The hours post trauma

Tags

Autobiography, Baby, Choosing single motherhood, Conception, Depression, IVF, Premature baby, Preterm baby, Traumatic birth, Trying to conceive, Writer

An unendurable hour passed before the hospital would allow me into the Special Care Baby Unit to see my child. I sat on the bed, numb and bleeding, unable to comprehend the situation.

Every so often a staff member would appear.

“When can I see my baby?”

“We’ll let you know. They’re just trying to settle him.”

Settle him? What does that mean? Why is it taking so long? What’s wrong?

At last, I was transferred to a wheelchair and taken upstairs to a bed in the postnatal ward.

Still shuddering with shock, I hobbled down the corridor to the SCBU and was shown in. There were a number of babies there. My gaze fell on one little one, who was wriggling and glancing around the room, not appearing particularly ill. I began to move towards it when the nurse caught my arm.

“Your baby is in here.”

She pointed to an incubator surrounded by monitors with series of lines moving across them. I peered inside the small transparent window. The only indication that the vessel contained a human being was a tiny, swollen closed eye visible through a sliver amidst a mass of bandages, tubes and wires.

How could this poor, frail little soul be the happy, active baby inside me for the last six months? This can’t be my baby!

One glance and I couldn’t bear it. I collapsed, crying and crying, waiting for my heart to burst so that the pain would cease.

Fight and flight responses struggled with each other. Gradually, I reprimanded myself for not being brave for the sake of my child. I tried to gather myself together to talk to the tiny being in broken sobs, telling him how much his mummy loved him and how hard she had fought for him, telling him to be strong and fight just as hard.

The words seemed empty. The little soul would surely not survive the night.

I prayed to God to save his life, to take my life in his place, at the same time questioning how any God could let something like this happen.

I knew that I should stay with my child but my flight response overpowered me and I had to get out of the room. None of this is real. Wake up. Wake from this nightmare and feel your healthy child kicking inside you again.

I returned to the ward. For hours I lay awake, twisted in the sheets, listening to the sounds of happy mothers with their healthy gurgling babies. I fought against the tears, afraid of being ‘the tragic woman in the next bed’ and spoiling the other mums’ joyful first moments with their children.

My own mother once told me that the most agonising experience that anyone could ever endure would be to lose a child. Now, faced with this prospect, a torrent of different emotions gushed through me, churning and merging in confused panic.

The crazed frenzy of voices in my head all screamed at once, fading in and out of focus…

Self pity: How could this happen to me after all my suffering and struggling to bear a child? I have been so healthy. I’ve done everything right. It just isn’t fair. I must be the unluckiest person on Earth. Why don’t I have a partner to help me though this? Why do I have to face it alone?

Fury: How could the hospital have let this happen? Why did nobody predict the labour? For God’s sake, I’ve been in to triage four times this week. I told them something was wrong. Why didn’t anyone believe me?

Resentment: Women have been bearing children for thousands of years. How can every other woman on the planet manage to have a healthy child except me? Some mothers don’t even want their children. Some will drag them up without any genuine love or care. Why have I been robbed? One healthy child was not too much to ask.

Self-protection: What do I do? My child is likely not to live through the night. Do I distance myself or give in to the instinct to love him?

Desperation: I’ve not time left. I need to put this behind me and try again. I need to have IVF as soon as possible. Oh God, I can’t live without children. There is no happiness without children. I want nothing else in life.

Guilt: What are you doing here? Your son is probably dying. He needs you. You should never have left his side. You should have loved him instantly. How can you feel nothing but emptiness and distress? You don’t deserve children!…

A midwife put her head around the curtain.

“How are you feeling?”

I could hardly believe she’d asked the question. “In utter despair. Suicidal.”

I used the term to communicate the depths of my anguish rather than an intention to end my life, but it was enough to alarm her. Around 3 am, after an exhausted sleep of waking nightmares, a psychiatric team arrived with an onslaught of questions. “Can you rate your mood from 1 to 10? Are you thinking of harming yourself? Are you thinking of harming your child?”

