Just the 3 of us!
The last 18 months of motherhood, although stressful, had been the best of my life. I felt like I was born to be a mummy. To be Lucy's mummy. And I felt like I was actually pretty good at it!
Yes, we had been through hell with Lucy's surgery, and the worry of her condition would never go away, but we were still very much standing and learning to live the new life we had created.
Adam was going to take some persuasion. We had talked on and off over the years about all things baby related. We never for a second had anticipated that the fertility treatment and the baby losses were going to be the "easy" bit for us.
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| Team Thom! |
Looking back, it's easy to forget all the pain we went through when we have our beautiful girl. The pain that never goes though is the memories of hospitals and surgery and lifelong illness. Of watching our precious baby go through so much and not being able to help her. The pain of knowing that my need for a child meant that she will spend her life fighting for it every single day. That guilt is immense.
But fight she does. She's absolutely the strongest person I know. Much stronger than I could ever be. But given the chance to do it all again with the risk of another heart baby was something that scared the life out of us. We didn't know if we could do it all again, and we had Lucy to think about this time too.
Lucy then began asking about babies and brothers and sisters and it made me think all over again. After all we did still have a frozen embryo left. A chance. A hope. We decided the best thing that we could do would be to speak to the Assisted Conception Unit at Dundee and to our counsellor, Anne, about our feelings and options.
So in June 2017 off we went on the all too familiar road to Dundee. The best thing about our Fertility Clinic being so far away was that the car journeys always gave us a chance to talk. Without distractions! Without being able to escape the awkward questions none of us really wanted to answer.
By the time we arrived for our counselling session, we had pretty much decided we just weren't ready to go forward. We weren't ready to put ourselves through any more heartache. And we certainly weren't ready to face the possibility of another heart baby and all that came with it!
We still had a chat with Anne and she agreed that it wasn't the right time. She suggested that we wait a bit longer and after all our embryo wasn't going anywhere. We left feeling like a huge weight had been lifted.
The next couple of months went by and after a wee while I started to feel all the feelings again. I still wanted another baby. I still felt that our family wasn't complete. I felt selfish that I still longed for another when Lucy was so much more than I could have wished for. I tried to put it all to the back of my mind and kept myself busy with Lucy and holidays and then Christmas.
As we went into a new year, a time I dread year after year, I started to think of what would lie ahead and once again, the old feelings resurfaced.
I longed for another baby. I was terrified of anything going wrong. I wanted Lucy to have a sibling. I didn't want to risk another baby being in hospital for months on end and that impacting on her wee life. The war in my head and my heart was getting too hard to deal with and I started to spiral to a place I had been before. A place I couldn't let myself go to again. I self-referred for counselling via my work. I knew I needed to talk to someone.
A year after we had seen Anne at Dundee, I was sat in another waiting room ready to start from the beginning with someone new. Someone neutral.
I had a few sessions over the summer focusing on the fact that we were in limbo. We couldn't move on with life without making the decision we knew we needed to make but neither of us were prepared to make that decision. It was impossible.
After one particularly good session, I decided to write to our Consultant in Dundee and ask about the quality of our remaining embryo. This is something we had never questioned before but something told me that I needed to know how healthy that embryo was and that it would help us to make a final decision. In reality, I was grasping at straws!
I quickly received an email back from Dundee explaining the grading system used and what grade our remaining embryo was.
It then read:
"Therefore, it is not to say that this embryo isn't capable of forming a normal, healthy pregnancy but the odds are stacked against it"!
My heart sank. In the moment, I knew it was finally over. The decision was out of our hands.
The letter basically went on to say, the decision to freeze embryos are made on the day by the individual embryologist involved and that the grading of our remaining embryo was below the normal freezing limits of the clinic. In short, our Embryologist froze it to give us as much chance as possible given our history but really, it should have been discarded at the time.
Adam, I think, was relieved. I was crushed. I knew I had wanted to expand our family, I just didn't realise how much.
We had agreed with Dundee that it didn't sit right with us to just let our embryo perish. After all, we had been through so much to create it in the first place, and so we decided to let the clinic use the embryo for training. A least that way we felt we were giving something back too.
I did feel a huge amount of relief that we didn't need to make any more decisions but I was also so sad that the journey was over. We would forever be a family of 3.
After a few weeks of not being able to pull myself out of the sadness I felt, I made an appointment with my GP. It was the first time since it all began that I felt ready to admit I was struggling and that it was time to ask for help.
I don't know if it was the finality of our situation or that I now had Lucy to think about, but going along that day was the best decision I made.
I told her about how sad I was feeling, and about the panic attacks and anxiety that I had experienced for so long, something no one but Adam was aware of. I told her about my insomnia and irrational thoughts and she suggested that it was time to try some medication.
At first I was embarrassed to admit that, after everything we had been through, I was now struggling to cope. Surely I had been through worse times than this!
My GP told me she thought I was suffering from a post traumatic stress disorder and suddenly it all made sense.
I have now been taking anti-depressant medication since August last year. We have had to increase it over time to a point now where I'm no longer suffering frequent panic attacks. I feel much more able to rationalise things and my mood is definitely better.
I've learnt that it's OK to be sad that the life we planned has taken a different route and that some days will be harder than others but I've also learnt to let myself be sad on those days and then pick myself up and enjoy every other day in between. I spend more days now appreciating everything that I do have than mourning the things I don't.
I have a beautiful daughter, a loving husband and the best family and friends. Yes life is different from what we anticipated and our journey here hasn't been easy, but it's been worth it. Every single step of the way has been more than worth it!
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