This month, we celebrated our miracle baby’s second birthday.
The same day, not far from our thoughts, though, was the anniversary of a miscarriage that will forever be etched in our history.
Because, it doesn’t matter that we finally got our wonderful, healthy, perfect baby girl after seven rounds of IVF. It doesn’t take away the horror of what we experienced to get her here, including three devastating miscarriages.
Our journey began back in 2018 when we decided to turn to the incredible science behind IVF to try for the one baby we were dreaming of. We saw it as our last resort, “but at least we will get our baby”… that’s how IVF works, isn’t it? Sadly, not always.
We did fall pregnant on our first round. Of course we did – we thought that was almost inevitable in our own naïve way. But, two weeks after the utter joy of finding out we were expecting our first baby together, the cramps and bleeding arrived and our dreams were shattered.
I almost couldn’t believe that what I had experienced physically was a miscarriage. It was no more pain or bleeding than a normal period (I had always experienced very painful periods and this was just as bad, but no worse). I was six weeks pregnant. It made us realise that many people unknowingly miscarry at this time without having ever known they were pregnant. Of course, having had IVF, we knew the moment that baby arrived in my womb and had planned our whole future with that baby in it.
Fast forward another two rounds of IVF – which stunned us further by failing to result in pregnancy – we desperately sought the guidance of a miscarriage specialist. That man became like a God to us. We will forever be grateful for him, his knowledge and his unwavering support via text and in person, whenever we needed him (and we needed him a lot!). Working alongside our IVF clinic in Essex, he tweaked our protocol very slightly and after that very next round of IVF – round four – we were pregnant again.
This time, we had several early scans – the first I’d ever experienced – and saw our baby’s heartbeat. Joy, but complete terror at the same time. Such very precious cargo I desperately needed to keep safe.
And I did, for several weeks. We had the standard seven-week scan at our clinic; saw the baby had grown and the heartbeat still flickering away. What we didn’t realise was that when we sent that scan photo to our miscarriage specialist, he could see there was a potential chromosome fault from the shape of the baby. Our clinic maybe saw the same as, instead of discharging us over to the NHS, they suggested we come back at nine weeks for another scan.
Thinking nothing of it, we returned – and the atmosphere in that room I will never forget for as long as I live. Deafening silence as our consultant searched and searched with a blank face. I’d had scans before, I knew this wasn’t how they went. After what seemed like an eternity, I said to him “you can’t find a heartbeat, can you?”
We were sent immediately to our local hospital’s EPU for confirmation – you have to have had scans from two different people on two different machines to confirm a missed miscarriage like this. Our baby was right there, but the heartbeat had stopped. We were taken to a room to gather our thoughts before a nurse gave us our options – let nature take its course, take a couple of pills to basically force the baby to leave my body or undergo surgery to have it removed.
With our heads spinning out of control, we said we would rather go home and let nature take its course. But, the minute we got home, panic set in; we couldn’t handle the prospect of dealing with a miscarriage – this time, much more developed than the first – at home alone. So, we were booked in for surgery ten days later, if the worst hadn’t happened at home. It didn’t – I carried that baby around inside me for ten torturous days; I went to work, I attended a happy family party; I painted on the most fake smiles and I got on with things. What nobody knew was that I was carrying around a mixing bowl with me, because we needed to capture our baby if we were to have it tested and to find an answer as to why it had died. We made it to operation day and, sobbing more than I’ve ever sobbed before and with tears streaming, I was wheeled into theatre to have our baby taken away.
Pure and utter hell. Coming home from hospital the day of the scan, my husband and I were almost hyperventilating – we simply did not know how we were going to get through the next hour, it hurt so very, very much.
If only someone could have told us that exactly two years after the operation to remove our baby girl – testing at Great Ormond Street Hospital on our baby showed it was a girl and that she had an extra chromosome not compatible with life – we would bring our perfectly healthy, full-term baby into the world, it would have made those very dark days so much more bearable.
One thing to bear in mind with our journey is that these were IVF babies. Once the miscarriages had happened, I still had a belly full of bruises from the hundreds of injections it had taken to get me that far. We had a house full of medication and IVF paraphernalia. We also couldn’t “try again next month” like so many people are told. IVF doesn’t work like that. We had to wait months for not only the drugs and hormones to leave my system, but also to receive the chromosome results from GOSH as there was little point moving forward until we had those answers.
Just as we were ready to try another round of IVF, the pandemic hit and our clinic had to close. Among the rules, it also meant we were not allowed to have the steroids which had formed a key part of our previous treatment plans as it lowered the immune system. We could decide to wait it out or go ahead without it. We had done enough waiting and we weighed up that because our issue was not something we could control – ie our babies having chromosome faults – we got planning our next round.
Yet again, I was pregnant and we had a super early scan which was all good, but the fateful seven-week scan showed our baby had not developed as much as it should have done and there was no heartbeat to be seen.
Amidst Covid, we were not allowed the same surgery I had had before and our only option was a medicated miscarriage as this baby also did not want to leave me naturally.
Another experience that will stay with us for a lifetime. Another experience that nobody should ever have to have. Another experience people do not talk about. I took the initial pill in hospital and returned home a few hours later, thinking I would need the second pill a day or two later to make the pregnancy let go. Instead, I felt a sudden onslaught of pain, went to the toilet and instantly knew I had passed our baby. Into a mixing bowl. I felt it leave me.
As it was at night, we had been advised that if we again wanted this baby tested, we would have to keep the baby in the fridge until we could get it to hospital. Just stop for a moment and think about that. We took our baby – the size and look of a small frog to me – and physically put it in the fridge in a Tupperware box, then drove it to the hospital and handed it over.
Just horrendous.
That baby – another girl – also tested to show chromosome faults. Again, nothing medication or a treatment plan could solve. We had to just keep hoping the next one would be healthy – and be prepared for more potential miscarriages.
People say to me all the time that they don’t know how I got through all that I went through, physically and emotionally, to get where we are today. My answer is always the same; I never had the strength to stop and admit defeat. My husband was, of course, struggling enormously, too. Watching me go through so much physically, there was many a time when he said we couldn’t keep putting ourselves through it.
Our miracle rainbow girl, Maggie, was born by planned c-section in October 2021, thankfully. Perfect in every way. Albeit, the hell we had endured made me obsess that maybe she was poorly, too, and that nobody had yet noticed – I was watched closely by my midwife and health visitor as post-natal depression was a real concern for them.
When we took our perfect baby girl to meet our miscarriage specialist at a few weeks old, he said he always knew we would get there, because he knew we would not give up. His theory was that if you try and try and try again, you will get there.
