Deodorants and breast cancer investigated
Dino's fertility story: part one
The beginning (January 1st, 2000)
Where did it start? It's hard to say really. Was it New Year's Day of the new millennium when I decided to stop taking the contraceptive pill I'd been using for so long? 'Let's just see what happens,' we said, 'no big deal'.
Was it the day in August, 20 months later, when I realised that my period was a bit late? I was due to go into hospital that week for a D&C (womb scrape), to cure a few problems I had been having with irregular bleeding. 'I'd better do a pregnancy test - just in case', I said.
Was it that day in September, when we went for a scan to finally prove that there really was a baby in there? There was. It had died two weeks earlier.
The missed miscarriage (September 14th, 2001)
The scan was at 12 o'clock on a Friday. I thought we were going to be late as we stayed to watch a memorial for the victims of the Twin Towers attack in New York three days earlier. It was a very poignant moment. We drove in silence to the hospital. It was probably due to world events, but we both felt oppressed and pessimistic.
The sonographer's face said it all, really. She looked worried. She told me she couldn't see a heartbeat, and the foetus looked about nine-weeks old, even though I was nearly 12 weeks pregnant. I had an internal scan and the consultant confirmed the sonographer's diagnoses. I'd had what's known as a 'missed miscarriage'. The baby died, but for some reason hadn't been expelled.
I'd been carrying a dead baby inside me for around two weeks. I wasn't shocked by the news - somehow it seemed inevitable. I still felt a huge sense of loss and sadness, though. I felt that this was my last chance. I was nearly 43.
After a few days I started to feel hopeful again. Maybe we could keep trying. The desperation to conceive became the major focus of my life. I had a lot of help and support from the web community I belonged to, so I knew I wasn't alone in my feelings and hopes. I got very little support from the 'real' world, as we hadn't told many people about the pregnancy or miscarriage. We said at the time that we wouldn't ever consider fertility treatment if it didn't happen naturally.
1 | 2 | 3 | next
printer friendly
send to a friend
Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Horoscopes| Message Boards | Quizzes | Newsletters | Join
iVillage Ltd is a UK company registered in England & Wales (3837269) at 80-110 New Oxford Street, London WC1 1HB
