The ectopic cherry on top part 2/2

When I came out of theatre after my ectopic I was happy. The pain was gone. I was wheeled into resus and then able to call my husband on the phone to tell him I was OK. I didn’t realise it then but I had been gone for about three hours and he was worried sick.

I don’t really remember being wheeled onto the ward at around 6pm that night, but I was there in a bed closed off by a curtain. To my left was a woman who snored so loudly. There was a tube used to drain blood from in my abdomen. And a catheter for urine.

It transpired that I had lost at least 2 litres of blood, probably more. In theatre I had two blood transfusions. My blood count was 74, when around 115 was considered the bottom end of normal. I had an iron infusion and two more blood transfusions.

I felt awful. For some bizarre reason I was surprised when the nurses said that I would be staying at the hospital that night. I think I was in shock still and probably drugged to the eyeballs. That night the nurses visited me regularly, taking my blood pressure, which was ridiculously low. I was in that ward for another few days. Things gradually improved, although it took me a long time even to stand. Comparing it to my c-sections progress was very slow. I couldn’t eat much without feeling nauseated and slept most of the day and night.

On the Friday I was told that I could go home. I wanted to be home but I also didn’t feel like I was quite ready. In hindsight I probably should have stayed in the hospital, but I went home. My mum was there and helped take care of me and the family. I still couldn’t eat much, and if I sat at the dining table I felt nauseated almost immediately.

I had a constant fear that there was a slow leak of blood going into my abdomen, that the wound was not quite shut. I feared going back to hospital. I don’t think I have ever experienced that sort of fear before, even though I wasn’t scared at the time of the surgery I certainly was afterwards.

By about the following Wednesday I was able to walk around the block. But it was hard to breathe and took a lot of effort. I paid for it the next day, and couldn’t get out of bed. Progress was still frustratingly slow. I cried at still being effectively bed bound. then suddenly things improved dramatically over just a single day. I could walk to our local cafe (although I paid for it the next day) or school (arriving puffed and sore). It was at my son’s school fair that things deteriorated rapidly, where I spent some time in the sun and simply couldn’t physically handle it. I cried, walked home, and went to bed.

Now it has been a couple of months since the event. Weirdly, I feel no real sadness for the pregnancy or the fact that I no longer have a fallopian tube. Sometimes I cry that we were not able to have three children and I wonder why such bad luck has befallen us. But it has also given me a sort of peace. A peace that I can end this fight for more children knowing that I have given more than everything that I have. There was little more than I could have done I think, except perhaps take more time off work during IVF, but with seven or so attempts at that I’m not sure it was ever going to be a realistic idea in any case. I am done. I sometimes daydream about being pregnant again but I know, I am done.

The ectopic cherry on top: part 1/2

I nearly died last month. That sounds so dramatic. But it’s true, well, if not the truth pretty close to it.

We were talking about whether we might try again. Not IVF, those days were done. But just as though we were an ordinary couple hoping to get pregnant. After I had a period that seemed to last forever, exhaustion and sore boobs that would not go away, I took a pregnancy test. I was shocked to see a strong positive line. I didn’t have much, if any, excitement. I’d basically had a period and had spotting for weeks with my history I knew that this was an almost certain failure. So I pretended it wasn’t happening.

It was at about six and a half weeks that I told my husband while we were sitting on the couch one evening. I hadn’t wanted to tell him earlier after seeing his face the last time I told him I had a pregnant test. It was hell for him to hear that news over and over again only for the pregnancy to fail.

I’m glad I did tell him though. Two days later I woke up feeling fine and took a shower. As I got out of the shower the kids were ready to head off to school and my husband was due to hop into his Uber and travel to the airport where he would be flying out of town for the night. It was at that moment that it happened. I suddenly felt a massive pain in my lower abdomen. I had to lie down on the bed. It got worse in a matter of seconds, and I thought I was going to throw up. I crawled to the bathroom in nothing but a towel and lay on the ground, sweating and nauseous, craving the cool tiles.

I remember having an awareness that the kids and my husband were standing in the doorway and watching me, but I couldn’t really acknowledge them or reassure them. I made my husband get a bottle of my daughter’s liquid ibuprofen and drank some, knowing pills would come straight back up. My husband’s Uber was waiting. “I can’t get up” I said “I just can’t”.

