WHY ME? WHY NOW?

For most people, taking a pregnancy test comes at a time of excited anticipation. The movie version always involves the couple sitting on the bathroom floor as the minutes elapse, filled with quirky yet poignant conversation as they ponder their fate. Even if it turns out to be negative there’s a sigh of relief tinged with a wistful glance into a child-filled future.

Yet for me the pregnancy test has been problematic at best. Traumatic at worst. If you have ever experienced infertility, fertility treatment, or any form of pregnancy or baby loss, the chances are you feel the same.

I started writing this blog shortly after receiving an unexpected but much longed for and wanted positive pregnancy test. I am aware, having walked some miles down the path of infertility and baby loss, that another person’s positive can be painful to hear and painful to watch. I’m not here to add to anyone’s pain. I’m here to explore – and explain to the world – what it feels like when a pregnancy test doesn’t always mean you’re going to have a baby.

I have one daughter, born after long periods of infertility and two miscarriages. Her arrival felt totally unreal – how could we possibly have got so lucky? – and I remain in awe and gratitude at her very existence. I have since had a third miscarriage and a prolonged period of secondary infertility. By the time I had this positive, I thought the game was up. It seems I may have been wrong.

I don’t know how this story is going to unfold. It may end abruptly as 3 of my previous pregnancies have. Or perhaps it will lead me to the arrival of my second living child. I know which I would prefer.

THE UPDATE

Sadly after a short time I found out that I would go on to have my fourth miscarriage. I hoped this blog would be an account of the challenges of being pregnant before bringing my second rainbow into the world, but this wasn’t to be.

Despite my loss, or maybe because of it, I decided to carry on writing. I wouldn’t bring another child into the world so I thought I would give life to something else; words. A truthful account of how it feels to live as one of the small percentage of people who have multiple miscarriages. How it feels when you don’t have domain over your ability to conceive and bring home a healthy baby.

It’s not the happy ending I hoped for. But it’s not the end either.