck. Maybe the ten thousand pounds we had spent on private sector treatment wasn’t really needed at all and it really all was bad luck. Or that other golden nugget you hear is, your body can change, you have carried a pregnancy now so it knows what to do.
So I made the decision that we would try without any intervention or treatment just like normal people. When I say I made the decision even though I’m very aware trying for another baby was an ‘us’ thing, I very much made all of the decisions on this journey and so ultimately it was me that decided to risk no medication.
Now, I am not infertile and had been fortunate to not have that struggle amongst my other issues the first time around. We would conceive almost every month that we tried but I guess we did find out that Prince Charming had super sonic sperm. However the second time around it did take us 6 months of trying and for me that was pure awful because I was convinced that was it and I now had secondary infertility.
After three cycles of fully tracking and no pink line I even went as far as getting letrozole privately to help me conceive. Right now I can rationalise that was ridiculous behaviour of me but at the time I all of a sudden was back thrown into desperation. I had gone from if we never have another child im totally fine with that, to being a crazed woman on a mission again. It’s wild all of this out of control emotion and feeling that just comes out of nowhere to get us.
There were times I was terrified incase I was pregnant but also desperate and in despair every month. I used to track the Amazon guy with more and more pregnancy tests, it was wild! I was so worried I would miss a chance one month I put off socialising and missed out on so many things ‘just incase’.
On my third round of letrozole (6th cycle trying) I got two pink lines, I was pregnant for the 6th time. We were in lock down it was 2020 and so appointments were limited and you had to go alone. I was fine with going alone as I had gone to most scans and appointments alone throughout this full journey.
I went alone because in my head I needed to shield Prince Charming from all of this so that he never turned around and told me enough was enough and that we could no longer try. So I used to just go alone and act like I was fine and then he would walk out of the door to work and I would be upstairs on the landing sobbing and screaming in despair miscarrying over and over.
Because it was 2020 and the risks of going to the hospital were terrifying I didn’t go for bloods like I normally would, I just waited for the 6 week scan. “I’m sorry there’s no heartbeat” BUT it may be too early and the hearts not started beating yet so we will bring you back in two weeks.
She turned the screen to show me the sac, the yolk sac and the little fetus, still, not even a flicker. I knew it was over but I also knew because they hadn’t seen a heart beat and couldnt confirm it had stopped that I had to wait it out. I didn’t make it the two weeks to the next scan I miscarried that weekend after a warm bath. I remember searching through clots desperately wanting to see something that would resemble this baby that I had wanted so much, flushing the toilet was such a trigger, why was this happening to me again.
I wondered if people would think I was irresponsible for even trying without meds, if people thought I was stupid and most of all if people thought it was my own stupid fault, because that is exactly what I felt. Why did I even think for a moment that I could be normal, idiot. 6 months which felt like such a long time and then back to the beginning again.
I can’t believe at that time I thought six months was a long wait, but it was something I hadn’t experienced before and maybe lockdown made it feel worse.
After the miscarriage I contacted a new doctor in London that I had read a lot about and consulted with her to put a treatment plan in place that would be possible for her to treat me remotely and without the trips to London. It was costly having nurses sent from Liverpool to my home as that was the closest available but it meant we had the safety blanket of treatment back in place.
As soon as I went back on the immune treatment the baby was surviving, this affirmed it for me that I needed it, my body couldn’t do it on its own, I’ll never know exactly what it was that worked but something did, this wasn’t just luck, I know it.
I’ve never done IVF, well actually I say I’ve never done it but I’ve probably done close to at least 100 rounds with a lot of you guys, other than the actual injecting and scans I’ve done it all a multitude of times and would say I have good knowledge on it now. I’ve never written about it before because it wasn’t my road but over these past few years I’ve done a ton of reading, researching and learning to enable me to help more people.
Infertility and baby loss; recurrent miscarriage don’t come hand in hand and for lots of people they end up on one path or the other but in many cases those paths meet and people find themselves in a realm of it all. Infertile and then lose a baby/babies conceived via ivf or lose a baby/ies and end up turning to ivf as they then become infertile or need genetic screening only available with ivf.
I know how fucking unfair right! It’s a reality for so many and you just think how can you get hit with the shit stick that many times and yep it’s totally crap and unfair.
First of all the infertile part just makes you feel like a broken woman that doesn’t work properly, why did it have to be you that just cannot get pregnant no matter what you try yet Denise (yes her again) can have a one night stand and is up the duff with identical quads.
It blows my mind that as women in our twenties we never have our egg reserve tested, we have absolutely no idea about our fertile future and no one at all ever tells you about amh testing. If they did that as a standard check for all women say at the age of 25 it would seriously give some people a heads up and save a whole lot of shit shows and heartache.
If you know in your twenties that your amh is 3 you’re not going to wait until 34 to start trying for a baby are you! I know it comes down to money and funding and cost but I know for a fact lots of people would opt to pay for that insight if only they knew about it.
Then don’t even get me started about the lack of education for both women and men, basically we have no clue about anything female cycle or sperm health related all we get taught is to NOT get pregnant and every which way to stop yourself conceiving.
If we provided good education that gave both genders the tools to make informed decisions and choices and about their contraception, fertility and lifestyle early in life, we would save our NHS crazy amounts of money.
The GPs answer to having not conceived for 12 months is a referral to your local sub fertility for investigation and or fertility treatment and I have seen SO many couples go through this but coached them in the meantime and they have managed to get pregnant without needing it at all.
That would save money so that the people that really do need the funding and help can get it in equal and equitable measure across the country which we know is a postcode travesty.
If neither you or your partner have any living children and are under the age threshold for your area and your bmi meets NHS criteria, you get referred and are entitled to treatment for however many rounds your postcode grants you. However if you do have any living children or maybe one partner does from a previous relationship maybe years ago then that means your now partner is no longer entitled to any fertility treatment on the NHS and you would have to pay.
The biggest and by far most shitty part of all of this for me is if you are infertile and are granted your NHS ivf funding and conceive a baby during that funded round and that baby then dies, you have used your token, that’s it game over. What kind of sick joke is that?! That would be on the top of my list to take to parliament… one day, and I will do that.
Basically it all feels very unfair and it’s all really quite shit, it’s something that the majority of the population have no clue about luckily for them, for those of you that are infertile or need ivf to build a family I just want you to know that I acknowledge it’s so hard, it takes such a huge toll on your life in so many ways, it’s isolating, lonely and a complete rollercoaster.
It’s a full time job, the admin, the planning, the ordering of drugs, timing the drugs, taking the right ones at the right time, scanning, consulting, procedures, WAITING, more WAITING. Putting an embryo back and trying to trust your dud body to implant it, more WAITING…. And then, well if it hasn’t worked you suffer immense grief, a loss of an embryo is devastating and opens a whole new realm of sadness and disappointment. If it has worked then you have another new million things to worry about and obsess over.
I bloody hate rollercoasters but it’s one I’m willing to sit on and hold hands because sometimes you have to step into your uncomfortable zone to be able to help others, so buckle up, I’ll be right next to you.
Just remember, never give up on a bad day, wait until it’s a new day and then make your decision that’s right for you, it’s fine to say I am never ever putting myself through this again… it’s also fine to change your mind the next day, there’s no right or wrong way to navigate infertility.
Xoxo
Crazy Fertility Queen 