The Uber left. After I tried to say that I just needed to lie down in bed, my husband convinced me that he was taking me to hospital. We agreed that it was best to drop the kids at school first. He placed a duvet over the top of me. I was in a bad way. We made it to ED at 9am and I tried to check in saying “I think I’m having a miscarriage”, but I couldn’t think to answer their questions, and I was in so much pain and nausea they popped me in a wheelchair and I sat, head lolling, waiting.

I was given priority at triage. There were a variety of tests done, it was confirmed I was pregnant, and a portable scanner was wheeled into the room. The person that scanned me did not find any issue that might indicate an ectopic (something that concerns me in hindsight), and I was scheduled for a scan at 1pm. That was about an hour and a half away from recollection, but apparently it was the first slot available. The time passed very quickly for me, I lay there simply trying to focus on breathing. I had significant pain despite having pain relief and a feeling of my chest feeling constricted, like it was full and being pressed.

When I was finally wheeled to the radiologist I was extremely nauseous. I asked if I could go back to the room for some anti nausea meds as I felt so unwell. The radiologist firmly but gently said “no, you need to stay. It won’t take much longer.” He said that something wasn’t right and after a few more minutes I was wheeled back to the ward.

Very quickly after that the gynaecology team busted into the ward, dismissing the doctor with me bluntly. I needed emergency surgery. I had an ectopic pregnancy. It had ruptured. I had a lot of internal bleeding. My husband looked terrified and swore. I felt scared, but overwhelmingly I just wanted the pain gone and I was glad it was being dealt with, as I knew I could not be sent home like I was. I was asked when I last ate, was I a smoker, do I have allergies, and the processes around all my previous surgeries came flooding back.

So there I was, being wheeled quickly to surgery. The gynae team being cross that the priority button on the lifts didn’t seem to be working. A woman in scrubs looking at me in the lift and saying “I know exactly how you feel” and me responding “I very much doubt that”, before my husband ripped into her being a medical professional with terrible bedside manner. Then, a laminated sign on the wall ONLY PATIENTS PAST THIS POINT. That was it, my husband said goodbye with tears in his eyes and off I went. In theatre I was asked to wriggle onto the operating table. The anaesthetist said she would be holding my throat as I went under the general in case my food came back up. I didn’t care, I was happy that it was all nearly over. I felt myself drift off and I was glad.

What might have been

I ovulated on Day 13 of my cycle. That never happens. Maybe it was a bad omen. Maybe my body was done with all the poking, prodding, and pain. But I got an early positive pregnancy test. And another one a few days later.

Bizarrely, my mind flicked to mundane things like “how will we fit three car seats in the car” and “this will delay me getting my body back again by years”, rather than jubilation. I was hopeful though, that this one would stick. My husband wasn’t. When I showed him the positive test with a smile on my face he looked at me with no expression, like I was an idiot. I burst out crying, and he explained it was impossible for him to believe it would work given our history. I was sad and angry that this is what a positive pregnancy test looked like in our house.

I took another pregnancy test, and it had barely shifted in colour. I had drunk a lot of water, but something didn’t feel quite right. My minor symptoms all disappeared. My breasts were no longer sore, my hunger gone. And so when I went for my blood test on Day 10 after the transfer, I was hopeful but not surprised when the nurse told me that the HcG was only 9, and the pregnancy would not succeed.

I was at work when I got the call. It was bloody hard holding it together that afternoon. My mind was blank. This was it, the last chance, gone. I walked out early. I had to go and pick up my son from school and someone talked about mundane things like lawns. I barely responded. My friend asked if I was OK, I couldn’t talk but I messaged her later.

I was truly heartbroken. The next week we went on holiday, which was a good escape, but the reality loomed over me and crushed me. I saw my pregnant sister in law, who had the same due date as our February failed transfer. Why did everyone else get pregnant so easily or at least eventually. Why the hell did we have nine failed pregnancies. I didn’t want to talk, I couldn’t. My mind was blank. I wanted to be by myself and away. My husband called me anti-social and compared me to my mother, which is basically the biggest insult he could have made. I don’t think he fully grasped that it was a side effect of me being broken inside.

And so here we are. It hurts every day. I pack away my daughter’s baby clothes and cry knowing that these clothes were meant for our third baby. Knowing I will never cuddle my own newborn again. I’m annoyed that after being in such a happy place after my daughter was born that I am back here, again, in a place where I feel broken, sad, deflated and down. I overanalyse everything, which is so frustrating and unhelpful. Why did we fail? Would a simple change have changed everything?

