Nathan's Day

I hate September, it's a bit childish to hate a month, but I dread it and every year right on cue it comes round and there is no escaping it or the welling of painful memories and emotions that inevitably come along with it.  Today is the day when our dream of having a child together officially ended. Today was the day that Nathan came into and went out of our lives... Can you say was born? Does someone who never had any chance of survival count as being born?

I ask myself why his loss, one out of so many, should be the one that hurts so much and why so many years later this day should still hold so much pain? Maybe it's because his loss really was the end of our road, even if we didn't allow ourselves to believe it, or rather I didn't want to believe it, but it was, the infection after losing Nathan really did put paid to any further attempts, I just couldn't accept that then.

Maybe it's because he was the only one I thought was going to make it, when you get to the magical 12 weeks you start to think 'yes! We're ok! Danger zone past!'  By 16 weeks you're telling people and beginning to plan and becoming attached to the little person in there, so the blow is all the harder to take when it comes.

I hadn't really let myself get attached with the others, more so after Nathan, by then I had realised there was no 'out of the woods' point in a pregnancy for me, it was always going to be an exercise in terror and I should accept it, but with Nathan I was already enraptured, he had a name, I knew he was a 'he' and we already had that connection, that bond, that love. Or at least I did, who knows what he felt.

Maybe in Nathan how I feel is accumulation of emotion surrounding all the miscarriages, maybe it's the tangible experience I had, perhaps this grief is for all of them, just he is the one with a name, he is the one that I wasn't alone for. He is the one we got to sit and hold and cry together over.

The last few weeks have been difficult for me, its not that the ache of loss ever goes away, it doesn't, but most of the time I absolutely refuse to let it rule me. I don't want to be defined by the losses, the pain or the sadness. But once a year I let myself feel it because if I don't I feel that the depth of these emotions will drown me and I couldn't fight my way back again.  Like a release valve on a pressure cooker. 

I was feeling so low last week I took myself off to the cinema alone,  I purposely picked what I thought would be a sad movie, Anna Karenina, I thought I can sit under the cover of darkness and cry and no one will question it. Didn't work,  film was not very good, I shed no tears, no release was had but I did cry all the way home in the car listening to sad songs.  So thats a lesson for me... Just sit in the car next year and listen to Tracy Chapman.

So today is Nathan's Day, today is the day I grieve and mourn the dream that never was and tomorrow I will dry my eyes, lock away the pain and get on with the business of living... Until next year.

Who Said Life Was Fair???

My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for about 5 years,  it's weird but until we got married I thought my "baby making" days were long past me, with two boys hitting their teens I really did think I'd done my bit for the continuation of the species and I was done with all that.   But getting together with Pie and seeing what a great stepfather he was and how much he missed his own children it reignited in me the desire to go through the hellish experience that is pregnancy.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy, pregnancy never is for me, but I did think it was possible and I thought it would be worth it.  But I didn't think it was going to be this hard.  When we started trying I thought we had lots of time but it's amazing how fast that time slips away from you and suddenly you are 5 years down the line and it's pretty much too late.

After seeing Mr Shehata in April and discovering that my problem with getting a pregnancy to stick was killer cells I was prescribed steroids to surpress the killer cells, aspirin to keep my blood thin and high doses of vitamins.  I came away from that appointment feeling so positive,  at last there was an answer and a possibility of having a baby.  I'd been getting pregnant regularly so I didn't doubt that we could do it again.

But here we are, the year is coming to a close and we still aren't successfully pregnant and it appears that the very drugs that were meant to help me stay pregnant may have ended my chances of getting pregnant at all.   Since I started taking the steroids I had noticed that my cycle had changed radically,  I had gone from a strict 26 day cycle to a 35 day cycle and then experiencing mid cycle bleeding as well. Using ovulation sticks every day it also appears that I am no longer ovulating, the first month I thought ok maybe I screwed up the tests and I missed the day but after 2 solids cycles of testing I know I didn't miss it, it just isn't happening.

So how do I feel? I can't honestly say yet,  I don't think it's actually sunk in quite yet, the part of me that should feel sad is so numb at the moment it isn't feeling anything, but part of me feels guilty for feeling relieved, I haven't had to make this decision myself my body has done it for me, my body has quit on me!  

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The Power of Words

Over the last two weeks I have been recuperating from our sad loss, it's not easy being upbeat, although you do have to try, children don't always understand loss and sadness, they generally haven't had to experience it and why should they, they're children and shouldn't have to face these things until they're all grown up, the flush of youth is gone and they discover how truly shitty life can be. Let's not rush them into that one eh!

