The Second Trimester

So much happened in the second trimester, some great, some extremely stressful and scary.  Turkey was good for me, just the break I needed and lets face it, I probably wasn’t going to get another for a few years.  This blog is a direct follow on from The twelve week scan

My mum has friends in Turkey, they live on a farm way up in the hills far away from the regular tourists.  It’s pretty basic, almost like Roma villages you see on television.  We stayed for the night and I was really cautious I didn’t eat anything.  There’s all these lists in the western world about what you can and can't eat while pregnant, but in places like Turkey you eat what you have and milk comes straight from the cow.  I slept on the only bed they had in the house, under a mosquito net that my mum had purchased for them a few years earlier.   I lay on the bed listening to bugs flying about and it made me feel really grateful for the life style we sometimes take for granted here in the UK. 

Once home the hospital appointments started up again.  I was seen frequently, usually every two weeks. We were a little upset that my husband missed the twelve-week scan but being seen and scanned again at fourteen weeks made us feel happy.  I actually felt really good in this trimester.  I had loads of energy, no morning sickness and I was out buying or looking at baby bits and bobs every chance I had.  I started a Pilates class early in my pregnancy and when my stomach started to grow too big I found a pregnancy yoga class.  I wanted to be in the best possible shape for what lay ahead.  I also had to think about parting with my beloved pink smart car. My favourite car ever!  We planned a little holiday to Cornwall, driving about and exploring was just the thing we loved doing.  My cousin who lives down that way was seven months pregnant and I thought it would be nice to go visit her, you know so we could compare bumps.  It‘s somewhere I’d always wanted to visit and it was scorching hot, just like being abroad.   My husband was a bit of a Rick Stein fan so we were definitely going to visit Padstow.  It was so lovely, we knew we’d return one day with Daisy in tow.  I bought her first toys in a Rick Stein boutique; at £40 each for some crochet rabbits Daddy Bear needed a little persuasion.  I will treasure the memories of that grumpy face, so to make him feel even better; I bought a bloody cake stand too!

I was really looking forward to starting my first antenatal classes but unfortunately, my dreams of a “normal” delivery were shattered when I was diagnosed with Placenta Praevia.  It can correct itself as the pregnancy develops and plans can change right through pregnancy from one week to the next.  I soon needed another course of IV antibiotics, as my body wasn’t coping.  My CF team were voicing concerns about a vaginal delivery knowing I was struggling to breathe and I resigned myself to the reality that I was going to have a planned caesarean section.  There were a lot of mixed emotions around this time because of the worry surrounding the various tests that are carried out to determine major birth defects.  This included the 20-week scan, which we were looking forward to, but there is always that worry we would find out there was something wrong.  By this time you look pregnant, you have accepted you are going to have a baby.  I could not imagine finding out there was some serious birth defect at this point.  How would we deal with that.  I remember my mum trying to explain years ago that your thought process is completely different when the baby is inside you.  I had casually said in my teens that I wouldn’t keep a baby it if had something major wrong with it.  I used to think a cleft lip was major defect and that I’d never keep a baby with that.  I guess our beliefs change with time as we mature.  We came home with another handful of scan photos and there was a really cool one showing her curled up in a ball showing all of her spine.  The lady said that was the best possible picture you could get to check the spine was normal.  

Even though I was clearly unwell at times, I loved being pregnant and our happiest times as a couple since the early years of marriage were around this pregnancy.  As I started to get bigger I suffered from leg cramps and foot cramps.  I think it’s pretty normal, but it was scary at the time.  So many changes is happening in your body and being ill I worried if it was normal or was it just something that was happening to me.  I had a good run of weeks feeling well so we organised a family meal with my late father in law and his parents.  I even went out and bought a new maternity dresses for the occasion.  I was feeling really good.  I wasn’t that close to my extended family.  Relationships were somewhat strained, but I was slowly trying to accept that not all families are like your own.  My husband was supportive of my beliefs and I was going meet him halfway in being more tolerant of the situation for the sake of our little family.