Now I have small victories. Doing things for myself. Planning a future about me, rather than about what I need to do to try and get pregnant. Small victories are just that at this stage, small, but I’m trusting that they will build over time until one day I don’t think about being pregnant, or what might have been.

One last chance

Heading back to the fertility clinic I felt bad in a way. Selfish. Like there were couples that were desperate to have one baby and I had two, so why should I show up there again. But I did. I wanted three children. I wanted more really, but three was realistic in terms of what I could cope with on a day-to-day basis. What seemed fair to my other two children. I had my heart set on three. My husband wanted three. So there I was, again.

We started our first frozen embryo transfer in February. I started a new job that month. It was probably not a great time to try a frozen embryo transfer, but there wasn’t going to be a time I wasn’t working. I had twelve blood tests across fourteen days. And then my transfer date was planned the same day as a flight to see a big client. It was stressful. I managed to change the date to the day prior. As so often is the case with me, on Day 10 I had my pregnancy test and it was positive, but only just. HcG at 30. Then the pregnancy failed, again.

We contemplated a further transfer in March, against a nerve-wracking backdrop of Covid-19 coming into the country. What were the effects of this virus? Could it harm a baby? I was unsure about undergoing a transfer with such a lack of knowledge, so we decided against it. It wouldn’t have gone ahead in any case, as our country went into lockdown for the next seven weeks.

The day we returned to our city after lockdown in May I started taking blood tests again. This time only five bloodtests were needed. The ridiculous thing about this month was we were shifting house. I didn’t really think about it prior, but it was inevitable that I lifted heavy boxes and furniture. What a stupid idea. The transfer failed.

We did a further frozen embryo transfer in July. It was the shortest cycle I can recall having in a long time. On Day 24 I was spotting, when normally that would happen around five days later. Who knows what was going on. But the embryo transfer didn’t work. It felt like our money was going down the toilet as fast as our embryos. This loss really hit me hard. I might have to come to terms with not having any more children, soon. It was not something I had previously accepted as a possibility. I cried a lot.

That left us with one normal embryo remaining. I decided to give it the best chance I could by having a further lipiodol flush, as we knew that could increase the chances of implantation. Even being in the room made me upset. The medical staff had no idea. I could hear two nurses outside the window talking about how one was pregnant and what the sex of her baby would be. Laughing happily. Meanwhile I was on the other side of the window, about to have a tube shoved into my uterus for a painful procedure. Again.

The procedure really hurt, to the point where I could barely handle the pain. My uterus was spasming the Doctor explained. Once it was finished I had to have a shower and wait to have a further scan. I was told the wait would be two hours. “But no-one told me that when I booked the appointment, and last time I simply went home”, I said. My husband was looking after the kids and waiting for me to return so he could work, I didn’t have two hours to wait. “Procedures change” the Doctor said (“Well, sure, I have no problem with that if you communicate it”, I thought). He was an older, white-haired man. He then said, “Look, I want you to get pregnant just as much as everyone else does”. I stopped him there. “I somehow doubt that”, I said. He was lucky to escape with his nose, I wanted to punch him so badly. He let me leave after fifteen minutes.

So there we were, ready for one last chance.

Miscarriage is confronting

I held it in my hands as they shook, like I would a baby bird that I had found fallen out of a nest and scooped up to care for. I was horrified, mystified, stunned. It was what remained of our most recent pregnancy. It took me completely by surprise. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. It was about the size of a grape and it almost looked and felt hard like a grape, but with extra soft tissue at the base and presumably then an umbilical cord. It looked like a tadpole. The smell of blood, the astonishing sight, the thought of what I was holding made me simultaneously cry and nearly vomit for the first time since I knew I was miscarrying.

It was a confronting moment following weeks of uncertainty. I had found out that I was pregnant when my period didn’t arrive. It would have only been my second period following the birth of our now one year old. I was breastfeeding around the clock and we’d only not used contraception on one day – day 27 of my cycle – because surely there was no chance of becoming pregnant only a couple of days before my period was due. Somehow the pregnancy test came back positive.

After so many losses and so much heartache, you might have expected that I would be over the moon to be pregnant so easily. Well, I wasn’t. I cried. My hands shook as I read the test and told my husband. I wasn’t ready to be pregnant again. I was still up all night with our baby. I was breastfeeding her. I hadn’t even left the house in the evening once, because she woke so regularly in tears.