Hearing this last question felt as if someone had driven a javelin into the core of my heart. “Of course not,” I felt like screaming, “Fear of losing my child is why I’m distraught in the first place.”

Instead I replied, “Under the circumstances, I think that what I’m feeling is a perfectly natural and sane reaction.”

They had to agree. They sent me back to my ward to spend the darkest hours of my life panicking every time the door opened, in anticipation of bad news.

The next morning I forced myself to return to the SCBU. I half-expected to find a little empty incubator and nurses turning their heads away from me in pity.

My baby – Barnaby – looked more human. Some of the bandages had been removed and a little more of his face and a tiny red arm could be seen. He was real. He was alive. He was my son.

That was the moment I began to fall in love with him.

A dramatic entrance (Barnaby is born)

Tags

Baby, Memoir, NHS negligence, Premature birth, Single mother by choice, Traumatic birth, What is it like to give birth, Writer

“She’s eight centimetres dilated. The baby’s coming now!”

No. No. No. No. No. This can’t be happening. Only a few hours before, I’d been told that my mild contractions were probably caused by a bladder infection. I expected to go home and carry on my pregnancy for another three months, not to give birth now. Not now. Not now!

“Please do something. Delay the labour. Keep him in my womb. Even if he can just make it to 28 weeks’ gestation…”

“There’s nothing we can do. If the baby is coming out, there’s a reason for it.”

The previous Saturday I had attended my first antenatal class, learning about the pros and cons of different birthing options and forms of pain relief, as well as studying a serious of helpful diagrams showing the baby’s journey out of the womb.

I had gone home very excited and written up a detailed birth plan. I wanted a natural water birth in as peaceful an environment as possible, with my mother as birthing partner. I intended to remain drug-free for as long as possible, then take gas and air, finally having a local anaesthetic as the baby arrived to relax my cervix and avoid the pain of tearing. I imagined the midwife lifting my beautiful little son from the water and placing him in my arms. He would cry at the shock of being out of his cosy womb but I would hold him and soothe him, sobbing with joy, and he would settle down to gently suck at my breast. A photographer friend had agreed to capture our first magical moments together.

Barnaby’s actual entry to the world was slightly more dramatic…

The moment the labour pains intensified, all my natural Earth-mother ideals were discarded.

“I need an epidural…NOW!”

“It’s too late for that.”

TOO LATE?! How could it be too late? I’d been in hospital for over fifteen hours and nobody had noticed that I was going in to labour. The pain was becoming unbearable, like a belt of dull iron spikes being pulled ever tighter around my abdomen and jabbing into my lower back. I was sure I would pass out at any moment. How could I give birth without pain relief?

A flurry of alarmed midwives, nurses and doctors suddenly surrounded my bedside. I was wheeled out of the ward, leaving the two full-term women still moaning. Even in the confused jumble of my panicked brain, the irony of beating them to the delivery room, after only half an hour of active labour pain, did not escape me.

I was wheeled down the corridor, numb with terror and disbelief. How could this be happening after everything I had been through to conceive a child? A healthy son was to be the golden reward that made the entire hellish struggle worthwhile.

There were around ten people in the delivery room, scrubbing up and making preparations.

“Are we fully staffed?” someone shouted and received affirmation that they were. I felt a slight wave of relief in this knowledge but couldn’t help wondering what happened if another woman suddenly went into labour.

The pain was worsening and I cried again for an epidural. A midwife shoved the gas and air tube into my mouth, which had no effect whatsoever. She assured me that they were preparing an epidural. I knew she was lying.

I was lifted from my ward bed onto a table, lying on my back. I remembered from the antenatal class that this was the worst position for birth, despite the stereotypical portrayal of birth in films, as the coccyx is curled inwards, narrowing the gap through which the baby must pass. I kept asking if I should kneel up but they told me to remain where I was.