Two Pink Lines

In the last blog Circle of Life I told you about the most intimate details about having IVF treatment and how I was now waiting to do a test to see if I was pregnant.  Well guess what I am and yes that is a photo of the actual pregnancy test used. 

Trust me, when you’ve waited three years for it to happen it's an important memory to capture.  It worked, can you believe it, it worked first time.  After all the waiting, investigating, blood, sweat and tears we didn't have to suffer the trauma of the treatment not working.  It makes me feel grateful that I came straight home from the hospital and stayed in my bed for the rest of the day!  That two-week wait feels like a lifetime, you try not to think about it and then you just can’t help it.  Then at times, you can’t stop thinking, your mind races one minute and you daydream for hours the next.  You go through all the what if’s.  You start to imagine what pram you might buy, what cot you might buy it really is a crazy experience.  I had a feeling it would work you know, deep down I knew it would work.  However my anxious subconscious needed a little boost to make it through the full two weeks until test day and so three days before I was due to take my hospital kit test, I did a wee secret test and it was positive!  Of course I was very casual on the outside about my findings. I didn’t want to get my hopes up in case it was a false positive, but I just needed a boost. If I'm honest, inside I was Dancing! 

Three days later I did the actual test and it was POSITIVE.  I then allowed myself to get super excited.  Well as excited as you get in my family, we are quite a reserved bunch.  Nobody really seems to jump up and down about anything in company.  I don’t actually remember if my husband was home for the proper test.  I’m now wondering if maybe I did the test on Thursday for him as he was going away, because he didn’t come with me when I went to tell my mum, so I’m pretty sure he wasn’t at home.  It’s all a bit of a blur!  I wanted to tell everyone and I wanted to tell them in person so I could see their reaction, it was like I’d won the lottery.  I got in the car and drove to my mum’s house, but she wasn’t in.  I then drove to my Grandma’s house and she wasn’t in either.  I got to my brother’s house and they were all there!  Not sure why, were they congregating in case the test was negative?  I was on cloud nine and it’s because of that I’m unable to tell you a lot about that day or the days to follow because I was THAT HAPPY I can hardly remember anything!

This was a big achievement though.  I couldn't believe my luck; my body that usually fails me on so many levels didn't this time.  I always knew any attempted pregnancy would have to be carefully planned, saying that I didn't think it would be such a military operation.  I knew I couldn't just fall pregnant, I had to tell the hospital so they could prepare me physically so it was done at the right time for my body.  The excitement of announcing you're pregnant to family is not really as effective when they already know you've being going through fertility investigations and IVF treatment for months before hand.  So the big "I'm pregnant" line never really got much of a reaction if you see what I mean.  Yeah I knew they were happy but I guess what was going through their minds was “what next”, how was I going to survive this pregnancy.  Would my body cope because as I explained before, pregnancy does carry huge risks in CF.   Not so much for the baby, but for me.  You see a baby growing inside you is a bit like having a parasite.  It will take whatever it needs from you to develop and grow regardless. There was also a huge risk that my lungs could be colonised with a nasty bug I have called Burkholderia Cepacia {BCC} I have this bug anyway along with another called Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, but colonised BCC would mean that it could absolutely annihilate my lungs and send me into respiratory failure.  However I felt that was a low risk because my health was fairly stable at the time, if I could just avoid people that were sick, but my CF team had to make sure I understood it was a real possibility.  I just thought in life you have to take risks and this would always be a risk factor if I were to get pregnant myself.  My mother was most likely told I would never have children and never get married because it was unlikely I would make it to adulthood but if you are willing to accept that is your fate, it's possible that's what you'll end up with.  I do struggle a lot with negative thoughts.  My glass is never half full, but I wanted to experience pregnancy for myself.  For me, surrogacy wasn’t an option I was willing to explore at that time.  It got me thinking about fate.  Maybe it was meant to happen at this time, we were meant to have this child.  I wanted to be excited but at the same time I was being quite aloof about the news should the worst happen; I didn't want to tempt fate. 