And I had literally just been offered a new role. It smashed my old role out of the park. More senior, a better remuneration package, a well regarded firm. If I turned up six months pregnant and left after three months what message would that send? I wouldn’t have any entitlement to parental leave or pay. It was not good timing at all.

“Let’s just take it day by day”, my husband would wisely say to me. He knew that the chances were that the pregnancy would never succeed. We had a 25% strike rate of positive pregnancy tests amounting to a live birth, and even then one of those two live births was carefully selected via IVF. He was right. I tried to remain calm but I was anxious as anything.

I took more pregnancy tests. They seemed to progress as you’d expect until the control line was weaker than the test line. Maybe we would be having another baby. I summoned up the courage to go to the GP and do some blood tests. 3600. It seemed about where you’d expect for the gestation. I did another test three days later. 5300. The HcG wasn’t doubling. It wasn’t even close. But the Dr said it was still progressing and it was still possible the pregnancy could succeed.

Meanwhile I started to have some spotting. Surely this was the beginning of a miscarriage. I worried, what if something was wrong but I didn’t miscarry for a while, or I didn’t miscarry at all and our baby had some horrible health issues? My mind was filled with anxious thoughts more or less constantly.

Another three days later I had an ultrasound and another blood test. The HcG came back at 7950. Again, nowhere near doubling but still progressing. And on the ultrasound there was a 3mm fetal pole. They estimated the gestation at around five weeks six days and said things were looking good, although there was no heartbeat yet. I was pretty sure the gestation should have been six weeks two days at a minimum. Things weren’t adding up.

It was on my daughter’s birthday nearly a week later that I started bleeding. Not heavily, but enough for me to doubt the pregnancy. We were on holiday. Thankfully we arrived back home before the real bleeding started. Bright red blood at around eight weeks. Really painful cramping and a strange feeling like I’d been kicked “there” over and over. A sore tailbone. I lay in bed curled up with a heat pack and some panadol. The cramping lasted all night. I was miscarrying.

The next day I had the kids to look after by myself. I was still cramping and bleeding bright red blood. How was I going to deal with this and entertain the kids? Thankfully the cramping eased enough that we could go out, and that was the worst of it, gone.

I bled bright red blood, quite heavily, for days. Almost a week. I wondered every time I went to the bathroom where the little 3mm bean had ended up. It felt undignified and sad, knowing that it would likely be in the toilet or in a pad rolled up and thrown into a rubbish bin. I tried not to think about it too much, but my body made that difficult.

So when, at around eight and a half weeks, I suddenly found myself face to face with the tissue of the pregnancy, things felt very raw and very real. I was really upset. I felt angry that this had happened to us, again. I felt sad that we wouldn’t ever know this little bean. I felt relief that the spotting, the bad results, the anxiety was over. It was such little emotion compared to our previous losses when my world felt like it had fallen around me, but it still hurt. I felt pain, bemusement, but wonder: how did we have two beautiful children? I had no answers.

Our little bean will be buried in our backyard perhaps, or maybe where all its siblings to be are, on a mountain near our house. It’s a sad thought, but one that gives me comfort knowing where they are.

Elective C-section: a blow by blow account

We arrived at the hospital in time for our 7am check-in. We were first on the surgical list that day, scheduled at 8.30am, and I was glad. I was feeling nervous enough without having to wait for an uncertain length of time for the surgery. The nurses called my husband to put his blue scrubs on. Things were starting to get real.

Now it was my turn. I had to put on two hospital gowns, as you can imagine both were hideous looking, one doing up and the front the other at the back. I was asked a number of questions by the nurses and the anaesthetists – what did we want to do with the placenta? did we want baby to have a vitamin K injection? was I allergic to any drugs? was I unwell?

Finally I was walked into another room and lifted onto a hospital bed.  There I was greeted by an anaesthetist with a Star Wars headscarf. Time for the spinal tap. I was anxious as I bent over a couple of pillows. Three doses of local anaesthetic followed into my lower back. The pain was sharp. And then the spinal.

I was wheeled into theatre and at that moment my emotions overtook me. I broke down. I was overwhelmed, worried, and finally having to face up to the occasion that I felt I had denied for so long. It was confronting. I wanted a hug from my husband as the theatre staff fussed around me. All I could do was look at him from a distance and try to regain my composure. After a while a senior nurse gently told me I needed to pull myself together otherwise they would have to consider me as distressed. I gathered that meant that the surgery couldn’t happen until I was calm. I got there eventually.

