It lasted 9 weeks.
I have been with my partner for the last 3 years. We met on Bumble after I came out of a 10 year relationship which had transformed in to a friendship. I was looking for butterflies in the tummy, exciting firsts and ultimately the family future I had always wanted. He was my second date and was awesome. He is a really creative, thoughtful and accomplished guy.
Fast forward to our baby making journey. Unlike some people who have a long road, we were incredibly fortunate. We made a decision we were ready to commit to each other and decided we wanted to have a family together. One period and one boozy weekend away in Dublin later, we were pregnant. It was much faster than either of us expected, and as is often the case, a number of other things kicked off at the same time – a close family member was taken ill and required a lot of support, and my boss of 5 years decided after 29 years that now was the time to retire so all the focus needed to be on trying to go for my dream promotion.
I found out I was pregnant the week before the interview. Nothing like adding pressure to something you already desperately want than thoughts of ‘this might be my only chance for promotion for years’ and I need to focus on this to give it my all, but my brain seems to have gone to mush.
Anyway, thankfully hormones did me a solid and I felt at least 90% human on the day of the interview and I got the job. One massive thing ticked off the list and now I could focus on getting my head around this incredibly exciting, but also fairly terrifying revelation that I was growing a human and (all being well) I will be able to fulfil my lifelong dream of being a mum.
I should add at this point that I am 37 years old. I was with my ex from ages 23-33 so I have to admit I wondered if I would get the chance to have a baby after our relationship ended. I have never even had a pregnancy scare before, and as is often the case, never had any sort of fertility testing so I just thought perhaps I needed to start wrapping my head around the fact this might not happen for me.
All of this is why, when this little surprise popped in to my life I was so so excited. Timing definitely could have been improved to fall at a less pressurised time but there was no doubt in my mind this was 100% a pregnancy I wanted and felt incredibly lucky to have come about given some of the struggles friends have had on their journeys to become parents.
I first started to think I might be pregnant because I had some weird things going on with my body… Even before I missed a period:
1. I got a weird itchy rash on my head and in my groin. Not sexy, not in the slightest, and really quite uncomfortable. Odd.
2. I felt like I was producing loads of saliva – I can’t really explain this one, it was odd and made me feel strangely nauseous.
3. My temperature was all over the show. I mean for years I have thought I was born with a dodgy thermostat, with hands and feet that could frankly rival ice blocks in my freezer much of the time, but I was oscillating between freezing cold wrapped in a blanket whilst my partner was sat in a t-shirt, to stripping off 10 mins later. All very bizarre.
I took 3 tests in total. The first on the day my period was due – I got a faint second line. Then after the slowest passage of time ever (or so it felt) I took another test two days later which was strong and clear. Test 3 is when I told my partner another two days after that.
He was going out for a bike ride with his friend. I forget why but we hadn’t seen much of each other that week – no doubt work got in the way – but I had called him and said I felt weird and I wondered if I might be pregnant… I figured I at least needed to set some groundwork to him finding out. It’s one thing saying as a hypothetical that you wanted a family together and would be happy if it happened, and quite another thing finding out less than 2 weeks later that it’s happening!
Anyway, I did lucky test number 3 (even shelled out for a posh one with the writing on a digital screen) and gave it to him. His response was, “Interesting.” I still think that’s hilarious and so indicative of him! About an hour later after he had had a minute to process he sent me a wonderful message saying how happy he was and how we would be such a happy family. Phew.
Over the course of the next 5 weeks I think I circled through every symptom going on the NHS app… Bloating, nausea, vomiting, sore boobs, burping, sore bits, fatigue (oh the fatigue which led me to snooze during lunch breaks when working from home and scuppered a number of meet ups with friends after work)… But by far the worst was dizziness. I really feel for any woman experiencing this. I found it completely debilitating.
I had to go on a business trip for 10 days and I don’t know how I did it to be honest. I spent two full days at the weekend in bed as the only way I could stop the room spinning and allay the horrendous nausea on those days was to lie down in a fixed position and pass out. I spent 3 days with the host getting a taxi to the door, sitting staring directly ahead, not even daring to move my head from side to side as it made everything spin. Loo breaks were a nightmare as I couldn’t walk in a straight line as my balance was totally screwed too. Anyway, I got through it as best I could and managed to do most things required of me before a weekend in Naples with a friend tagged on to the end ended up with her sightseeing alone as I was in bed unable to move except to vomit. Excellent.
I got home and figured I needed to slow down. I am the sort of person who is out and about all of the time seeing people and doing things. I realised I wasn’t going to be able to keep that up and it wasn’t fair to little bean (as I called my growing baby) who clearly needed my energy more than I did – well whether that was true or not, they were taking it!