I had so many plans based on the success of this IVF treatment and I could finally start to get organised and put those plans into action.  I wanted to experience everything that pregnancy had to offer.  I wanted 4Ds scans, pregnant belly casts, weekly photos, a maternity photo shoot, I wanted to breast-feed, go to ante-natal classes, but most of all I wanted a baby girl.  Some people will be outraged with my preference but I knew I would probably only do this once and for me, I wanted to buy dresses and pretty frilly things and wanted to take her to dance classes.  I also thought a girl would look after her dad if anything ever happened to me and I hoped she would be a lasting reminder of me.  In the early days visiting the fertility centre for the IVF seminars, I quickly realised that for the hundred or so couples in the room, some would never have babies and I felt extremely lucky.  The week after announcing the pregnancy to family I went to Edinburgh with my Gran and Cousin GG, we were going to visit GG’s sister and have a nice day out in Edinburgh to cheer up our Grandma.  I bought my first pair of maternity jeans from Topshop and it still didn’t feel real.  I must have been speaking about it every five minutes; maybe I was verging on annoying.  I can’t even fully remember what the argument was about, but I ended up very cross with GG.  It was the start of the emotional side of pregnancy, the hormones roller coaster where all reason is up in the air. 

I had my final appointment at the fertility centre at around six weeks for another vaginal ultrasound for the purpose of detecting a foetal heartbeat.  That was another emotional roller coaster for my husband and I, because I was technically pregnant and I felt pregnant.  I was thinking I was pregnant, but this would confirm it or potentially turn our world upside down.  I was very calm that day, I don't think I thought about the possibility of there not being a heart beat.  I lay back on the bed and tried to regulate my breathing so I wouldn’t cough.  So many things went through my head in the next few seconds.  It was like my whole life flashed before me.  Suddenly the nurse said, there it is "Congratulations" you have one foetal heartbeat.   I don't think I've ever felt that much relief and I think this was the point my husband realised it was real.  I was measuring 6+6 weeks pregnant and was due on the twenty-second of December.  Most people would just be taking a pregnancy test at this stage but we knew right from the start.  The first three months of my pregnancy wasn’t great; I was sick, a lot.  I craved milk, I couldn’t get enough of the stuff.  I was easy drinking four to six pints a day.  Even though I had the morning sickness I was happy.  I was happy I was getting to experience the full effects of pregnancy, something I’d wanted for so long, but it was exhausting for me; it was beginning to feel real now.  I didn’t get off to a good start as I was starting to have chest complications at the time of the embryo transfer and antibiotics were delayed when I needed them.  The decision was taken so they didn't jeopardise the egg collection.  Now that I was pregnant it meant I was restricted to the antibiotics I could safely have and this didn’t help in my recovery.  However, it was important that in the early stages I should try to soldier on with basic antibiotics instead of the lethal cocktail I usually get. 

I made my first appointment with the midwife, I waited a few weeks for the appointment and was concerned that would make my subsequent appointments later.  I had no idea what to expect.  I asked a lot of questions and she rudely told me that I should have made a double appointment if I had this much to discuss.  Like I was supposed to know all this being my “first” pregnancy!  She arranged for my first scan to be done at hospital and I remember being both disgusted and disappointed that I would be almost 14 weeks by the time this was to take place.  I thought the whole point if it being called a 12-week scan is that it was done at the 12-week point in pregnancy.  She also took a blood test from me that day and this was the icing on the cake, it was to be her last meeting with me. I was told to get up on the bed and as she stood in front of me with her soiled uniform, which looked like she spilt her dinner down.  She proceeded to come at me with a needle.  I stopped her and said, are you not going to clean the area first.  She replied, “I don’t usually”.  I told her I would rather she did on this occasion and I never went back.  I think you need to absolutely trust these people if they are going to be looking after you and the most precious cargo you have.  I never usually question medical professionals; I just let them get on with what they have to do.  I’m a seasoned hospital goer.  However this time my attitude was completely different and for you guys out there that do not yet have children.  You wont understand that feeling until you are in that situation.  That mothering instinct starts from the minute you find out you are pregnant.