As the agony in my lower half increased, something very odd was happening inside my brain. My consciousness split into two, each part vying for control of my body and voice.

One part of my being was out of control, racked with helpless delirium. I screamed and convulsed and gibbered nonsensical outbursts. I pleaded to the people around me, and then to God, to make the pain go away. I felt like Winston Smith in Room 101, confronted by his greatest fear, willing to do or say anything to prevent the torture. I would even have consented to forceps or an emergency caesarean (both of which were suggested and which I had been adamantly against). Just end the pain. I thought I would die. I thought the baby would die. I grabbed the midwife’s sleeve and told her that if they had to make a choice between the two, to save my baby. I had given up my whole life for my child and couldn’t live without him.

The second part of my consciousness took a step back from what was happening to become a logical, scientific observer, determined to get through the next few minutes as safely and effectively as possible.

The delirium took over again. In true British bureaucratic style, I was asked to sign a lengthy form on which could have been written anything.

“This is just to give your consent to whatever procedure we do here today and that you understand all the risks. In the worst case scenario we might have to cut out your uterus… but that’s highly unlikely.”

Given what was happening, ‘highly unlikely’ was no longer a reassuring term, but I’d neither the time nor capability to explain that I wanted more children and would require the use of my uterus in future. My shaking hand signed the form, the end result in no way resembling my signature. Still contorted in agony, I managed a loose squiggle roughly in the vicinity of the line. My logical brain wondered, for a moment, whether that could be considered legally binding.

The doctors finally decided to let me push the baby out naturally. I was relieved to be having the natural birth I’d longed for but couldn’t believe that I was capable of delivering it. The staff manned battle stations. I had a midwife on each arm, two doctors between my legs and a team at the ready to try to stabilise the baby on arrival.

“The membrane’s still intact,” commented one of the doctors, referring to the fact that my waters hadn’t broken. I felt a slight tap and then GUSSSSSHHH! An ocean poured out of me, soaking the table and probably the doctors too. I had been measuring large throughout the pregnancy and actually looked as though I was full term. All my friends had joked about the fact that I was going to give birth to a giant and, knowing that the sperm donor had been six-foot-four, I had expected a huge baby. That entire massive bump turned out to be fluid.

My logical self took the reins again, asking in a calm, monotone voice, when I should start pushing.

“Very soon, when the contractions come.”

“OK, the contraction is starting to build. It’s coming now. The pain is coming. It’s here. Do I push now? Yes?”

I pushed with all my might, grimacing and yelling and still asking for pain relief.

The midwives reassured me, telling me how well I was doing, but I knew they were just trying to keep me as relaxed as possible. I still didn’t believe that the baby was going to fit. I was terrified of causing damage to the baby, if he got stuck in the birth canal. I was certain I was crushing him.

After two more contractions and strained pushing, I thought that I was surely there.

“You’re doing brilliantly. We can see the top of the baby’s head.”

‘Is that all?!’ I thought.

“Ok, we need you to get the head out with the next push.”

No pressure then.

The contraction arrived and I gave it everything. At last, it felt as though someone had poured burning acid on my vagina. I put banshees to shame with my howling.

“I’M BEING TORN APART!”

“It’s fine; the baby’s head’s there. We need you to get him out now.”

Steely determination. Two more contractions and I felt his body slip from mine – and the placenta too for good measure – and a numbness wash over me.

I raised my head to see a tiny red body lifted by the doctor and placed in a clear plastic bag, to be rushed to the corner of the room. Even though I knew that this must be done to keep the baby clean and warm, nothing could have prepared me for that image. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.

The pain was gone but I was in shock. Frantic action was taking place behind me but I couldn’t see or hear what was going on. I tried to focus on the tone of the voices. Is the baby ok? Are they panicked?

The doctor checked me and confirmed that I had a small tear. While being stitched up I thanked God that I still had my uterus. Now please let my baby be ok. Please let him live.

Finally, I heard the tiniest cry from the corner of the room and sounds of elation from the staff. A good sign. Someone came over and tentatively congratulated me.