So I have been having to hide just how sad I feel from my sons mostly because I can see how sad my sadness makes them. I can see how worried they are about me and it was brought home to me just how scared these miscarriages make them when my 14 year old said, "you won't be doing that again will you mum". I thought he meant the miscarriage bit, but he was actually talking about trying to get pregnant again! It's one thing when Conor says it, being dyspraxic I kind of expect him to come out with things like that. But when my older son Daniel said something similar I realised just how frightened they are and how much they understand about the process I go through.

I couldn't really explain to Conor why it was so important to me to try again, he just doesn't understand but I gently pointed out to Daniel that if I hadn't kept trying the five times before he stuck, he wouldn't be here and how empty and sad would my life have been then? I think he "got it" but who knows, the workings of the teenage boys brain are a mystery to me. I often look up, ignoring the loud cracking in my neck and wonder how this beautiful 6ft 5in creature ever came out of me and then being ever so grateful that I inherited my fathers stubborn streak and kept on plugging away trying to have a baby.

I have managed to secure my health insurance companies support to go and see Dr Shehata at the Miscarriage Clinic in the hopes that he will be able to find out why my pregnancies are ending the way they are. He seems to behaving some success with women who have recurrent miscarriage. I am hoping to have a test for Natural Killer Cells which could be the reason I am having such trouble.

I wonder if I am crazy to hope that they are...? If they are then there is a reason for this to be happening to me and also a treatment, both of which would be a good thing, a step forwards instead of the 10 steps backwards I constantly seem to be taking.

The worst part is not knowing... not knowing means you can't make decisions. Not knowing means you run around in stupid circles blaming yourself for some imaginary thing you think you did to cause the miscarriage, cursing your body for failing you or just feeling an utter failure for not being able to do something so natural, something every woman's body is designed to do.

So roll on April, I am not looking forward to the trek into London, I hate going into London but small price to pay for an answer.

Letting Go.

Last week at a scan I was told that the baby I was carrying had stopped developing and that no heartbeat was detected. It's strange but I can't say I was surprised when the technician, a very sweet lady called Louise, told me, I think I had already known something was wrong. The fact that I could suddenly eat chocolate again had made me suspicious, whereas just a week earlier the sniff of a bar of chocolate was enough to make my stomach turn over and lurch.

By dates I was 10 weeks pregnant but by the size of the baby only 6weeks, so there was obviously something not working properly.

I have a couple of blood conditions Lupus Anticoagulant Positive and Antiphospholipids which mean that my blood is too thick and prone to clotting, which probably doesn't sound so bad when you hear the usual term for it "sticky blood", sounds kind of cute doesn't it, sticky blood... but what it means in reality is that my blood doesn't travel properly and develops micro clots which make me miscarry.

This pregnancy was my 14th miscarriage, 14? What a ridiculous number... how crazy am I to keep doing this to myself? Perhaps I am an advertisement for the word...persistance...

We just want to have a child together, you think it would be a simple issue of two people getting together, getting the timing right and bobs your uncle, but sometimes it's just not that simple.

Sometimes I want to scream at the unfairness of this... I had given up, this pregnancy was a bit of a surprise, when we moved house I had given up on the idea already, new house, new start but my husband thought a little differently. He proved there is an App for everything including getting your wife pregnant as he used ipod to track my cycle, sneaky little devil. Now if only he can find an app that will keep me pregnant we could be laughing....which would be hugely preferable to the crying we are doing at the moment.

You probably are wondering how I can find any humour in this situation... and to answer you honestly, I don't know, all I do know is if I cry anymore my eyes will fall out of my head and I might actually lose my mind. If I don't find a way to smile or some form of humour I may not hold on to my sanity and I need that, I really need to keep it together.

The sadness we feel is so deep and so all consuming you do feel like there is no way out of it and if my husband and I weren't so close and such strong support for each other I think we might struggle even more with the sadness than we are.

Strangely whilst I had given up on having a baby, losing this one has somehow reignited my desire to try again. Perhaps the difference in care and the support I have received here in Wellingborough has something to do with that.

I do feel angry, I see the stories in the papers about the children hurt by parents who didn't deserve them and I look at us, good loving people and reponsible parents, my sons are testament to the kind of parents we are and could be again and I rail at the powers on high at how cruel and unfair they are.

All I do know is that I am not a quitter, yes the daily injections and the tablets and the scans are uncomfortable and unpleasant and the miscarriages are devestating, painful both emotionally and physically but the end result, a baby of our own, made from the two of us has got to be worth the price.

Information about Lupus Anticoagulant Positive and Antiphospholipids can be found on Google but a useful starting point is the Hughes Syndrome website. Hughes Syndrome is much more widespread than currently known and most GP's are not even aware of it's existence of how easily it can be tested for and treatment is very simple and can be very effective. If you are a victim of recurrent miscarriage or know someone who is, get tested. http://www.hughes-syndrome.org