Pregnancy after infertility: the hidden guilt and anxiety

 

We were sat down in the pub, and a baby from another table came toddling over, giggling away. 

They were simply beautiful. They had these huge blue eyes and rosy cheeks. I noticed them and noted the cuteness then became determined to forget about them completely.

But this baby was relentless.

They came up to my chair, banging on it, garbling away at me. They were so determined to say hello. 

I couldn’t ignore the cute baby for much longer. I didn’t want to know their name, if they were a boy or a girl, even how old they were. But I felt I couldn’t deprive this cute creature of my attention any more.

I turned around a said hi and played some peekaboo then politely asked their mum how old they were. I didn’t listen to the answer.

Finally the family’s food came and they moved into another area of the pub. And then the tears came. Hot, fat, unstoppable tears. Jono silently held my hand and I wiped them away on a scratchy napkin. We both knew there were no words.

Not long before, I had been at a fertility clinic, undergoing tests and scans, trying to find out what was holding us back from starting a family of our own. We were awaiting the final results, which a consultant would brutally deliver via a conference call a few weeks later.

This bad news was the culmination of two years of trying and failing to get pregnant. Not a single hint of a pregnancy had come our way the whole time, and getting help from the NHS had been tortuous. 

It was in early May, and I’d only been at my new job for three days, when I foolishly took the fertility consultant's call at work. I went back to my desk with three hours of my shift left, feeling hollow, and prayed no one would notice me crying at my desk.

The consultant had told us in no uncertain terms we would not be conceiving naturally, and we might not be successful with IVF either.

I managed to hold it together until I got on my bus home. Then I let the tears flow and then spent the rest of the weekend crying. 

That weekend, my period was due to arrive. It had been a few days late before, so I just waited for it to arrive, choosing to take its disappearance as a sign of my fast declining fertility, rather than being hopeful for anything else.

I didn’t sleep all week. I just cried every night, googling IVF success rates, egg donation and clinics in Greece. It was all so huge and overwhelming. 

But by the next weekend, my period still hadn’t arrived. I went to my usual yoga class on Friday night, and while in child’s pose I felt a strange sore patch on my tummy. I knew I had to take a test, as scary as it was being faced with another almost certainly negative result.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, the test was in fact positive. I nearly broke my neck running down stairs to show Jono the shock result. 

In these early days, we were mainly completely bemused. 

Only one week before, the consultant said we would not be able to conceive. 

The reality (and the excitement) wouldn't hit us for a while.

It was weird. We went out and bought some pregnancy vitamins and got a milkshake to celebrate (the first of many cravings).

Really quickly symptoms started to appear. I woke up with a face full of spots and felt nauseous 24/7. I started having to wee several times an hour and my boobs were insanely painful. 

And then I had to go to the job I’d only had for 10 days and pretend absolutely nothing was happening!

I had to start telling people - the fertility clinic, my yoga teacher, the fertility dietician I’d just been put on the waitlist for. But I was too scared to tell the people I loved!

I was completely convinced it was all going to end at any moment and I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up and I knew the stats weren't really in our favour. My family were having a really hard time and I didn’t want to add to their anxiety. And I couldn’t face my friends being sad on my behalf if it didn’t end up happening. 

Because finding out I was finally pregnant brought about all kinds of crazy emotions. I was excited and blissfully happy in moments, but also scared and also strangely guilty.

I’d bonded with women who’d been through infertility and felt like a traitor to them. I felt it was a privilege to hear the stories of women who’d been through IVF and not succeeded and by getting pregnant it felt like I was abandoning them. I was one of them only a week before. 

I was in this weird limbo. I wasn’t someone who had breezed into motherhood and felt an easy optimism or excitement about my pregnancy. And yet here I was, expecting all the same. 

Walking into my 8 week midwife appointment I felt like an imposter, like I was just pretending a baby was on the way, despite the terrible morning sickness I was experiencing!

And I was terrified of miscarrying. I tried to almost detach myself emotionally  from the baby I was carrying as a coping mechanism. I read every single thing I could find on early miscarriage to arm myself with every sad possibility. Google was my best friend and worst enemy. 

I started to join pregnancy Facebook groups so I could have people to talk to, and everyone was going for early scans, but I couldn’t bring myself to have one. If something had gone wrong, I didn’t want to know. I’d face that at 12 weeks. Ignorance was bliss. 

I went shopping in town one day and remember suddenly seeing lots of pregnant people and newborn babies. I remember peering into a pram and thinking how strange it was. Until I had a realisation. There had always been this many round bellies and round babies. I’d just completely, mentally and physically blocked them out. It must have been 7 years since I’d voluntarily looked into a stranger's pram. It had just hurt too much and my brain must have been protecting me. 

As the weeks went on, and I got more used to the idea of being pregnant, I got even more scared, but

gradually I began to accept the pregnancy and the possibility I would actually be bringing a baby into this world.

I started to write letters to my bump (which appeared at 8 weeks, good lord) and even got a pregnancy journal and started to take photos of my changing body. 

I decided that whatever the outcome, getting to know this tiny ball of cells growing inside me was a privilege I had longed to experience, and I would regret not trying to connect emotionally and feeling all my feelings. Whatever the outcome, I didn't want to be numb. I wanted to be present. 

Once I'd had my 12 week and 20 week scans, and we decided to make the news public, it started to feel a lot more real and I knew we would most likely be bringing a little boy into the world, my acceptance of the pregnancy began to increase.

Even though I had a hard time during the 9 months (more on that soon) I didn't want to complain too much as I knew every day I spent carrying this baby was a privilege and I couldn't take for granted being in this position, as tough as some days were, because I never forgot that actually being pregnant was completely against the odds.