“Let mum see him before he goes upstairs to SCBU.”

“Don’t wait for me,” I called out. “Just get him to safety.”

They lifted me back down onto the ward bed and turned me to face the exit as they wheeled the tiny red being past. I knew that I was looking at the baby who I had loved so dearly inside me but it just didn’t seem real. I reached down to feel my empty belly and longed to feel my little companion’s reassuring kicks.

I understood nothing of premature babies, other than that they often didn’t survive or turned out to have severe mental or physical disabilities. I felt I’d already lost him – lost everything. Future shattered. Dreams stolen.

The doctors may as well have removed my heart.

A new journey begins

Tags

27 weeks gestation, Autobiography, Baby, Choosing single motherhood, Female empowerment, IVF, Labour, Pregnancy, Premature baby, Premature birth, Trying to conceive, Writer

Twelve days ago my life changed forever.

Thus far, this blog has followed an incredible conception journey. Conceiving alone at 37 through donor sperm IVF felt like climbing an impossible mountain but I survived the financial and emotional rollercoaster that went with every step of the path to a positive pregnancy test.

I had hoped that the story would conclude with the joyous arrival in late September of a healthy son or daughter. Life had other plans. What I found at the top of the mountain was not the reward I’d envisioned, but another mountain, infinitely more terrifying and impenetrable than the first.

Barnaby, my beautiful son, was born at 27 weeks’ gestation, weighing only 985g. His tiny fingers were not even long enough to fit around my thumb. He was in critical condition and I was told to take every hour as it came. Barnaby’s conception made him a miracle. The rare circumstances of his birth have made him a double miracle.

From now on, this will be the story of Barnaby and me – our journey together.

Thirteen days ago I was nearing the end of the second trimester of a blissfully happy and healthy pregnancy. I had loved every moment of being pregnant and even managed to escape morning sickness. I read pregnancy health books and followed every recommendation to the letter. I ate the right foods, did gentle exercise, stayed calm and contented, took daily pregnancy vitamin supplements, slept on my left-hand side (with a special pregnancy support pillow) and refused even to take paracetamol. My 12 and 20 week scans were perfect. Physically, I’d never felt more beautiful and would have happily remained pregnant for the rest of my life, were it not for the eager anticipation of meeting my child in another three months.

I was aware that my age and the fact that I’d undergone IVF gave me a slightly higher risk of complications but, statistically, the chances of these (once I’d made it through the miscarriage danger zone of the first trimester) were so infinitesimal that I hardly thought about them. I had never smoked or drank alcohol, so I felt I had an even greater chance of a healthy birth than most women.

After six months of wellness, I had been into the midwife triage four times during my 27th week with minor worries. The previous Saturday I’d felt like a slight tightening of the uterus (possibly Braxton Hicks contractions) throughout the afternoon. Triage had sent me home with a ‘Paranoid First-time Mum’ stamp on my folder. I received the same answer when I turned up again with concerns about slightly odd discharge, which I thought might be the mucus ‘show’, which seals the cervix, beginning to come out.

On Monday 24th June I again went to triage straight from work. The pinky discharge that had been my concern turned out to be a cervical ectropian, “very common during pregnancy and nothing to worry about”.

Around half an hour after I arrived home, I began to have slight period-type pains, which came and went. I’d not experienced anything like this throughout the pregnancy.

By 3am the pains had worsened and become more regular. I was sufficiently worried. I called a cab and returned to triage. Sensors showed that I was having mild contractions. I was told it was probably nothing to worry about but that they would admit me and monitor me over the next few hours.

I was placed in a ward with two full-term women who caterwauled loudly and described their suffering to their sympathetic husbands all through the night and the next day. Surely I couldn’t be in labour – that’s labour!

I was given a shot of steroids ‘just in case’, which would strengthen the baby’s lungs. Apparently, I should have had a second shot, but the nurse on duty wasn’t sure whether the second dose was to be given 12 or 24 hours after the first and the doctor was not around to ask (an unforgiveable error which, it turned out, put my son’s life in danger).