I was lying on my back, the green curtain between me and my soon to be sliced open tummy sat in front of me. My arms were outstretched, a drip in one hand, monitors on the other hand. The anaesthetist stood by my head and my husband sat behind me.

I didn’t react well at all to the initial dose of anaesthetic. My chest felt like it was being crushed, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe” I said to the anaesthetist. Thankfully, a friend of mine had the same experience and I knew, or at least thought, that it was due to slightly too much anaesthetic too quickly. The feeling wore off fairly fast.

The next period was probably the worst. I suddenly felt extremely unwell and as though I was going to faint, even though I was already lying down. Everything was spinning, I felt nauseous, there were black spots darting around in my vision. I was sweating and shaking. I overhead the anaesthetists talking about my blood pressure. My husband was asking questions. The anaesthetist was telling me, “you’re fine, you’re OK.” Well I wasn’t. It was awful.

Thankfully, they managed to fix the issue. I had reacted badly to the drug that stabilises blood pressure. They had to quickly find an alternative drug and swap the IV over. My husband said that my vitals dropped really low – my heart rate and my blood pressure, and that the anaesthetists were visibly stressed. I’m glad I didn’t see that. It must have been hard for my husband to watch.

Then began the surgery. I could feel pressure on my abdomen, so I knew it was happening, but felt no pain. After a while, I felt the senior nurse putting a lot of pressure on my chest and ribcage – it made sense, I could feel the baby had squished itself right in there. Two more attempts at squishing her out and then it happened. That first cry. She was here. I bawled tears of relief and happiness.

She went off to get weighed and have her vitals checked. 4.19kgs, yikes. I had some relief that I had the c-section. I didn’t realise it at the time, but the surgeon had to cut through my placenta and I was losing a lot of blood. 1.5 litres it turned out. It would make for a difficult post-birth recovery.

But from that moment on, I went from being in denial to being completely in love with our new girl, and so happy. I looked in my husband’s red eyes as happy tears welled up. It was if the pain of the past three or so years was washed away instantly. We had finally done it.

The third trimester – the reality begins to set in…

It was really happening, we were entering the third trimester for the first time since my son was born. We might actually be having this baby!

I had a further scan at 32 weeks, more for sanity reasons than any medical need. Oh wow, our little girl was a whopper. She was already measuring at 2.3kg and was sitting off the charts in terms of her percentile. I wondered whether I might have gestational diabetes so I sat through the two hour glucose test. No, she was just a whopper!

Because of her size, and our history, we elected to have a c-section. The obstetrician who was at my son’s delivery had suggested that I might consider an elective as, “these things tend to repeat themselves”. So, our plan became that unless a natural birth happened fairly promptly and without issue, we would have a c-section at 39 weeks. A date was finally set.

I was getting very sore, and was not even walking much. My ankles were getting larger and my belly button was now a series of stretch marks. I described the feeling to my friends as having a spikey bowling ball in my lower abdomen. It turned out she was also lying in the breech position, poking her toes out my sides.

I was leaving work to take all my annual leave before the baby was born. It was a disappointing time. Despite my boss knowing what I had been through, nobody organised a lunch for me, like had been usual in our firm. I tried to focus on the larger picture – I was having a baby finally, a work lunch was hardly important. But it did leave me feeling fairly unhappy. On my last day, I was sick, which spelled a strange start to my annual leave / maternity leave. There it was, I had finished work for over a year.

In those final weeks, I painted our baby’s room (something that’s not that easy when you’re that big!) and hurried around getting things ready., like buying a bassinet. I felt like I had no relaxation time at all, really. But I didn’t mind. I was hoping that she wouldn’t come early, and there were many times I nervously thought that we wouldn’t make it through to 39 weeks. We had no real back up plan if she did. Both our families lived outside our city, and we had friends, but I was nervous about having to rely on them to look after our soon for days.

The eve of the c-section finally arrived. My mother in law had come up to stay with us. There was no worry now about if the baby came that night. We finally packed our bags. It’s a strange thing preparing for an elective c-section, knowing that you leave in the morning for the hospital and you’ll be most likely coming home with a baby. What a journey and a momentous moment.

