Pregnancy

Obviously with every pregnancy that we've ever had they've never, I say they've never been planned, but we've stopped, we're not taking precautions but you don't basically want to say to yourself or to tell people, 'Oh we're trying to have a baby' in case nothing happens. I mean nobody knows, especially after the first miscarriage. Nobody knows, you don't know if there is a problem and you don't want to say to people, 'Oh we're planning to have a baby and we want it to be this age or' whatever because if it doesn't happen then you've got no one to answer to, to explain that it hasn't happened and you don't get people sort of saying to you, 'Oh how's it going or'. I mean that can make it very difficult subsequently, put you under a lot of pressure as well. So we've always said we wanted children but never said we're planning them.

This a sort of half-way house kind of thing?

Yeah, because then you don't, you're not. I think a lot of the time people who are trying for babies and can't have babies they'd feel under so much for themselves that it makes it. It's like a catch twenty-two because they are under so much pressure and they don't get pregnant and then when they give up and stop worrying about it they fall pregnant straight away so. And it also means obviously if you've had things go wrong in the past then you don't have to, you're not. If it happens it happens. You're not actually trying for it to happen and you're not having to explain to yourself even. I mean it's, I think it's, a lot of it is psychological. You don't have to explain to yourself why it's not happening or could there be another problem or is there something wrong with you.
 

Tell me about getting pregnant?

It was definitely an unplanned scenario [laughs], unplanned scenario. So yeah, it wasn't something that I'd planned at the time, in any form at all, so.

Right. And how did you feel when you found out?

I was pregnant? It was a bit of a difficult time personally, because I was kind of thinking about, I was unhappy in my relationship, which had been going for about four years and I sort of, the day I found out was the day I really had to say that things were not going too well, and so it was a bit of a shock. It was a bit - I mean, I was quite happy to be pregnant in a way but it was also like it made me feel more confused about what I was supposed to be doing and “Should I stay in this relationship or shouldn't I?” and things like that, which made it very, it was quite upsetting at the time [laughs] in a way.

Did you ever have any doubts about going ahead?

Only briefly, but not really, no. I mean, I figured that, you know, whatever happened, that you can still have a baby as long as you've just got to do what is necessary to, what is going to be good for it in the long term, in terms of its life and stuff, and how you interact as parents, as a parent towards it and stuff. 

So that was more my, more important to me. I was 28 at the time as well, and I sort of figured, well, I think you come to a - I, for me I think you can come to an age where, you know, having an abortion just seems like it doesn't feel like the right thing to do. If I'd have been younger maybe I would have thought about it, but I was coming up to being 30 anyway, and I sort of was thinking, “What am I actually doing with my life at the moment?” And I figured, “Well, I can have a - if I'm pregnant I can keep this baby. It's not - why not [laughs] keep the baby?” So yeah.

Was this planned and waited for, this pregnancy?

Certainly waited for, yes. Waited a very long time, in fact waited - we've been married seventeen years this year, and she came after sixteen. 

Right.

Sixteen years.

And had you been trying all of that time?

Yeah, we'd been - well, not for the first couple of years. Maybe after sort of like the fourth year of marriage we decided to try for a child, but it just wasn't happening. But then fortunately I did actually fall pregnant about two and a half years ago. And that, so that was after fourteen years of trying and I fell pregnant and unfortunately I lost my child at 6½ months.

Oh.

So, I had a little boy, but lost him. And I just gave up then, because I thought, “Well, I've had one, it took so long to get pregnant and it's not going to happen again.” And she came by chance again - total, total miracle.

I knew, we knew we wanted a family quite quickly after we got married, so but we knew that the epilepsy was a big issue within that so our first port of call was my neurologist, and we went to see him and discussed the options with him and the possible problems he thought we might have. Probably over quite a long period of time, even before I was married, he was working towards getting me on one drug, with the knowledge that I would want children eventually. So we'd managed that and we went and discussed, you know, getting pregnant. The implications, as in, if I had terrible morning sickness, what that might mean with my drugs, and that I would have - you know obviously the current thinking is that you should very much keep taking them. That you do more damage to the baby by having a seizure than you would sorry - you do more - yes, you do more damage to the baby by having a seizure, because you're not on drugs, than you do by taking the drugs, which the risks, although higher, are still you know, greatly, very low. So we saw him first. He was very positive, suggested a few tips, you know' go to my GP first, see if I could go to some sort of counselling at the local hospital. Which is what we did, and we were sent to somebody who is actually a genetics counsellor at the local hospital and she basically talked us through the implications that having epilepsy might give to the pregnancy. Things that, you know, the higher incidence of spina bifida, that all of that would be screened for you know, cardiac problems. And she went, ran through when each one would be screened for throughout my pregnancy. And probably discussed with us long before we were pregnant, you know, what did that mean? If you found out you had a spina bifida baby, think about what you would do about that. So off we went and got pregnant very quickly and were back there within six weeks [laughs].
 