The abdominal pains became more regular – I counted, three minutes apart – and my anxiety grew, but then the intensity and length of the pains subsided and I relaxed again. An ultrasound indicated “the baby doesn’t look anywhere near ready to come out” but I still worried. All my hopes and dreams were pinned upon this pregnancy. I asked about a drug that I had heard delayed labour for a few days (every day marks a huge leap in a baby’s development).

“We’ll do a few more tests and then think about that tomorrow.”

The doctors were busy in the labour ward all afternoon. Finally, someone came to see me around three in the afternoon. He didn’t check my cervix but reassured me.
“Most likely a bladder infection. They can cause mild contractions.”

I feel a rush of relief. That must be it! I’d felt a heaviness pushing against my bladder all day and kept needing the toilet. A bladder infection would explain everything.

Around 6.30pm, my friend Joe visited and dropped me off a bag from home with a few overnight essentials. He sat by my bedside and we chatted for about half an hour. During that time, the pains began to grow steadily worse. I started to feel nauseas and began, involuntarily, to imitate the groans that had tormented my ears for hours from my two ward companions.

I kept a brave face but as soon as Joe left I buzzed for the nurse to ask for pain relief. She fetched another doctor, who examined the cervix with a finger and then called with urgency to his companions.

“She’s eight centimetres dilated. The baby’s coming now!”

My son was born 20 minutes later.

Photograph taken 16 days before giving birth prematurely at 27 weeks’ gestation

Premature birth at 27 weeks

Tags

27 weeks, Baby, Premature birth

I will write more fully when able but I wanted to announce that 36 hours ago, my beautiful son, Barnaby, was born unexpectedly at 27 weeks and 1 day gestation, weighing 2 pounds, 2 ounces (985 g).

He is stable and will be in special care for at least two months. I am taking each day as it comes and praying for my little universe.

Pregnancy paranoia

Tags

Baby measuring large, Cervical ectropion, IVF, Pregnancy

Never in my life have I felt more beautiful or more afraid.

My 25 week doctor’s appointment came and went. I was disappointed to find that the doctor did very little other than measure my bump and tell me that the baby was measuring very large and that I’d probably need a growth scan later on. At 5 ft 2 and with a petite frame, I didn’t exactly welcome this news but it did explain why everyone kept asking if I was just about due!

One would think that on approaching the third trimester, with the baby gaining a better chance of survival with every day that passes, the worries would subside. Wrong!

By this stage you love your baby so deeply that you obsess about every detail of your body’s functioning.

With every little unexpected cause for potential concern, one is faced with the ultimate question – to Google or not to Google? I’ve probably internet searched over a hundred different anomalies since the pregnancy began.

The web is filled with questions from equally worried women along the lines of ‘I’m X weeks pregnant and experiencing Y… IS THIS NORMAL?’

Like many others, I’m reluctant to phone the midwife, afraid of becoming ‘that paranoid IVF woman again’, so I’ve found the forum messages comforting. Whatever you’re experiencing, it’s almost guaranteed that a whole bunch of women have experienced the same thing. I usually phone the midwife anyway but it’s always good to know that others have gone through it and everything has turned out ok.

I have been to A&E three times this week and finally, after an internal examination, discovered the problem – cervical ectropion (essentially, a changing of the cells of the cervix and a common cause of bleeding in late pregnancy). The condition is fortunately harmless but the last few days have escalated my worries and undermined the confidence I’ve felt throughout the second trimester.

The words of my dear friend, who has just had a beautiful baby girl, continue to be of great comfort: “It’s amazing just how many strange bodily occurrences turn out to be perfectly normal in pregnancy.”

