Author: The life of a rainbow mum 🌈

For years we had been dreaming of having a puppy!                                                                     So in late February, we decided to have a look around. We knew we wanted a dalmatian and we knew that we wanted to have a pedigree ( which apparently is very difficult to find ! )                                                 We popped on pets4homes and started hunting. After a few failed attempts, we found our forever pup, due to be born in April!                                                                         We went all the way to Cornwall to get her, whilst I was 12 weeks pregnant !                          That was a nightmare drive but so worth it !         Our rainbow and pumpkin are best friends !    It’s a hell of a ride having a puppy under one and a now 12 week old baby!

After a few months of trying again, coronavirus struck!                                                            

Two weeks into lockdown I missed my period. So did the normal routine of not getting our hopes up and waited for the negative test result.       

So, once again we tried not to get our hopes up as we waited for the test to be negative…..                                  

But that didn’t happen!                                         

Two bright pink lines pinged up on the test !      

Excitement set in !                                          

23 tests later, and lots of water  drunk – we knew we were pregnant!                                       

We had longed and waited for this baby, and prayed that everything would be okay.            

Still there was this feeling of panic as we thought  of the possibility that all could be lost once again.                                                     

There is nothing worse than having pure excitement, love, and fear all rolled into one.     

Due to the previous miscarriages, we were placed under the care of a consultant.                                             

And, we were supposed to be scanned every two weeks up until 16 weeks. But, due to the pandemic we were told this would not be happening.                        

The fear of not having the regular scans checking in on our beautiful baby was terrifying.                                                                  

So, we paid for the scans to check our little one was safe. It was so lucky we did!                  

The first scan went perfectly, our little one was so tiny at 5.4 weeks, but we knew they were there, and at the moment safe.                    

We went back a few weeks later and they found an issue with my cervix, my cervix was slightly open and they could not tell me what was causing it, so they sent  me into the hospital.                                                    

We were terrified.                                                   

The consultant placed me into the high risk category and said there was a risk we would miscarry.                                                      

They put me onto progesterone tablets and sent me on my way to wait and see if we could get to 12 weeks, which felt like a lifetime.                                              

Being in full lockdown, unable to see family at that time was hard, but we wanted to make sure we stayed as safe as we could.

We hit 12 weeks and had a scan privately. Once we made sure the little one was okay we then told family.  

     Lockdown lifted slightly and at 14 weeks I could hug my mum, which was pure bliss as I was terrified that something was wrong…….                                                                 

With regular calls to the midwives, panicked something was wrong, they decided to give me weekly heartbeat checks.                                

This helped for a 24 hour stint, but the panic would set back in and build until the 7 days were over. This cycle went around and around our whole pregnancy.                           

There was a feeling of aloneness being pregnant at the time of a pandemic. With no classes or meeting of other mums, and people not really understanding the worries of a family that longed for their rainbow – but were scared their dream would be threatened by a virus – was heart breaking, and it took a toll on my mental health.

I was extremely lucky my husbands extremely supportive.

It was pretty hard being pregnant in a pandemic I must admit. There was very little cooing and tummy rubs from others which was really sad, but we kept him safe and that’s all that mattered to us.                                            

Regular trips to the doctors, medication, and midwives ensured that we got to full term !                      

Then came labour!                                                 

No one fully explains this !    

This is not something I write easily.  

It is not something I write for sympathy.  

I do not think I’m worse off than anyone else. 

We are extremely lucky 🌈.   

 Please skip this post if you do not feel ready – you can always return in the future.   

This is where it all started…….            

We fell pregnant around 9 months before our wedding, it was crazy to think that we would be weeks away from giving birth on our wedding day!                                    

All the same we were extremely happy, and of course we thought pregnancy leads to taking a baby home so excitement set in .         

The next thing I knew I was in horrendous pain. I called the doctors and they booked me in for a scan the following day at 12pm.      

I went to work because that is what I do no matter how poorly I feel and I work my way through the pain.                                                   

It got to around 11am and I was unable to stand, I was aware I was sweating profusely. My husband picked me up and off to the hospital we went. I was terrified that something was wrong and just couldn’t shake this gut wrenching feeling.                       

We waited for what felt like an eternity and went in for the scan they didn’t really say much at that point, told us to wait for the doctor.                                                                

We waited….

The next thing I knew was I’m admitted, they thought that the pregnancy was ectopic.        

I was bombarded by doctors and an anaesthetist.                                                               

I signed bits of paper which would allow them to do whatever was necessary and off I went to wait for surgery.                                    

It turns out I had ruptured cysts and they assured me that the surgery should not effect the pregnancy.                                          

24 hours later we lost our baby.                          

The process was long and painful.                     

I wanted to miscarry naturally so medical management not surgical (I do not like hospitals).                                                         

It turns out my body doesn’t do things effectively.                                                                

We were heartbroken .  

We asked for help from professionals.

There was a very long wait for this and once we did get to speak to someone they said that these issues were out of there remit.                

This made me feel horrendous, like there was something seriously wrong with me.                           

The next pregnancy happened on our wedding day! We didn’t find out about this pregnancy till a while after our honeymoon. It was perfect! We got further into this pregnancy and we were 8 days away from our 12 week scan when the spotting started.  

Looking down at my knickers with little spots of blood I felt sick.                                   

When I say sick I mean dizzy sick, about to faint sick.                                                             

The uncontrollable crying and irrational emotional outbursts started again.        

My husband was so strong although I know how heartbroken he was.                               

This time everything was more painful.   

I couldn’t get a grip on reality.                                           

I went through days without really realising I was loosing time.                                             

After being told there was no heartbeat and that I would start the miscarrying process again, It was easy to slip into binge drinking because it numbed me even just for a short period of time.                                                      

Again my body didn’t do what it should have done. I felt that being a women I should have been able to be a safe place for a baby.                                                                  

The miscarriage this time was bad!                     

We had been away for a weekend to get some alone time away from everything that had happened, I thought I had finished miscarrying by this point. How wrong was I !                                                                          

 On the way back from our weekend away, I felt a huge amount of pressure, warmness and then pain head – spinning pain.                   

We pulled over in a service station and I was bleeding ALOT.                                                     

I was in a car park full of people. I had bled through my underwear, jeans, and jacket .                                               

I ran into the bathroom crying and pulled down my trousers and the blood was streaming out of me.                                             

I cleaned myself and the bathroom as much as I could and came out to the loving arms of my husband 💙.       

The journey home consisted of pain and us wondering whether we should go to the hospital.             

We got home and we had left the key in our hotel. By this point I should have let him take me to the hospital but as I said I hate them.                                                                  

So off to my mums we go where I take some tablets and curl up with a hot water bottle.   

The bleeding didn’t ease so we ended up in hospital that night. It was a long 24 hours.        

The 3rd time was a complete blur, by this point it was all too much.

We again heard the dreaded words of I’m so sorry – “there’s no heart beat” – as my mum held my hand in a pitch black room, with the blinking little light in the ceiling.                    

This time I wasn’t silly enough to think my body could do what it was supposed to, and I had the operation and took the morphine. 

The mental strain was too much for us both and we took a break from trying.                                   

Around 6 months after our last pregnancy we decided we were ready to try again.

 …………….Then came the pandemic.

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