Retro Mummy is all about life as a stay at home mummy to 5 little people under the age of 7. A former investment banker my life is now about baking, babies, feeding the family, renovating our very 70's Brady Bunch house and craft. I am obsessed with craft and share my love of knitting, crochet, quilting and sewing with anyone who listens. That's why I blog.
I always thought having a baby would just happen
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If you saw me on the street heavily pregnant and walking with my 4 little ones then you’d probably say that is one fertile woman. But the truth of how our family came about is far from it.
I was one of those people that always wanted to get married and start a family. And I very naively thought that you find the right man, start trying for a baby and it just happens. I had no idea about cycles, charting or your most fertile time of the month. However after a few months of married life I was told that I didn’t ovulate and wouldn’t be getting pregnant on my own. The plan was to try a course of fertility drugs (Clomid) for 6 months and see if that got things working.
Each month involved blood tests, ultrasounds and lots and lots of good old fashioned sex. In fact I was known to say ‘quick one’s a good one’. We would be having sex for about 10 days straight to ensure that we ‘caught the egg’. And every month was full of disappointment when it didn’t work. On our 5th month we were lucky enough to fall pregnant with our first daughter. I was relieved that the Clomid had worked because I knew how involved and how expensive fertility treatments were if the drugs didn’t work.
When our baby was 6 months old I was back at the specialist’s office to start trying for number 2. We didn’t know how long it would take us to fall pregnant or if we’d be lucky enough to have the fertility drugs work again. On our 4th month of trying we were so happy to find out we were pregnant again. An initial scan in the Dr’s office confirmed a sac was growing and I was going to have an internal scan a week later to check everything was fine. Unfortunately the night before the scan I was taking a shower when it felt like someone was stabbing me in the side. I knew immediately something was wrong with the pregnancy. But part of me was hopeful that since I wasn’t bleeding that everything would be fine.
When we had the scan they confirmed there was an empty sac but they then found that the pregnancy was growing in a fallopian tube instead. I had what is termed an ectopic pregnancy. I had never heard of it before and I couldn’t believe this was happening to us. We had to go to the hospital for emergency surgery that night and I cried the entire time. I couldn’t even tell them my name and the procedure they were going to do because I was just a mess. They removed the fallopian tube with the pregnancy growing in it. And it took a long time for me to come to terms with the fact that there was a baby inside me and through no fault of its own was growing in the wrong place.
We went back on the fertility drugs and on New Year’s Eve, almost 6 months later, we discovered that we were having twins. Some people freak out and cry when they hear they are having twins. Us? We smiled and were over the moon. Our twins were born in 2008 and after all of the hormones of a twin pregnancy my periods came back and I was ovulating like clockwork. We made the decision not to use any contraception as we always dreamed of 4 children. And 2 years after the twins were born I gave birth to our 4th baby. And almost 2 years later, I’m preparing to give birth to our 5th (and last) baby – and as my Dr likes to say conceived – au naturale.
I share my story because infertility can be devastating, emotional and expensive. But it can have a happy outcome that you often can’t see when you’re going through it.
Do you have a happy ending or a story to share? I’d love to hear it.
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