Surviving the 20 week scan

Tags

20 week scan, Autobiography, Baby, Book, Choice mother, Choosing single motherhood, Conception, Donor conception, Donor sperm, Female empowerment, Fertility, IVF, Knock yourself up, Memoir, Pregnancy, Single mother by choice, ultrasound, Writer

Elizabeth, the sonographer, is holding me in her arms while I sob… and we haven’t even started yet!

The terror of receiving bad news at the 20 week ultrasound scan has grown rapidly worse all week. I’ve held it together throughout and even sat stone-faced through the lonely forty-minute stint in the waiting room, as couples around me hold hands and partners lovingly rub their wives’ or girlfriends’ bellies.

Now, finally inside the scanning room, the panic hits like a blow to the chest and I am crying hysterically. Between shallow intakes of breath I again blurt out the difficulties of the journey so far and how much is riding on this baby.

“The next fifteen minutes could ruin my life.”

Thankfully, Elizabeth is empathetic and gets me quickly into position for the scan. I’ve spent the week reading horror stories – the sonographer goes very quiet and then says something like, “I’m just going to fetch the doctor”. The doctor returns and gives the couple the devastating news, discussing the extent of the problem and, in some cases, options for termination – an unthinkable position to be placed in after so much hope and happiness.

Elizabeth is revealing no clues; she tells me in advance that she will go quiet for a little while when she begins – she does this with everyone – and then talk with me about what she sees. In fact I don’t have to endure these torturous moments of silence. She shows me the baby on the screen straight away; it is wriggling and twisting and kicking like a slippery fish on the end of a hook.

Elizabeth systematically checks the heart chambers, the aorta and pulmonary artery – all fine, a good sign. She moves on to take measurements of the limbs, the hands and feet, the brain, the spine and the internal organs. The placenta is in a good position to the posterior of the uterus. At each stage, she reassures me that she is happy with what she sees. My fears dissipate with every positive appraisal and I can rest calmly, watching my little one dance about on the screen.

I ask to know the sex. From the first few weeks I’ve had a strong instinct about it and the screen image confirms my suspicions. I smile, knowing that I will tell my parents but keep it secret from everyone else until the baby is born. I have largely settled on a name but hearing the sex cements its feeling of ‘rightness’.

There are just a couple more things Elizabeth wants to check. The baby has rolled stubbornly round to face away from the monitor. As she pokes and jiggles the womb to encourage it to turn, a peculiar rush of protectiveness floods me. I know she isn’t hurting the baby but I fight the urge to bat her hand away and plead with her to leave the poor little thing in peace.

The ultrasound is over. Another hurdle cleared and the finishing line is visible on the horizon at last. Elizabeth has a slight concern over my cervix. With blessed relief, I empty my bladder for an internal scan. Everything’s fine. “A lovely baby,” she says. I spend the bus journey home gazing at the scan images and can’t help agreeing.

And I’m feeling movement at last – light prods, swirls and flutters just below my navel, as though that little fish is now freed from its hook and swimming contentedly about inside me. I mouth a silent prayer for those women who have not been so lucky but I am soaked in gratitude for my own small miracle.

Dreading the 20 week scan

Tags

20 week scan, assisted conception, Autobiography, Baby, Book, Choosing single motherhood, Conception, Donor conception, Fertility, Infertility, IVF, Knock yourself up, Memoir, Pregnancy, Trying to conceive, TTC, Writer

Photo courtesy of Christopher Robbie

The 20 week scan fear begins to creep into my thoughts like a frosty shadow over the blooming garden of second trimester bliss. Next Friday afternoon could utterly destroy me – throw me off the mountain I have been climbing to have a child. I can’t even contemplate having to dismiss all the progress I have made and begin struggling through this nightmarish journey again.

At this stage I have already settled on a shortlist of potential boys’ and girls’ names and begun researching costs of buggies and cots. Photographer friends have captured beautiful ‘bump’ images so that I can show them to my child when he or she is older. My employer has interviewed for my job and a replacement found to begin in September. I’ve made arrangements to rent out my house and to live with my parents from the month before the baby is due. Financially and emotionally, I can’t afford for anything to go wrong.

