I am overwhelmed at your support. Thank you so much.

Our little miracle has a heartbeat. Hoping for some arms, legs, fingers and toes next.

Six weeks today and starting to thaw out. I’ve been pretty knackered, had sore boobs and queasiness so have started to relax (not a typo!) and hope for the best. What else can I do? Of course the fear is still there but it is not the fear, as most people think, of losing my baby. It is the fear of returning to the horror of infertility, the pain, the bitterness, the minute-by-minute struggle to get through the day. I can’t go back to that, I just can’t. I have to keep going, I have to have this baby.

I want to be sick. (Or should that be, I want to want to be sick.) I want nausea, vomiting, cold and hot sweats, knee-trembling, earth-moving sickness. For those of you who have been there, done that and think I don’t know what I’m talking about, then maybe you haven’t experienced the sheer terror that is pregnancy after recurrent miscarriage. Or maybe you have! I’d be interested to hear your opinion.

Today is the first day that I haven’t had breakdowns on the hour, every hour. That is because I am quite tired (a little smile is escaping as I type – yay, a symptom!). It’s impossible to imagine but I sincerely hope the day will come (soon, like tomorrow) when I am exhausted, sick and aching all over. Please.

I am pregnant, I’d even go as far as to say that I am proper pregnant. What is proper pregnant? It’s when the lines on your HPT get darker over time and then after about a week, you stop testing and start counting down the days until your first scan.

I am 4w5d. I said that 5 weeks was the holy grail, that if I could reach that milestone then maybe I would be in with a chance. Please, ahem, allow a lady to change her mind. Six miscarriages can tend to make one quite confused in the head. And I have become a CRAZY LADY. To quote my husband, “insane”. And there is little chance that two more days will change that.

I have to believe that I still have a chance but no, I just can’t get my head around the idea that you get pregnant and then you have a baby. I know other people do it all the time, they conceive and then what seems like a few weeks later, they have a baby – a real, live newborn baby. The thought is beyond a dream for me. But the alternative does not bear thinking about.

So I am going to close my eyes and put my fingers in my ears and sing a happy tune for as long as I can. No more testing, just breathing – in, out, in, out…..

We had a wonderful holiday. I was amazed at how normal and content I felt when taken out of my usual surroundings. Of course I had moments of anxiety but they did not predominate. So life outside of infertility is possible. If you can just work out how to remove the remnants of it from everyday functionality.

One thing I was fairly sure of when I returned was that I didn’t want to write this blog any more. Maybe another blog but not the one about that poor girl who couldn’t have a baby and couldn’t cope with the consequences of it. I just wanted to be normal and even if I couldn’t really be normal, I wanted to pretend to be. I did it for a couple of weeks while we were away, I could certainly try it for a bit longer.

I was in the 2ww, hence the optimism. We hadn’t really given up TTC, well we did for one month but that was all I could bear. So we did a cycle of Clomid with follicle tracking. Didn’t I mention it? No, actually I wanted it to be a surprise. Wanted to wait until the second trimester to make my announcement. What a dreamer I am! I would have had to have had the most perfect pregnancy of all time and even then I would surely have cracked after a few weeks.

I am not having a perfect pregnancy. At 4w2d my HCG levels are still very low but at least they are rising. I don’t want a beta so am just torturing myself with pee sticks.

So I am still the same poor girl who couldn’t have a baby, who couldn’t pretend to be normal for very long, who couldn’t stay away from her blog. I don’t want to be, I want to be the holiday girl. If I can just make it to 5 weeks, I might be in with a chance.

Dear God or whoever,

For two and a half years I have been as good as gold. I have followed every piece of medical advice I have received, I have made countless sacrifices for my family and I have tried to be considerate and helpful towards others. I have done everything I could possibly have done to try and have a baby, and despite the psychological toll, I have put on a brave face most of the time. I have worn my brave face to christenings, birthday parties, weddings, even when it has meant toilet breaks to let the tears flow.

When our first baby died, I thought these things happen, this is my turn. When our second baby died, I tried to focus on the positive things that had come from knowing her. When our third and fourth babies died, I concentrated on the fact that IVF had worked for us against all the odds. The fifth, sixth and seventh babies were unexpected and only with me for a couple of weeks, I congratulated myself on becoming pregnant the old-fashioned way and hoped I would never need IVF again.

This time I have run out of excuses, of explanations for why one baby’s death is just a stepping stone towards another’s life. This baby is surely my last hope, for every possible reason. So please God or whoever, please look after this one and even if it takes a little bit of magic, please don’t let this one die.

F

Off on hols for a while to clear head and get a bit of perspective.

Nope, nothing is better, everything is the same except worse. I am only ok as long as I don’t interact with the fertile world. The only solution I can think of is to move to China.