I still had to look after my family member but I was proud of myself for taking it as easy as I could.
I kept having a stretching feeling, nausea and had nipples that could have cut glassI figured all was well. The people I know who have sadly had miscarriages had all remarked things went wrong when symptoms disappeared. The silver lining to largely feeling nauseous and knackered all of the time was that I felt reassured all was well. Regrettably it turns out that wasn’t the case for me and my little bean.
At 8 weeks+5 days I started having some light bleeding. Now everything you read says this can be completely normal in the first trimester. When I got to 9 weeks I called the community midwife team and mentioned it. It was playing on my mind and I wanted some reassurance. They advised me to call the Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit at my local hospital. When I spoke to them they said they had a cancellation for a scan in just over an hour if I could make it. I jumped at it. Sadly my partner couldn’t make it in time as he works an hour in the other direction from the hospital but I managed to call an amazing friend of mine who jumped straight in her car to come and meet me.
At the hospital I went straight in and they started an external scan where they confirmed that they could see the foetus and an egg sack but as it was so early they needed to do an internal scan. Cue the night stick (as I’m going to call it) smothered in lube which they gently manoeuvred inside me to take measurements and get a closer look at what was going on. They were able to confirm I had ovulated from my left ovary and the foetus was sitting on the right with a yolk sack and everything was intact.
However, they did remark that it was smaller than they would have expected for 9 weeks, instead measuring closer to 6 weeks in size. There was no heartbeat. They very kindly explained that there might be some mix up of dates and if so then there isn’t always a heartbeat at 6 weeks so I should come back in a week for another scan to see if there has been any further development. The other possibility (which I got the impression they thought was more likely) was that the foetus had stopped growing at 6 weeks and the pregnancy was not going to progress.
I was sent home with a leaflet containing a number for a 24 hour emergency line in case I needed any support or had any questions and I had a week to wait to find out what would happen.
I didn’t have to wait that long as the following day I was just about to leave work and I had a reasonably sizeable gush of blood. I knew in my heart that was it. My pregnancy was ending and the hope I was clinging on to of my baby potentially still developing was over.
I spent the next couple of days having some cramps and heavier bleeding than before, a bit worse than a normal heavy period but not much. I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen, but to be honest not what happened next. In retrospect I was incredibly naive. I just had in my head that they said a foetus of 6 weeks was the size of a pea so maybe it would be like a big clot at some point that I would pass and that would be it.
What I didn’t expect was my body starting to have full on contractions which lasted for several hours until I passed tissue the size of my fist. I was absolutely not warned about or prepared for this. However I am incredibly grateful to the emergency line at the hospital who answered on the third ring and reassured me this was completely normal and advised me to stay at home if at all possible.
As luck had it an amazing friend of mine from uni who I actually don’t see often had mooted that she was around and happy to come over (she knew about the pregnancy as I had seen her a few days after I found out and was so in shock I had shared, so I had told her I was having a miscarriage). I called her and asked her to bring drugs and more pads. She came with not only that but pastries (my favourite), chocolate (always important), energy boosting smoothies, deep heat and lots of support. She was with me for the last hour of the contractions and stayed with me for hours after.
I am writing this the day after this epic and what felt like a pretty traumatic end to my pregnancy at 9 weeks+5 days. I am incredibly grateful that my body was able to manage this itself rather than needing to go to hospital.
This experience has taught me a couple of things:
1. My body is incredible. I often focus on berating how I am overweight, but do you know what, it created life, it knew what to do when things went awry and I’m pretty sure it has done what it needed to do to keep me safe and enable me to try again without outside intervention at the end. How incredible is that.
2. I have the most amazing people in my life – friends who support me 100% and come through for me without question. I have leaned on friends through this experience who have not hesitated in being there with me through every stage of this. I was scared going in to this as my mum died when I was young so I don’t have her to lean on and I feared that I would feel alone or unable to depend on people. That has 100% not been the case. When I needed people, they have shown up without question and provided more love and support than I ever could have anticipated.
3. I love my partner. I want everything with him. We have had one heck of a journey to date, but we have got to where we are supposed to be. Together.
Whilst this experience has been like being on a rollercoaster physically and emotionally (with the emotional in the early stages I am sure), it has taught me some things about myself that I can take forward and when I do manage to have a baby, I will appreciate that little miracle all the more for having not got chance to meet this one.
I hope that my journey can be of some help, reassurance or support to other women who have lost their babies. Women are absolute incredible, this experience has given me all the more love and respect for us all.