My fear has been heightened by the fact that I am not yet feeling my baby move. I thought I sensed the telltale flutters around my navel a couple of weeks ago, but nothing since. My pregnancy will reach 20 weeks tomorrow and most textbooks suggest that movement should be felt between 18 and 20 weeks, though some extend this to 22 weeks. I’m dying for this daily physical reassurance that all is well.

I bought a foetal doppler, which enables me to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. It sometimes picks up mine as well and the two pulses can be heard in double time rhythm with each other – profoundly beautiful! But even this cannot console me. Please God let everything be fine.

I made the mistake of returning to the pregnancy message boards. Although chances of problems at the 20 week scan are slim – perhaps less than 1% – the boards are still peppered with stories from unlucky women who received bad news. Would I be one of them? I am not a young, fertile woman with a partner who can simply keep trying for the next ten years if necessary. This may be my very last chance!

Glowing

Tags

Baby, Book, Choice mother, Choosing single motherhood, Conception, Donor conception, Female empowerment, Fertility, Memoir, Pregnancy, Single mother by choice, Women's rights, Writer

Pregnancy is beautiful.

Despite the decades of period pains and the agony of birth, I wouldn’t swap the privilege of growing a child within my body for anything. I feel like a creator goddess, like my body has become a sacred temple built to protect the precious relic inside.

I am now 18 weeks but somehow looking more like 6 months. The extra weight is taking much getting used to but I still love every moment. Pregnancy seems to wave a magic spell over everyone around, bringing out their care and kindness. People smile at my bump as I walk down the street. They insist on my having their seat on the bus and even offer to carry my shopping.

Even the sorrow at not being able to share this special time with a partner cannot dampen my spirits for long. The many fears about what will happen after the baby is born, as well as the two hurdles still to face before then (the 20 week scan and the birth itself), are pushed to the side for now. I just want to bask in the glory of this unique life experience. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I truly feel like a woman. I run my hand over the curve of my belly, whispering gently to my growing son or daughter. Don’t be afraid. Mummy loves you. Mummy will always love you.

Beyond the twelve week scan

Tags

Autobiography, Baby, Book, Choice mother, Choosing single motherhood, Donor conception, Female empowerment, Memoir, NHS, Single mother by choice, Twelve week scan, Writer

Sunday 17th March was the date set for my twelve week scan. I’d been scanned at almost 9 weeks but it seemed like an eternity to wait. Three months was a real milestone – if I could only get through the ‘dangerous’ first trimester there was a good chance I would be able to relax and sail through the rest of the pregnancy.

A close friend had kindly offered to take me to the hospital. I was grateful for the company but dreaded the thought of her having to cope with my inevitable breakdown if something was wrong. I couldn’t even contemplate having to start this process all over again.

On the way, in the car, the vice-grip of fear clamped hard on my chest. My friend noted the tension.

“It will be fine,” she asserted, echoing the words I’d heard from most of my loved ones.

I nodded, knowing her intent was to comfort me. Perhaps everything would be ok, but other women had lost babies at this stage and so nobody really knew what lay in store. Was I to be one of the lucky ones?

I tried to clear my mind, letting my consciousness retreat into the background while my body flew on autopilot. I remained in this zombie-like state until I was inside the scanning room. The sonographer popped out for a minute, returning to find me in tears as the mountain of worries would no longer be silenced.

“What’s wrong?”

I apologised and gave an ‘in a nutshell’ account of the struggles I’d been through to conceive alone and how much this baby meant, not only to me but to my family and future.

“I just need to know everything’s fine.”

A few seconds later all my tension and fear melted as I saw my baby on screen, its tiny heart beating determinedly, its body bucking and kicking like a rodeo horse. A fighter, just like mum.

For the first time, and though it was less than three inches in size, it looked like a fully formed person. I was again struck dumb by the miracle before me, lying peacefully while the sonographer checked my baby’s arms and legs. I marvelled at the delicate features of the face, the gentle curve of the forehead, the little button nose, the fine lips and chin. Through the translucent skin the spine bent and flexed as the baby danced. Neurons inside the developing brain buzzed with electrochemical energy.