The changing body

First ever portrait of Daisy Sim

Circle of Life

I’ve been planning to make you guys wait a few months for the next chapter of this story, but I thought, oh what the hell.  In my last blog I shared with you that we needed IVF and that the waiting list was long.  This is the next part of the infertility story, which follows on from The Great Sperm Race

Mr H had positive news for me that day in the hospital.  The answer to my plight of my time being now was, that if there were a medical need for someone to be expedited up the list then it would happen!  I can’t begin to tell you the relief I felt hearing that.  An appointment was made for us at the fertility clinic to discuss further and an action plan was devised that I would start treatment in six months.  I guess I was a little disappointed that it couldn’t happen straight away but this was to give me time to prepare myself physically.   I was told I would have to undergo an ultrasound of my heart to make sure it was strong enough to cope with carrying a pregnancy to term.  I would have to get fit to increase my lung capacity to the best it could possibly be and I would have a fitness test before commencing treatment.  I had that familiar carrot dangling above my nose feeling again.  It was stressful knowing I had to fulfil a criteria to get my baby and it weighed on my mind but I was focused 100%.  I wanted this and I was going to get it come hell or high water, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about those awful people out there getting pregnant without a care in the world.  You know, the ones that take drugs, drink alcohol and smoke knowingly putting their child at risk.  Where the hell was their test? 

We were invited along to an open night at the fertility centre and there were over 100 people listening to the talk on what IVF is and what the success rates were for the Aberdeen clinic.  Everybody was in that room for the same reason but I wondered what if you wanted to keep it private, but you knew somebody that was there.  I looked around the room and came to the conclusion that for many of them, they would never have a baby.  The success rate was dependent on so many factors, your age was the biggest one, women under 35 years old stood the best chance of success and I knew I would be one of them.    I discovered at that meeting that embryos don’t like perfumed soap and products that most of us use everyday.  In preparation for the IVF we both changed our washing and grooming habits for the 6 weeks of the treatment.  I felt like I’d been taking folic acid for at least two years so I had that covered.  My husband went on vitamins specifically for reproductive health.  I did what I had to do with the hoops I’d been made to jump though and treatment was due to start in January 2009 but it didn’t go ahead.  I was disappointed to learn that Mr H had planned to travel to India and was concerned that he would be away at the crucial part of my treatment, so with regret he postponed and I didn’t start until February.  He wanted to make sure that he would head the specialist team that would take me through the IVF treatment and I will be forever grateful that he made that decision.  I don’t think I fully understood what was going to happen to me and I didn’t think too much about it, nor did I look at what it involved because in the day and age of internet it would be relatively easy to find out. 

We arrived at our first appointment at the fertility clinic and I was told that I was going to have an ultrasound of my ovaries.  I thought ok, no problem I can do that.  I untucked my clothes, lifted up my top and glanced across at the ultrasound machine, it looked slightly different to the ones I’d seen previously for check ups of my liver and kidneys.  I turned my head and looked the nurse straight in the eye and said, “this is not an ultrasound of my abdomen is it”?  She said no, it’s a vaginal ultrasound.  With a lump in my throat, I gulped as that smear fear started to engulf my body but I quickly calmed myself down because lets face it, if I was going to go through IVF I was going to have to overcome this.  I just said to the nurse, look I have a vaginal examination phobia so let me relax and don’t talk to me when you are doing it or I will just tense up trying to speak back.  Then we started to laugh as the nurse got the machine ready.  The probe that was going to be inserted into me looked like a dildo, however it was more clinical looking and was cream in colour and smooth in appearance.  The nurse then opened a drawer and took out something that looked like a condom.  It was in a square wrapper just like a condom and my husband and I snorted laughing like school kids as the nurse said “it’s called a probe cover”.  We looked at each other and lip synched “probe cover”, then we winked.  I did say this fertility stuff wasn’t for the faint hearted did I.  I wasn’t sure if we were going to manage to stay calm because then the nurse put the probe cover over the probe just like those demonstrations they do in schools now with condoms and bananas.  She then picked up the ultrasound gel.  It was pure hospital porn, as the nurse squirted the gel over the probe and the probe cover.  Next she took the probe in her hand, griped the probe and started moving her hand up and down to spread the gel.  We were in absolute stitches laughing at this point and I knew if I couldn’t stop laughing there was no way she was going to manage to do the examination on me as when I laugh, I cough and muscles tense up.  Again I calmed myself down and hubby got himself on the other side of the curtain, mainly to stop eye contact between us.  However, he was also a little squeamish and needed time to adjust to the examination experience too.  It was over relatively quick, it was really to just measure my ovaries as they would be monitored over the coming months.   

