“I felt we were out. It was over”
BY KATY ROBSON-MALONE
Once again, the first week was ok. This is the week filled with so much hope. Hope that your body is doing everything it needs to make that little embryo comfortable.
Week two was when it got hard. I remember waking up feeling those early period cramp pains and lower backache. Oh, I felt so deflated. Even the back-up embryo didn’t make me feel happy that day. I felt we were out. It was over. My boss called me when I was at an event and asked me how I was doing, as she knew we were having treatment, and I could feel the tears coming. I explained it was probably a no and all the reasons why and she was so sweet, bless her. She reassured me it could be a good sign. Who knows?
Two days later, we caved. So we were three days early but neither of us could take it anymore. We wanted to know either way. Lynz especially is rubbish at waiting for surprises, so she was really up for testing. Testing is her job and always has been. We took the usual position where I peed in a pot, she put it onto the test and we both lay on the bed waiting for the three minutes to be up so we could check the result. I was in the foetal position to protect myself from the news and before we knew it the news was in.
It was negative. Ouch! I felt numb this time and apologised to Lynz for having the crappest body ever and for ruining our chances. I cried. It lasted a few minutes then it was like, “Ah well, that’s that. We have the frozen embryo”.
At that point, Lynz went back into the bathroom. She shouted, “Hmmm. I don’t know, but there might be a faint line”. Huh?! I shot out of bed. “Are you sure?” She wasn’t, but she showed me and sure enough there was a really faint line. THERE WAS A LINE! THERE WAS A LINE! Put your glasses on!!
Wow! So from heartache to potentially being pregnant in the space of about 10 minutes. All we could do now was wait until test day and repeat the test. Except what actually happened in the R-M house was we waited three days and carried out five tests. Each day, the positive line getting stronger. I could not believe our luck after we’d had such a rubbish cycle. From feeling the low of the negative, we were back to the high of the positive. Why, oh why, is this the story of our lives? It’s never straight forward.
The good thing throughout all of this was that the children kept us so busy that even if we felt sad or upset or stressed about the treatment, there was never any time to dwell. Not throughout the day anyway. At night, that’s when I had my thinking time. But the two weeks from test day passed quite quickly until we had our first scan to check for a heartbeat and to check things were looking as they should. Thankfully they were.
Something immediately felt different about this pregnancy. With all of the others, we always said we would keep trying until things worked and with this one being the absolute last child, and also the last try, it just felt so, so fragile. I felt like I was trying to not get too attached, because things might not work and I know how precious these tiny humans are and how easy and common it is for things to go wrong.
When we saw that heartbeat, it blew me away. We had really done it. But we were also very matter of fact. We’d been here three times before and I felt wary of getting too hopeful or excited. The view was poor, so they did want us to come back in a few weeks for a follow-up scan.
So sure enough, we did and now we had something that looked almost like a baby. It really was happening. We really had four children. This was our journey at the fertility clinic done. Six years long, eight rounds of treatment, approx £20,000 spent and now four babies. We were both so pleased that part of our life was over. There have been a lot of emotions at that clinic and we were both ready to close the door on that chapter of our lives.
Thank you Nuffield – we have our precious tiny humans to be forever grateful to all of the staff who played a part in creating our little army of R-Ms.
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