How incredible it was to be a woman and to be creating a human being!

The sonographer was happy with the foetus’s anatomy. I went for blood tests designed to check the potential risk for Down’s Syndrome and other abnormalities. The tests wouldn’t produce an answer with any certainty; I’d receive an estimate based on my age; hormone levels; and a measurement of Nuchal Translucency (NT), the fluid at the back of the baby’s neck. I was told that I’d be called during the week if the baby was high risk or receive a text the following week if low risk.

Disabilities such as Down’s had always been a serious fear – perhaps even worse than losing the child – and my age increased the risk. As much as I admired those who chose to keep and raise a disabled child, I knew I would not be able to do so on my own. But I was horrified at the prospect of being faced with that impossible decision.

After a week of flying into a panic at every missed call or voicemail message, I discovered that I was very low risk – chances of Down’s one in 13,000. With this news, my pregnancy finally began to transform into a source of joy rather than a daily walk along a knife edge. This was really happening. Come September, my life would change forever.

With everything progressing I allowed myself, at last, to begin to think through and plan the practicalities of the child’s birth and first couple of years. I longed to have and raise the baby in England but would it make better financial sense to rent out my house and live abroad with my parents? If so, would flying long-haul at eight months pregnant be preferable to flying the same distance with a screaming four-month-old infant?

The never-ending river of tricky decisions continues.

The longest three months of my life

Tags

Autobiography, Choice mother, Choosing single motherhood, Conception, Cost of IVF, Donor conception, Female empowerment, Knock yourself up, Memoir, Pregnancy, retroverted uterus, Single mother by choice, Trying to conceive, TTC, Writer

Each day of the first trimester of pregnancy must seem like walking on a knife edge for any woman keen to be a mother, but for a soon-to-be-thirty-eight ‘last chancer’ who has invested everything in self-funded IVF the wait to the safer fourth month can be almost unbearable. One is advised to ‘forget’ one is pregnant despite the need to scrutinise every menu item and deal with pregnancy symptoms.

Like my mother, I was lucky enough to avoid morning sickness but the fatigue has sometimes rendered me incapable of making the epic journey from my bed to the sofa. And for the first time in my life I’m almost completely filling an A-cup (which I know because, also for the first time in my life, I’ve had to buy a bra to support the weight of my new breasts!).

I spent the entire three months wishing I could be put into a kind of stasis, only to be woken when it was time for my twelve week scan. To add to the frustration, the hospital arranged my scan for 13 weeks and a day (next Sunday) so another week of waiting and worrying lies ahead. I’ve tried to avoid search engines and forums – too many horror stories from women who have had a normal scan and strong heartbeat at 8 or 9 weeks and then learn, at the twelve week scan, that the baby has died with no apparent cause. This is known as a silent or missed miscarriage and I can’t even imagine the agony of thinking everything is fine and then receiving this news.

Although I still feel pregnant, I can’t feel my uterus at the moment. Most of the pregnancy books and websites mention that one should be able to feel the hard ball poking up over the pelvic bone by now. I’m hoping the reason mine remains elusive is that I have a retroverted uterus, which means it is tilted backwards towards the spine. This is common and seen as another version of normal, but it often means that pregnancy takes longer to show and the heartbeat can be more difficult to hear. At some point (supposedly around 13 weeks) the uterus is supposed to flip forward and right itself. In very rare cases, the uterus doesn’t move forward and becomes ‘incarcerated’ within the pelvis, leading to miscarriage in the second trimester. Another possibility I don’t want to think about.

And so I’m preparing myself for another long, long week and thoughts of ‘surely God or fate wouldn’t be so cruel as to let something go wrong now, not after all I’ve been through’. I just want to be through the scan and setting my sights on the calmer waters and ‘glow’ of the next three months.