On the 20^th of February after attending the clinic for over a year, we were finally due to start treatment.  After another routine vaginal ultrasound I was shown how to inject the hormones into me.  I felt my eyes rolling being shown how to put a needle onto a syringe and how to break open the glass bottles of medication.  I’ve dealt with needles and medication for many years but I’ve never actually had to stick a needle in my skin and that was a bit weird.  IVF is not without risk and it’s possible that your ovaries can react to the medication causing Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome, which can serious.  In the initial stages of IVF treatment, the drugs being injected first are to tell the Pituitary gland in the brain, which controls the reproductive system, to stop what it’s doing.  Then after about six days I had to inject another drug, which fired things up again.  This is so the doctors know exactly what stage in my cycle I am at so they could control it.  I had to inject into the stomach or thigh and the drug must be given at the same time everyday.  I let my husband have a go at being the nurse, it was nice to involve him in the process and with the injections being stingy I felt I was resisting and dragging it out doing it myself.  While all this is going on at home, the clinic will be monitoring the ovaries by vaginal ultrasound every two days and was taking blood samples every week to measure hormone levels.  This whole process with the injections takes about 5 weeks.  The drugs stimulate the growth of eggs and the follicles in which they grow are measured.  Once they are at the required size another drug is given to mature them, and get the body to release them into the follicle but this is a carefully timed injection because if given to early or too late the eggs may not be right.  You also don’t know how many eggs will be retrieved.  It really is an emotional rollercoaster. 

During my treatment my Grandfather had become sick and was in hospital.  It was an unwritten rule in our family that I did not visit him if he was in hospital because he had a lung condition and that it would be risky for me having contact with him.  Especially as I was going through the IVF it was even more important for me to stay well.  However about a week before the egg recovery I did become unwell and I needed antibiotics, but I held off until the eggs were out so they had the best chance of being healthy and not take the risk of damaging them with antibiotics.  On the 26^th March 2009 we went into hospital for the egg retrieval.  I drove us down to the hospital in my dinky pink car and I was nervous but excited.  I put on my lucky diving t-shirt, the same one I wore for my fitness test a few weeks earlier. Normally the egg retrieval would be carried out by two doctors in the fertility centre treatment room, but I had a team of four doctors and one nurse down in the Maternity Hospital Operating Theatre.  This was a safety precaution so that if anything went wrong with my lungs, we had the right people on hand to deal with it.   Mr H did a quick check with labour ward to make sure all was well and there were no signs of any women needing an emergency c-section anytime soon.  When labour ward gave the all clear we were able to start.   I was sedated but conscious throughout the procedure and I remember getting up onto the bed wearing my hospital gown and no pants almost trying to do it without flashing anyone.  But hey, that’s what they were there to look at so no point being all shy.  My husband sat beside me and was kitted out in his very own surgical wear and he thought he looked like a doctor.  He even told me he thought people in the waiting room must have been thinking he’s a real trendy doctor with all his tattoos on his arms.  I don’t remember too much about the procedure, but what they do is use a transvaginal ultrasound to guide a needle through the back wall of your vagina, up to your ovaries.  The needle is then used to aspirate the follicle, or gently suck the fluid and oocyte from the follicle and they are placed in a test tube.  This is where the “test tube baby” phrase originates.  There is one oocyte per follicle and these oocytes will be transferred to the embryology lab for fertilisation.  As the procedure was drawing to an end the anesthetist woke me up by gradually withdrawing the sedation drug and I glanced across to my husband who was holding my hands.  I was taken back up to the fertility clinic for monitoring before I was allowed to go home.  Once we got back to the fertility clinic the embryologists got to work to see how many eggs they retrieved and we had FIVE.  My husband was then required to do his bit and provide the semen for the next stage.  Only this time he had to hand it over himself, but by now he was fully involved and it didn’t bother him.  The embryologist washes the sperm in the lab and selects the “best looking” sperm to be introduced to the egg in the culture dish and round 10,000 sperm will be battling it out to get inside the egg.  The culture dishes are then incubated and after 12-24 hours they are inspected for signs of fertilisation.  We were allowed to go home after an hour or so but I was told that I couldn’t drive.  Knowing instantly what this meant for my husband, I glanced across and sniggered laughing as he was trying to take in what the nurse was saying.  I think he must have been saying to himself “OMFG I have to drive a frigging baby pink smartcar fortwo home in broad daylight”.  And he did!

