My story…

I’m sharing my story here as this is my therapy. It helped me when my brother passed away, and I believe it will help me now. You don’t have to carry on reading, but the last few days I have found a lot of comfort from reading other people’s experiences, and I find that writing things down helps me understand my feelings. Also, I’m lying on a ward next to a lovely little old lady, who snores louder than anyone I’ve ever heard. So, between her and my thoughts, I can’t sleep.

At the beginning of February we found out I was growing our second little addition to the family. We’d been trying for a couple of months, so we where so excited. We told our Family early on, as and when we saw them, and we told some close friends too. You know the one’s that are in regular contact, the one’s that check in on you, and the one’s that knew we where trying.

Do you know what? Even after this whole experience, if we are ever lucky enough to conceive again, I would do exactly the same thing. Why would we ever have thought this would happen? Also, I always said if anything did happen I would want those people around me, and boy have they helped me!

So the couple of weeks leading up to our scan, I kid you not about 10 friends within the space of about 5 days announced their pregnancies through social media, and I was so happy for them and couldn’t wait until we’d seen our baby and knew it was safe to “publicly” announce our news

However, it just wasn’t meant to be. On Monday we went for our scan, sitting in the waiting area was the first time I had any sort of feeling that this wasn’t going to be good. Call it a sixth sense or whatever, but up until that point, I’d had so many symptoms of what I thought to be a strong pregnancy. (with Jasper I’d had literally nothing). Anyway, we where called in, the gel was applied, and there was our baby on the screen. The sonographer took measurements for a few minutes, but I knew deep down something wasn’t right. Our baby hadn’t moved, and the room was silent. I told myself ‘oh maybe they don’t have sound anymore, to try and eliminate worry’ that’s when she turned to us and said, ‘I’m so sorry, there’s no heartbeat’. I broke down instantly, what I already knew was coming, had just come in full force, a great big slap to the face. We where sent home, and told someone will call you tomorrow. I was sent home with a what happens next leaflet.

Those first couple of days went by in a bit of a blur, and are a bit to roar to write about. The lady I saw the next day, was amazing, and I can’t fault the NHS at all and I’m so grateful for everything. She eliminated the choice of what happens next by choosing for me, which was very much appreciated. She chose surgery, so they could do further testing, and I was booked for Thursday. Which in theory, bearing complications, I’d be home by the afternoon.

There’s only one fault I have with the system, bearing in mind the sensitivity of what I was going through. My darling husband came with me to the outpatients unit at 7:30am, and when they called me through. That was it, I had to say goodbye to him. I then went through the whole process of removing our baby by myself, until I eventually made it back on the ward at 2pm.

The pre-op and build up was straight forward, filled with tears of fear, and loss. Coming round was the hard part. I lost two litres of blood in surgery and had to have two blood transfusions of which I reacted badly to. I won’t go into much detail about my complications, as I’m not here to scare anyone who might be going through this.

On a side note if you donate blood, thank you, you saved my life today.

The reason I had lost so much blood was because I’d had a molar pregnancy (to be 100% confirmed by the results) the scan had shown it, but I only found out today. Even though me and Google had Investigated into this anyway. Que everybody googling molar pregnancies, yeah I’d never heard of it either.

I’d gone from a 1 in 4 statistic, to a 1 in 600 in a matter of hours. It’s rare.

My baby had got to 11 weeks, and even though the facts tell me it would never have been a foetus. I saw my baby. Even though I never got to hold my baby, it still matters.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts since Monday, a lot of thoughts about what people would say. A lot of thoughts about why this happened, and a lot of thoughts about gratefulness.

My main thought about what people might say, was that at least I have Jasper. Which to a certain extent is true, gosh I love that boy, and his vulnerability and innocence has kept me going, made me laugh on my darkest days and his kisses and cuddles have been invaluable. BUT. Just because I already have a child, it doesn’t make this any easier.

On the note of what people say, there’s not much you can say, but the words that I have received from family and friends, and the checking in on me has been so helpful, and I couldn’t have gone through, or get through this grief without you.

Lastly, to my Husband. In times like these people seem to forget about the man, because its physically happening to the woman. Please don’t. The baby was his child too, I’m so grateful for the brave face he’s putting on for me, and for the way he’s trying to make me laugh, but I know deep down this is killing him too. We’ll both get through this. Together. I hope I don’t need to tell you how much I love you, but if I do, I love you. Endlessly. Forever.

If you’re going through something similar, do what you need to do. Do you. Take comfort in your family and friends, and know you will get through this, and when you’re ready, find someone to talk to, or write it down.

If you’re a friend. Check in on them. You never know how much your ‘Hey, how you doing?’ could make someone’s day.