I had been trying to become pregnant, but hadn't actively been trying to conceive. I had hoped to become pregnant, but because of my history of complications - oh, pre-, because of my history of gynaecological complications over the years, since I was thirteen, I've had severe, chronic endometriosis, I was told that I probably wouldn't be able to become pregnant anyway. So therefore it wasn't - if I became pregnant, that was, that's great, and it would be wonderful, but if I didn't, then we would look at other options.

Right, so was it a surprise when you found that you were pregnant?

It was a fantastic surprise. It was one of the best surprises I think you can possibly have. It was very nice to find I was pregnant, yes, and very unexpected. Good news.

Okay, so how long had you been sort of trying or hoping to become pregnant, before you actually did?

I had probably been trying to become pregnant for about a year, before I became pregnant. After my last surgery for the endometriosis I was told I had a six month window of opportunity, where I could probably, I could possibly become pregnant, so I think we kind of took that as a good sign.

Can you just explain that to me, what was different in that six months?

I'd had laser surgery, and they had to remove a great amount of cysts, of the chocolate cysts, as they call them with endometriosis, and therefore that meant that it should have been easier to conceive, because they cause problems with trying to conceive.

And they would eventually come back?

Yes. Uh-huh, they do, they just, eventually it does come back, so over the years I've had several amounts of treatment to keep the condition under control and to remove, both by drug therapy and surgery, to remove these chocolate cysts. Obviously that leaves scarring behind, if you're having laser surgery then that leaves scarring behind, which again can affect your fertility.
 

So after the first miscarriage were you apprehensive about trying to get pregnant again?

I was very apprehensive, sort of in a rush to get pregnant again, because I was very sad and I really wanted to put it behind us and thought, “Well, that's just bad luck and this time it's going to be fine.” 

So I was really, really looking forward to get pregnant again. And I was almost pregnant like the following month, sort of thing. Because [laughing] we really wanted to get pregnant again, so it was quite sort of like, I wanted to be pregnant again and say, “Yeah, I can be pregnant.” 

And I think also a lot of the people think that when a woman miscarries it's the woman's fault, you know, like something's wrong with her, and I really wanted to show that, “No, there's nothing wrong with me”, you know? So we sort of - it's a bit silly, but that's how you feel. You just want to say, “Well no, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm fine, I can have a healthy baby.” So you always - you know, I wanted desperately to be pregnant. If it had taken months and months, I would have been shattered, I think.

How did you feel about that?

The miscarriage?

Yeah.

I didn't really have much time to think about it because we, I, the way that we were living we had like loads of friends come round quite a lot and things like that. We had people, friends staying with us from, after they came from travelling, so - not long afterwards - so I didn't really have time to think about - not think about it, but I think, you know

I was obviously going through, if I look back on it now I think it kind of made any existing depression feel worse, but obviously you're having to sort of keep on going a lot, so I don't think I gave myself, had enough time to really think about the aftermath of that properly, or to be able to act on the aftermath of that properly. So I think that might have, I don't think that contributed to the pregnancy, in a conscious way to the pregnancy but maybe, I'm thinking, maybe that's something that may have affected me getting pregnant again, I don't know.

In what way?

But I think it made me - in what way? I can't, it's difficult to say, really. But I think when I found out I was pregnant this time I just, I didn't really - that's why I felt quite happy that, about being pregnant. Even though I felt that, you know, my relationship was a mess and stuff like that, I didn't actually, I didn't feel upset about being pregnant, I think because I'd had that experience. So I think that's another thing that made me more determined that no matter what happened in the rest of my life, that if I wanted to keep the baby that it should still carry on, basically. I didn't really question it.