I got home and took it easy; it was going to be a tense 24hrs.  Tomorrow we would be called to tell us if any of the eggs had fertilised.  I got up the next day, still a bit on edge because if this didn’t work it would all end today.  All the hopes and dreams would come crashing down.  I looked out the window and saw my Grandma’s car pull up outside our house, but my mum got out of the car.  My Gran was nowhere to be seen and I instantly knew something was wrong.  I opened the door and my Mum was clearly upset.  There on the doorstep, she struggled to get the words out, but I knew what she said.  Your Granda has died.  I fought back the tears as I was more shocked, because I didn’t realise he was that unwell.  I had also not seen him for over two weeks.  I cried for a few minutes but I couldn’t let my body get upset, I had to stay focused because if those little eggs fertilised they were going back into me the following day, regardless.  About an hour after my mum arrived with that devastating news the lab called to say that 4 of the 5 eggs had fertilised and now they were being monitored.  We were booked in for implantation the following day.  Some people may think it silly but I’ve often thought, did he die so I could have my baby.  It seems really spooky that he died during the night, the same night as those eggs and sperm were being incubated in the lab.  The next day we were told that of the 4 eggs that did fertilise only 3 of those were good enough to be implanted.  One embryo in particular stood out in the lab and that was the one that was going to be transferred to my womb.  In embryology terms, it was the best it could possibly be, we had a Grade 5 on a 3-day embryo.  The lab was absolutely delighted!  The embryo transfer was the final part of the treatment; today it was make or break.  We arrived at the clinic on Saturday morning, the day after my grandfather passed away and the clinic atmosphere was serene.  This time I had my treatment in the fertility centre treatment room.  I got changed into my hospital gown and Mikey was back into his surgical scrubs, yeah pretending he was a doctor again (we did have photos and I wish I could find them for you guys) After years and years of the same jokes, I kinda had a “whatever” attitude to his sense of humour and I’m sure he thought I was negative a lot of the time but I didn’t mean it like that.  That was just my sense of humour.  I got up onto the bed and put my legs in the stirrups, I had become a pro with all this poking about down in my lady bits.  I really didn’t care anymore, but the instruments table looked like they could have been used in medieval torture.  My husband up until now had the luxury of being at the head end of business but now he had a full view.  There was a doctor in the treatment room and the lab could be seen through a glass room divider.  The doctor inserted the clamp into me just like you would get in a smear test.  She swabbed and cleaned my insides so that the embryo had the best chance of being accepted by my body.   When the doctor was ready the embryologist came out of the lab and passed the doctor a syringe with a long catheter attached.   This then gets passed up through the vagina and into the uterus.  It was popped in and that was it, legs were closed and I went back through to the recovery suite to lie down.  My husbands face was a picture.  I wondered how this man who had picked up body parts in the 1998 Omagh boming could be squeamish.  I wondered how the hell he managed in the Army being one of the battalion first aiders.  He just said quietly, “it’s different when it’s someone you love”.  That’s one thing I did know about him, if we ended up with a baby in our arms after all this I knew that baby was WANTED, was really WANTED and there was no question about that whatsoever.  After about an hour we left with the pregnancy test I had to do in two weeks and drove home, we took our campervan this time so he didn’t have to drive the pink car.  I wasn’t told I had to go to bed, but I just decided that’s what I was doing and I wasn’t going to move.  We were home by 11am and I stayed in bed until 7pm.  He adopted the role of nursemaid and I was waited on hand and foot.  He was pretty good like that.

