My Darling Girl

I never felt old enough to have a child, I still don’t to be honest.

Maturity has never been a strong point, although I apparently come across as intimidating to some people, probably less so nowadays maybe in my heyday. I radiate an air of capability but inside I am still a teenager, confused by most things, desperate to run away but I know I have to just ‘get on with it’, so I do. Being fairly old fashioned in my upbringing I never considered having a child before marriage, so I didn’t even consider it until I was 36. I’d had a contraceptive implant for a number of years and it was a bit experimental for its time, so when it was removed and nothing happened I was not massively concerned. Time ticked on and still nothing happened, and eventually I went to seek help. Over the next two years I had many trips to the doctors, and many conversations, but no resolution, so armed with my company private healthcare I sped up the process.

The consultant I saw was an older gentleman with no manners and a weariness to him that radiated sadness and bad news. He looked at his notes, stood up and popped his head through to the secretaries, returning he presented me with a box of tissues and just said that I was one of the unlucky few who must have had their menopause early because it was quite clear in my results that I had the egg capacity of an 80 year old. I stood in that car park bawling my eyes out while all the happy young people went in for their appointments, the saddest thing being that the same doctors who tell you that you have no chance of being a parent are the ones who deal with the pregnancies and childbirth.

My Mum had lost several babies between my sister and myself and she had also noted that it is incredibly unfair that people in that position remain on the same wards as the new mums and babies. Anyway, the NHS gave up on me (too old apparently) and I gave up on them. The only option was to go to a private fertility clinic, where the lovely consultant heard my history and immediately said it must have been the Sarcoidosis.

Sarcoidosis makes the immune system go into overdrive and the body starts to attack its own tissue and organs. This, he said, was most likely what caused my loss of fertility and had probably been over and done before I was 30 years old. The only way to have a child now would be by donor egg or adoption, and we thought that we would try by donor egg first. Very briefly, the process included some psychological assessment, matching with someone not too dissimilar to myself and an agreement to pay toward their treatment on top of our fertility treatment. In the main the egg donor would also be going through treatment due to a partner’s infertility and what we paid made their treatment more affordable. There were many months of injecting hormones into my thighs and stomach, pills and prodding, and the awful probe scanner thingy that went up the yin yang, but at the end of the day we got our egg. 3 eggs were provided for us, 2 were fertilised and put into my womb and one was frozen just in case we wanted to try again.

During the 5th week I started bleeding, it felt like pints of the stuff, ‘He’ was out at that time and I called him distraught saying I thought I was losing the babies, and he popped home to give me a hug, he denies every saying it but I remember quite clearly that he said he was happy it hadn’t worked because it would have changed our lives so much, then he went back out. I waited a day or so and then called the clinic, it was early for a six-week scan but they went for it to see what was left, and there she was, my wonderful little egg still clinging on and not letting go. I had lost her twin but not her. I’d gone on my own and my relief was so emotional that I couldn’t drive, I was shaking and crying, and the staff there were lovely to me until I was capable again. I think I was about 10 weeks pregnant when I phoned my mum and told her, her reaction was to groan and say “what have you done that for? It’ll ruin your life”.

I loved being pregnant, I was the size of a bus and nobody cared, I bought maternity clothes and baby stuff and moved furniture, decorated, cleaned, everything would be perfect. I’d made a birth plan that included a water birth and chilled music, I attended pregnancy pilates, and I revelled in my state.

At 9 months 9 days I started to bleed, I was having pains but only a little cramping, obviously not having done this before I had no idea what to expect but things were definitely moving. He didn’t go to work and stayed with me through the morning whilst the pains got stronger, we called the doctor about the bleeding and because it wasn’t much they said not to worry. By mid-morning the pains were getting intense and frequent so we headed to the hospital. Despite the pains I arrived at the hospital with my happy head on, expecting to be examined, shown to a room, and to be ‘mid-wifed’ through the next few hours. What I got was a long wait while a surly nurse told me there was no room and I should go and wait in the main waiting room. It was full of strangers and people staring, all thoughts of making any noise went out of the window, I tried to be as quiet as possible through each contraction until they could see me. They finally ushered us through to a room, but this was a four bed ward where we were separated only by a flimsy curtain, the other three beds were also occupied with a crowd of friends and family gathered around each one. I was expected to “hop up onto the bed and remove any underwear”, my embarrassment knew no bounds. After she had stuck her fingers in and wriggled them around a bit she told us we weren’t ready and should go away and come back in a couple of hours! And she walked away. We went to get some food but I was almost in tears whenever the pains came back so off we trotted back the ward.

Four hours later we finally managed to catch someone’s attention. By this point all my lovely plans were out of the window, because I was bleeding a water birth was out, because I had been ‘keeping it in’ my blood pressure was through the roof, and because we had been forgotten babies vitals were falling. So, I was dragged through to a birthing room that hadn’t quite been fully cleaned since the last victim and strapped up to a bank of machines which meant I couldn’t move. At this point I got an epidural, ah the bliss. A lot of things happened but I am vague on the next few hours, it was a round of pushing, not pushing, feeling ill and just wishing it was over, I was certainly not the wonderful image of an earth mother. The epidural slipped, the anaesthesia wore off, but it was shift change so could I just wait a bit for the next anaesthetist to come on duty, then I trapped my sciatic nerve, I was numbed down one side only so every contraction was a hilarious and painful folding of only one side of my body, the baby needed to come out urgently, there were wires stuck up inside on the top of her head, they were prepping me for a C section and telling me to push, her heart rate was slowing, my BP was rocketing, there were so many people in the room all at the same time, and then there she was …… calm and quiet and laying on my chest, just staring at me and I stared back.

I didn’t fall in love with her straight away but I was fiercely protective, she was mine and nobody else’s. Over the following few days I couldn’t look at her without smiling, the love built as we got to know each other. As a baby she was no trouble, she rarely kept us up at night, she slept through from early on, and I think she was (and still is) beautiful. When she had to start nursery because I was going back to work, I worried all the time, that I would go to collect her and not know which one was mine. I would have nightmares where I would pick up a baby and it was a wizened little old man in a foetal position. I think I just had separation anxiety but it really worried me at the time. She grew to be a beautiful little girl with a caring heart and an independent nature. She struggled to fit in and form large friend groups but has always had a few really close ones. She feels deeply and, because she is an only child, she has on some levels a maturity beyond her years. She is bright and clever and will no doubt make much of her life.

When I was going through hell, she was four years old, and there were nights when I would wake up in the spare bedroom crying , and there she was stroking my hair and telling me “there, there Mummy, it’s OK”. Her Dad would swear blind he helped when she was little but it was 10% at most, she and I were a unit, we did everything together which is why I believe her anxiety later on is caused by mine when she was little. Much as I tried to shield her from all that happened and probably overcompensated with fun things to do and gifts her friends didn’t get, she picked up on my mood and soaked it in. I dearly hope that I haven’t messed her up too badly. I want her to have everything she can dream of, and to love and be loved.