March 2019

Dear Future Babies, 

Where does the time go? Some weeks go so slowly I want to gouge my own eyes out but now I sit and look back at the last time I wrote to you, I can’t believe it’s been so long.

Spring finally feels like it’s on the way and I’m hoping that you are too.
The last few months haven’t exactly gone to plan, but let’s be honest, when have they? 

We had everything planned to transfer our last two remaining embryos at the end of January, however during one of my routine scans the nurses weren’t 100% happy with the way my body had responded to the drugs. We were monitored for another week however the decision was made to cancel the whole cycle. I was devastated, it had taken us such a long time to get to that point following our last round in May 2018, I couldn’t bear the thought of more waiting, yet waiting appears to be what we do best! My consultant advised me to have a minor surgical procedure called a hysteroscopy to look at the lining of my womb to help figure out what was going on.

In classic mum style (I’m sure by now you’ll know what that means) I went into organisation-mode to have the surgery as soon as humanly possible. I managed to book an appointment with my previous private consultant only 4 days after the news that we’d have to abandon the cycle and I had my surgery 2 weeks later. I’m so glad I decided to push to use my private medical cover as we’d been told we could be waiting up to 3 months on the NHS.
The surgery went well, they removed a ‘thickening’ from my womb which explained the anomalies seen on my earlier scans and the tissue was sent off to a lab for further testing.

I think I found the first few weeks after the surgery the hardest. That was it, I’d done as much as I could do within my control, I’d fast-tracked my surgery and then all of a sudden I had nothing to do and nothing to plan and I felt lost and left behind, not knowing how long we would be waiting to get the green light to start again. One night I remember just crying on your dad’s shoulder, I felt like a broken woman, dreading what the rest of this year had in store for us and how much more would be thrown at us before having another chance to get pregnant again.

Luckily, the wait wasn’t too long in the grand scheme of things. We got our new treatment plan through on 7th March and we are now gearing up to transfer our two special frozen embabies in May. It’s really disheartening to know we’ll have been waiting pretty much exactly a whole year between transfers, I’m itching to get started and I just want to have my embryos back with me. I start injections in a few days and I’m looking forward to that feeling of having some kind of control again.

The fear does keep creeping in, I worry if we’ll even get as far as transfer this time, and if we don’t, will we ever again? The results of the testing they did following my surgery showed I have a mild form of hyperplasia, which is where the lining of my womb behaves abnormally. I wonder if this is the reason for the previous losses, in a way I hope it is, the surgery may well give us a better chance this time around, but it also makes me sad and frustrated to think it should have been picked up earlier. 

Life goes on for us though, I am trying to enjoy what we have now rather than what we are missing. We’ve booked some holidays, including a trip of a lifetime to New York in November (I’m secretly hoping I’ll have a big bump by then). We added a new member to our family, a little kitten called Reggie. He came into our lives back in November when we needed a baby to love and I truly believe he’s helped me to heal. He is such a character and I’m sure when you are older you will absolutely adore him. 

I know every letter I write to you is so full of hope and I never want to lose that, I want you to read this even if it’s years from now until we meet you and know that I never lost that glimmer of excitement to start a new cycle. Each time gets harder, the stakes are higher, the fear is greater and the longing is doubled. I already feel like we have gone through so much, we’ve been waiting so long and been so patient. I wish I could just know that it will definitely happen even if it’s not now. In all honesty, I can’t imagine ever being pregnant, or being the one to have a scan and see a wriggly baby on the screen, maybe I’m just protecting my heart but it feels like something that only happens to other people. In 2017, not long after I joined Instagram, I signed up to a silly psychic app which answered one question for free, I’m sure you can guess what my question was! It told me I would fall pregnant with a baby girl in May 2019. At the time I was horrified that I would be waiting so long and completely dismissed it. I remembered it again recently and thought about how weird it would be if it came true. I want to believe somehow it will come true and that the universe has a plan for us. I would give anything for it to come true. 

All I can say my babies, is that I love you, I believe in you, I believe in the universe, I believe in science and I believe in the magic of new beginnings. Please come home soon. 

With love always, Mum xxx