I think the hardest part of the IVF treatment is, surviving the TWO WEEK WAIT.  This is how long you have to wait before carrying out a pregnancy test.  I guess I had other things to think about, as we had to bury my Grandfather.  All the family met up for lunch the following day, it was the first time we’d all been together since the news of Granda.   I’m not a big fan of funerals and I generally as a rule don’t go to them.  Some I’ve regretted not going to but my own mortality is usually right at the forefront of my mind and that’s what stops me going.  I felt my Grandma needed this pregnancy just as much as me as it would be a reason for her to carry on living.  I’d managed to avoid countless funerals for over three years but I had a responsibility this time to not let sadness consume me.  After all, I was due to take a pregnancy test in a few days.  Something that would change my life forever.

Elton John - Circle of Life

The Great Sperm Race

Having explored the journey and the soul searching in making the decision to have a child, I felt under enormous pressure to conceive.  While I did feel supported with the weight of the world on my shoulders, my husband found solace texting another woman.  This story is a follow on from blog post amuse-bouche.  We were about to embark on a pretty major life event, but didn’t realise quite how difficult it was going to be.

We already had genetic testing before we were married to see if my husband was a carrier of the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) gene.  It’s a recessive gene, 1:25 of the population carry it and many would be unaware.  In the area where we live, they only test for the forty most common mutations of the disease, meaning there was still a small chance of passing on an uncommon strain to our child.  In fact at the present day, I believe there are 1800 known mutations of CF.   Each parent has to pass on a faulty gene,  I know I have two as I got one from my mother and one from my father, so I have Cystic Fibrosis.  Now if I were to have any children they will automatically get one faulty gene from me, making them a carrier but not affected by the disease.  If the father of my children is not a carrier, we would not have any children with CF. However, if the father of my children did carry the faulty gene; there is a 50/50 chance of the child having CF, apposed to the odds of 1:4 if I were just a carrier.  Thankfully our test came back negative, of course as I explained above they couldn’t rule it out completely.  But, I felt confident in myself that the result was a positive step forward. 

It’s funny how you spend a great deal of your life trying not to get pregnant and then when you actually are trying, it sometimes doesn’t happen as fast as you thought it should.  The baby thing was just not happening for various reasons so I decided that it might be a good idea to get ourselves checked out, to see if there was any underlying problems because there can be CF related fertility issues.   As human beings it’s natural that we desire to have a family of our own one day and the thought of that not being a possibility can cause a great deal of heartache.   I’m not alone in thinking it can become an obsession for women trying to conceive because we believe that this is the one thing we are supposed to be able to do.  When I found out friends or family were expecting, I was really low.  As the time dragged, the feeling low turned into something else and it’s natural to curse and wonder why irresponsible people can get pregnant by accident or how a drug addict is allowed to have a baby.  Everyone deals with things in their own way but having spoken to a number of girls facing infertility now, almost all felt some level of failure, frustration, distress, disappointment, the list is endless. The road ahead was long and many couples experiencing infertility have to go through many tests to determine the root of the problem.  Some are straightforward, but others are extremely invasive and unpleasant.  Not everyone has the same series of tests because the follow up test is determined by what they find on the previous one.  In the early stages, they are looking to see if you are ovulating and if the sperm are healthy.  You can buy special kits at a pharmacy to monitor your cycle but they are not cheap.  Your GP is probably the best bet as they do a blood test on day twenty-one of your menstrual cycle to determine if ovulation has occurred.  I found the sperm test highly amusing, probably because it wasn’t about me for a change.  Fertility investigation is not for the faint hearted so you really do have to want it to go through it.  I did have one small part to play, and before you all jump to conclusions, no it wasn’t that.  While the man of the house was recovering from his ordeal, I had the job of delivering the sample to the hospital.  I’m glad we didn’t stay far away because it has to be kept at body temperature and needed to be delivered to the lab within ten minutes.  I felt like an athlete in a relay race, waiting patiently to be passed the sample pot at the bottom of the stairs.  I put it into my armpit to keep it warm, got into my wee pink car and off I went.  All the time we attended the fertility clinic we were anxious about bumping into people we knew.  I think I thought what if it didn’t work, we would then have the pain of telling people and that would have been upsetting.  We carried on as normal and tried not to dwell on things.  I sold my flat and came into some money so we lived life to the full; probably to mask the sadness of what we wanted most, which couldn't be bought.  My husband would say, “I couldn’t go through all the things you do”.  My response to that is, I don’t really have a choice, some things that happen to me are out with my control but some things I do are done for the best of both of us.  That’s Love.

