In May 2014 I had my second IUI.
Nervous that I wouldn’t conceive and nervous that I would
I tested early and got a very faint positive, I was totally amazed. How lucky was I? I was told IUI had a 15% success rate so I wasn’t expecting another positive so soon.
Feeling anxiously excited I tested again over the next few days expecting to see the lines get darker but they didn’t.
It was my friend’s wedding the next day, and I was a bridesmaid. By now I’d had 3 days of positive tests but they’d all been really faint and I just had a feeling this baby was leaving just as soon as they’d arrived.
I phoned the clinic and asked what to do, they suggested waiting a few days and retesting but I started bleeding during the wedding reception.
I soon learnt that the professionals often call these losses ‘chemical miscarriages’ as they happen too early to be seen on a scan and the only evidence is via a pregnancy test
I still have that pregnancy test, the evidence that baby 2 existed. If only for the shortest time, but loved forever.
I went to work as normal on the Monday but I could only think of my babies, the hole in my heart and the emptiness in my belly.
I quickly went on to IUI number 3 and the same thing happened again, more days of faint positive tests. On official test day or ‘OTD’ I stood on the train platform after work in my rush to get to my evening class in London trying desperately to get hold of the fertility nurse. She rang me back but of course there wasn’t much she could say, ‘test again in a few days and then ring us back’.
I started bleeding a few days later and I said goodbye to baby number 3.
By now I had started to worry. One miscarriage was very common, so everyone told me, the statistics say 1 in 4 pregnancies apparently. Even having 2 was fairly common but 3?
Was it something I’d done, had I been rushing around too much? Had I forgotten to give myself one of my daily progesterone suppositories? Maybe I should have been eating more veg? Had it been because I’d been traveling to London every week after work? Maybe I’d left it too late to have kids and my eggs were just too old.
I booked myself in for a review with my fertility consultant in a few weeks and waited, hoping they’d be able to give me some answers and rescue my hope
Tasha xxx
For Bear & the Stars 