The anatomy scan and the gender

Although we’d passed the 12 week scan with flying colours, fears still remained that we would discover something awful at our 20 week anatomy scan. I think part of this fear came about because of posts I had read on a Facebook support group. Lots of the members of the group had received heartbreaking news at their anatomy scans. Heart issues, brain issues, spinal issues…

I held my breath as the scan started. The sonographer methodically began to examine the different parts of the baby. The baby’s head, it looked OK… was it OK? Yes, it was. The baby’s heart. The obstetrician said it had four chambers was that enough? Yes, it was. the baby’s spine. We’d seen it on an earlier scan, was that OK? Phew. Ok so those were the main issues, right? It seemed like things were going alright. The sonographer continued and it gradually dawned on me that we were going to get through this scan just fine.

“Would you like to know the sex?” she asked. “Yes, please”, we nervously replied. “You’re having a girl.”

And with that, my months and months of denial hit me quite hard. This was real, it was actually happening. It was upsetting feeling the weight, the pain and hurt, start to lift off my shoulders. I also felt a strange sense of anxiety. Our son’s needs seemed so simple, a girl seemed like such a big responsibility. I panicked a little. I had just assumed that we would have another boy, again I think because I was in denial about having any baby. I thought of all the challenges and issues I had faced growing up as a girl and freaked out. So much to navigate.

Everything hit me like a lightning strike that day. What would be a really wonderful occasion for most people was quite a shock for me. It was as if I had just been told I was pregnant for the first time, and I was 20 weeks pregnant. And we were going to have a baby girl. My husband asked if I was happy, but I couldn’t say that I was at that moment. I was anxious and in disbelief and it overrode the underlying feelings of happiness that I had.

My husband said that I ruined the day for him because of that. That really upset me. While the feelings of anxiety and disbelief faded quite quickly, we wouldn’t have that moment again.

Telling work that you’re pregnant

I spent so much time in bed in my first trimester feeling unwell that it seemed quite bizarre that my nausea stopped at around 13 weeks. It was like the nausea switch turned off overnight. Of course it made me nervous, was the baby still alive? I was having weekly appointments with the obstetrician at that point, so I would anxiously await the scan to see that baby was still alive and kicking. Everything seemed fine.

At around 16 weeks I felt the baby’s first kicks. Very soft at first, but then distinct. It was  really important development for me, because from then on I had an internal monitor to tell me that the baby was still alive, that its heart continued to beat.

Meanwhile at work I couldn’t bring myself to tell my boss that I was pregnant.

It was as though telling my boss would make the situation more real and I would become a lot more vulnerable to accepting that good or bad things might happen. If I didn’t say anything I suppose it was a form of denial and self preservation. I waited until I was about 16 weeks pregnant, when I really couldn’t hide the bump anymore. In the meantime I snuck out in my lunch hour to my appointments and kept slowly counting down the days.

By 16 or 17 weeks the comments began. An older woman at work joked that I had baby brain. She couldn’t possibly know I was pregnant apart from looking at me, so I felt that her comment was fairly dangerous and, to be honest, plain rude. One colleague hauled me into her office and asked me straight up. I laughed and I appreciated it.

A male colleague saw me in the lift and said, “hey you’re pregnant! You are pregnant, aren’t you?” That was a risky move. I still remember how devastated I was when a man in a parking lot pointed at my tummy and said, “you’re pregnant!” I wasn’t. I was gobsmacked and fled the scene before getting upset. You should never ask a woman if she’s pregnant!

 

 

The 12 week scan… a lot of tears

The last time we had a 12 week scan our hearts were crushed. There was a large amount of fluid behind the baby’s neck, indicating possible Down’s Syndrome or significant heart issues. I remember crying and saying, “why does this keep happening to us!” before we were ushered into a small tea room out the back of the practice so I could regain some composure.

So, fair to say that reaching the 12 week scan was a huge milestone for us. Because we had screened our embryos we knew that it wouldn’t have a trisomy, but that didn’t stop me imagining any number of problems the baby could have. We went into the sonographer’s small dark room and I was quick to let her know that we were anxious and would need reassurance as soon as she was able to give it to us. I cried, it was becoming pretty standard for me to do so at every appointment!

The sonographer was really amazing. She quickly found the baby’s heartbeat. OK, so it was alive. The sonographer then measured the fluid at the back of the baby’s neck. It was around 1.2mm. For our previous 12 week scan it was 3.8mm. It was a sobering feeling considering what a huge difference that was and how at that previous scan we had no real appreciation of just how significant that reading would be for our baby and our future.

Even when it became clear that everything was just fine I continued to feel so anxious. After all that we’d been through there was such a large element of self preservation and protection that it all felt like another tick alongside a long, long list of milestones. But we’d got past this hurdle, it was an immense relief.