On our next appointment at the fertility clinic we found out the sample was normal and it was a relief.  So, the ball was back in my court and I was told I needed to have a procedure called a Hysterosalpingogram (HSG).  This is where they flush your fallopian tubes with dye to see if they are clear.  Very dignified procedure, legs up in the air, bum up in the air for all to see.  My saving grace was that they decided to do a Laparoscopy at the same time, to get pictures of my uterus and this is carried out under general anesthetic.  It was arranged before hand that I would be transferred to the chest ward afterwards as I feared the surgical ward would not be able to cope should my lungs have a bad reaction to the anesthetic.  General anesthetic is only used in CF patients if absolutely necessary.  I wanted to make sure I was in the best place but I made a bad decision there.  I remember waking up, getting out of bed to discover the sheets were covered in blood and I felt let down, as I do on many occasions when I’m admitted for exacerbations of CF. It’s like I’m bottom of the pecking order, not ill enough to warrant a look in.  It’s felt in almost all CF patients because we “have” to manage on our own at home and are probably perceived as more able than other patients by the staff on duty.  It’s not so much a problem during the day but there are serious staffing issues on nightshift.  Usually get my medication put in a tray and left to get on with it.  I’ve experienced nurses trying to give me medication that’s not mine.  I always say you have to be on the bloody ball when staying in hospital, unless I’m on the brink of death; I’ll be just fine staying at home thank you.  It’s a difficult one, it’s such a complex condition, no two people are the same and there is a very fine line between being well and unwell.

Being a high-risk patient I was under the care of the head of the fertility clinic.  He arrived at the chest ward with a colleague after my procedure to explain their findings and placed in my hand was a photograph of my insides.  I was glad that we finally had an answer to what the problem was because it was all pretty draining, both physically and emotionally.  This would see the end to the invasive tests, so I thought.  I’ve never really felt any real anxiety about medical procedures, except for smear tests.  Stick needles in me, cameras down my throat, cut me open, do it without anesthetic; I can take it!  However, the word “smear” used to leave me frozen with fear after the first one being a horrific experience.  The thought of having anything done “down there” turned my stomach.  Being the warrior woman I am, this was another thing I was going to have to overcome because after that visit from Mr H I was told in order to conceive I was going to need In vitro fertilization (IVF).  There were various reasons for this and with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill nearing completion of its passage through the UK parliament, it stood to overhaul Britain’s fertility and embryo legislation.  It was called “one at a time”, so if you did eventually go through IVF treatment they were only going to implant ONE embryo and this would significally reduce the odds of a pregnancy. Nevertheless I was crushed listening to Mr H explaining that the current waiting list for treatment was eighteen months to two years.  


“I might not have that time to wait, my time is now”, I exclaimed.   My health is stable NOW and I might miss the boat if I have to wait that long.”