From Loss to Hope: My Journey Through Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Motherhood
Sunday the 14th March 2010 (Mother’s Day) is a day that I will never forget, I was just over the 6-week gestation mark with my first pregnancy when I started to experience some mild cramping and bleeding. Over the course of the day these symptoms started to increase and later that evening I found myself staring at the bottom of the toilet not quite knowing what to do. Sadly, it was obvious that I had suffered my first miscarriage, so many thoughts swirling through my mind. How do you flush your baby away? To me it was my baby, but to so many others it wasn’t a real baby, it was just a small clot of blood.
Two more miscarriages followed, same pattern, between the 8-10 week gestation mark, lots of hospital appointments, blood tests, there was a possibility that my blood was clotting when I was pregnant so a small dose of aspirin was advised during my next pregnancy.
On the 8th August 2013, our son Jack was sadly stillborn at 28 weeks. A scan of my pregnancy a few days before had shown that Jack was on the small size but we were told that it was nothing to worry about and that I would be booked in for another growth scan in two weeks’ time. Jack was delivered naturally and peacefully in our local hospital and we decided that we needed some answers as to what had gone so terribly wrong. The post mortem results showed that my placenta had started to fail and that also Jack had suffered from a blood clot which they think had passed through my placenta. I will always blame myself, essentially my body had caused the death of our beloved son.
I was so lonely, no one really understood what I was going through.
We bounced from hospital to hospital, trying to find answers as to why I kept suffering from a miscarriage between the 8-10 week gestation. We even paid to have private care but this too resulted in a miscarriage.
I was so lonely, no one really understood what I was going through. During each pregnancy I had received regular scans and had always seen a little heartbeat, no one seem to understand the heart ache.
This was my thirteenth pregnancy so I didn’t really hold up much hope.
All of our hopes were pinned on our referral being accepted into the recurrent miscarriage clinic at Warwick and Coventry Hospital. It was only then did we get all of the answers that we were looking for. Following a Cervical Biopsy, it showed that I suffered from the condition Natural Killer Cells and that this condition would need treatment in the early stages of pregnancy and due to my blood clotting disorder then I would need to be take clexane every day. This was my thirteenth pregnancy so I didn’t really hold up much hope, I just presumed that the pregnancy would fail and that we would need to start the process again. Luckily for us this was not the case, following the fantastic treatment from Warwick and Coventry and being under the care of an amazing consultant at our local hospital, our daughter Emily was born at 33 weeks by caesarean section in July 2017. Emily spent the first 4 weeks of her life in SCBU, I was always told that I would never make full gestation and everyday of my pregnancy I just hoped that we would get past the 32-week mark.
I think it’s safe to say that my body wasn’t really built for being pregnant.
Our second daughter Charlotte was born in March 2020, just as the country went into lock down! I had been given the same tests and treatment plans as before and Charlotte was also born prematurely at 32 weeks by caesarean section. Our family was complete!
I think it’s safe to say that my body wasn’t really built for being pregnant, a blood clotting disorder that only happens when I’m pregnant, my placenta starts to fail later on in pregnancy and combined with natural killer cells, it was quite clear that I would never of had a successful pregnancy so I owe everything to the wonderful team at Warwick and Coventry and the fantastic consultant at NDDH for enabling me to achieve my dream of being a mum.
