Well hello there, it’s been a minute.
I’ve written and re-written the next few blogs post for quite some time now. If you’re an avid follower of my blog (lol) then you’ll notice I haven’t published anything in 6 MONTHS. The last time I even attempted to write this, it was New Year’s Day. And a lot has happened in that time. Let’s throw it back...
Living in Limbo
Last you heard, I was taking control of my pregnancy. I was attending Pregnancy Pilates, going back to my acupuncturist, and had signed up for my local NCT course. Most of my friends had done it, and they all raved about it! I thought, wouldn’t it be great to have a new network of friends who are all in the same boat as us? Navigating parenthood for the first time with no clue of what lies in store for us? How very wrong I was!
I’m not saying I wouldn’t recommend NCT classes. They really have been invaluable for J and I when it comes to the knowledge of labour, birth and beyond. And some people really make friends for life there. My best friend even has dinner and coffee catch ups with her lot! But I just felt like an outsider, and wanted to scream at everyone “but we did IVF! How do we cope with pregnancy and birth when we’ve already been through so much already?!” Because that’s what I’ve now been struggling with, is how to come to terms with everything, now that we’ve come out on the other side. The support for women who are pregnant after infertility is so highly lacking, I’m shocked. I didn’t know where I fit in anymore – like I was in pregnancy limbo.
I didn’t feel like I was “allowed” to post on Instagram anymore for fear of upsetting my IVF followers - the guilt eats away at me and I feel like a fraud sometimes. I was in a group chat with fellow South West IVFers, and I barely contributed to the conversation in the end, because I don’t know how to relate without pissing them off. I was due to go to a meet-up with them back in October, and I pulled out at the last minute because I couldn’t go and hurt them, just by having the bump. I’ve been them; I’ve been there. I’ve been the woman to unfollow someone because they got pregnant, even after IVF. I’ve been the person to bitch and moan because someone is bitching and moaning about being pregnant after IVF. In the end, I removed myself from the group.
I also didn’t feel like I fit in with my pregnant friends, either. I could have general chit-chat conversations about things with them – the usual shopping habits, tips and tricks for avoiding stretch marks, cravings etc. But none of them were going through pregnancy anxiety on the level that I was (and PS I'm not saying that my anxiety was worse than theirs – I'm saying it’s different to theirs). My mind automatically went to the worst-case scenario when something bad happens, and that’s to do with how much we’ve been exposed to already. We’ve already dealt with the struggle of conception, and the grief of pregnancy loss. I didn’t know how much more I could handle, but I knew that the worst may not be over yet, either.
Plot Twists!
To put it into a brief summary, our pregnancy was not easy – at all. I wrote a whole blog post about what went wrong in the second trimester alone, but actually having proofread it, it is quite a dramatic read... and I’m so over drama!! Call it justification, but if you're reading this and thinking that I should have been more grateful for being pregnant after years of heartache, then just take a minute to read what happened:
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| One of my many visits to triage! I'm hooked up to the CTG machine which monitors fetal movements and heartrate. |
- Bleeding – Since finding out that our pregnancy was viable at 7 weeks, I experienced unexplained bleeding a total of four times. Three of those times I was admitted to triage, where I was then examined with a speculum (ew, and ouch) and monitored on the CTG machine until the maternity staff were happy that things were okay. Two of those times I was transferred to the antenatal ward and kept in overnight, once for 24 hours, and then again for 48 hours. This was due to how far along into the pregnancy I was, (37 and 38.5 weeks, respectively) which was extremely unsettling – the second time I was admitted I was having Braxton Hicks contractions, and you could see that the contractions were reaching the maximum tension limit on the machine – so surreal, and utterly terrifying in the middle of the night, when they were 3 minutes apart! I felt for sure I’d end up giving birth during that particular visit!
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| Braxton Hicks contractions at 38 weeks pregnant - these were my results at 5:42/5:45/5:49/5:52am... I thought I was going into labour! |
- Reduced Movements – I actually can’t tell you how many times I was either sent for an urgent doppler scan or admitted to triage for reduced movements! Again, the times in triage you are hooked up to the CTG machine, and you press a button every time you do feel baby move. Thankfully, there was no obvious reason as to why baby wasn’t playing ball those times, and again the maternity staff were happy that things were okay. Understandably, my anxiety levels were riding high.
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Husband’s Health Problems – You know by now that J has Type 1 Diabetes. At 16 weeks pregnant, J literally woke up one morning and his vision was blurred out of his right eye – and eye problems are a massive issue for diabetics. Cue a barrage of various tests, scans, MRIs, consultations, and a small fortune in hospital car parking charges. Thankfully, although a diagnosis was never found as to why he couldn’t see properly, J’s vision did improve slightly and both the eye infirmary and neurology department discharged him after 6 months of investigations. Needless to say, the fact that we thought my husband was going blind in the summer of 2019 was not something we had anticipated or needed!
- Cat’s Health Problems – Okay, you may be reading this thinking seriously? The cat? But our Ollie was a part of our family, and had been since he was a kitten. We’d had him for 13 years, and he was the happiest, most loving and beautiful cat you ever did meet. Sadly, during a routine op to remove a cyst, the vet found that Ollie had heart disease and hyperthyroidism. The vet told me, in his words, that it was very touch and go, and at one point advised he wouldn’t even make the trip home. I was beside myself! Although he did pull through that day, he was put on medication that he would need to take for the rest of his life – 6 tablets a day, to be precise! Ollie withdrew from his usual happy self, and ended up growling, hissing, scratching and hiding from us every time the pills came out. I couldn’t even give him the tablets myself, as one of them was dangerous for pregnant women to handle. In the end, Ollie sadly succumbed to his illness, and we lost him in April 2020.
- Finances – Thank god for pet insurance, that’s all I can say. Although we did have to pay out initially for Ollie’s treatment and medication, it still took time to get reimbursed from our insurance provider (minus the excess, of course. Ugh!) His medication alone was costing us over £200 every 6 weeks, and J was on SSP for 8 weeks while he couldn’t work due to his lack of eyesight! This was obviously something we did not expect to have to pay out while we were trying to get ready for the baby’s arrival and moving house. (Oh, and remember, we didn’t get pregnant for free either!)
- Moving House – In amongst all of this, we were trying to sell our house, and find our dream family home. With Brexit looming in October 2019, this was probably the worst time to do this! After finding a lovely house which needed a lot of cosmetic work, our vendors completely dragged their heels with the selling process, even though we – and our buyers – were chomping at the bit to get moving! We ended up moving 10 days after Morgan was born, we were literally still in hospital when we got the call to say we could exchange contracts!
Okay, that wasn’t so brief. But time and again I heard people say to me that I’d taken on too much whilst being pregnant. No, I hadn’t. No, I did not have “baby brain” if I forgot something – my mind was just in complete overdrive! And reading the list above, is it any wonder I couldn’t settle my anxieties? One of the worst things was being told that I was putting my baby's health at risk because of how stressed I was. As if that's what I needed to hear on top of everything else!
Life had yet again thrown us too many curveballs, and - essentially - I didn’t know how to be happy and pregnant at the same time. Little did I know, how unhappy I really was.
KEB x
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