When I was 21, and spending 8 days a month in considerable agony, a young, naive doctor told me that I had something called Endometriosis and that one of my ovaries was slightly damaged. As a result of his diagnoses I was never to have children.
At this time I was a student paying my way through teacher training college by childminding, babysitting and organising childrens’ birthday parties. So as you can imagine, I was devastated at this news and remember sobbing myself to sleep on many occasion. It never occured to me to get a second opinion or demand more tests and scans… why would it? He was a doctor, he knew his stuff, right?
At 23 I met the man I was destined to marry. He also would have loved to have children, but was very accepting that I couldn’t and it wasn’t an issue to him. But when we got engaged and moved in together it became more of an issue for me.
So the years skip by… My Mr and I move house a few times… from Lancashire, to Essex, to London then finally to a beautiful little village in Hampshire. By this time all my friends were parents and I threw myself into my career with children to compensate for my own lack of motherhood.
Then one day, at 29 years of age, I was doing our weekly shop after school and I found that pushing the heavy trolley round the corners was causing a sharp pain in my abdomen. It was a really nasty pain but it only lasted a matter of seconds. However, after it happened at every bend it was enough to start me worrying.
When I got home that day I felt the same stabbing pain whilst bending to put the shopping away. It then occurred to me that I was 2 weeks late on my period. Now that was not necessarily new because I was quite irregular, but the thing I noticed most was that the time had come and gone without the usual pre-menstrual crippling pains. Hmm…
After a sleepless night, worrying that maybe I was having an INCREDIBLY early menopause, I got up in the morning, headed to work, and had to stop half way to throw up in a bin. Something was definately different here! I chatted with my TA (who was also a really good friend) and in our lunch hour she went out and bought me a pregnancy test!!
“A what?? Don’t be ridiculous! I can’t!!”
Three minutes later and two blue lines appeared in the windows of the pee-stick!
I made a doctors appointment that evening and was seen there and then. (Ah, the beauty of living in a small village with 2 excellent doctors! Whatever happened to those days? Sigh!) The lovely lady doctor did another test and confirmed that yes, I was indeed pregnant, and was I not aware that Endometriosis would not necessarily stop me from having children anyway?!?
Ha, the irony!
It wasn’t an easy pregnancy. I was violently sick after every meal, especially if I had left it a long time before meals. Also my blood pressure was borderline high from the beginning and because of my earlier difficulties, I still bled every 4 weeks. But who cared? I was having a baby! Woo Hoo!
At 15 weeks in, Mr and I got married. It was a fabulous wedding, small and friendly, in a hotel in our little village with family and close friends. The day wasn’t even marred by the fact that I had lost so much weight since ordering my dress 3 weeks earlier, that I had to have it pinned to my bra straps to keep it on!
Baby was due on the 12th of January. The date came and went and I had already spent a lot of time in hospital for raised blood pressure and protein in my water. Then on the 21st Jan the hospital decided that enough was enough and I was to be induced.
I was admitted on the morning of the 22nd and taken straight in to the labour ward where a midwife with the largest hands I had EVER seen told me she was going to give me an internal examination! What??? Hubby still reminds me of that day as I was pushed a foot up the bed by a hand inside me! (Shudder!!)
The baby was nowhere near ready to arrive, so the Dr decided to induce with a pessary. It was 14:00 on the 22nd.
The pains came thick and fast. Mainly around my lower back. So Hubby and I were shown to our own private room and at 19:00 I was examined again. I sobbed as the midwife told me that there was no change and that women often experienced labour pains with the pessary without any results.
By 22:00 the back pain was almost unbearable. I was exhausted but in too much pain to sleep. Apparently I was talking complete nonsense. ( Though how that makes a difference to a normal day is debatable.) The midwife gave me Pethadine to help me get some sleep and sent Hubby home until morning. She assured us that nothing more would happen that day. The pains continued regularly all night, sleep didn’t happen!
Hubby returned at 8:00 the next morning and Dr Huge Hands came along too. She broke my waters with the aid of a long and scary looking crochet hook, then told me to go out and walk around the hospital grounds for a bit “to get things started.”
Hubby walked…I waddled…for miles and miles and miles…stopping frequently to throw up. (Me, not him!)
we were told to return to the labour ward at 14:00, so we did. God help us, Labour was no further on.
By 17:00 that evening I was put on a Syntocinyn drip and given an epidural for the pain. The epidural worked beautifully…on my left leg…
At midnight I was told to push. I did!
At 2am the most beautiful looking man arrived in the room. He was a Consultant and had arrived to deliver my baby. (Bugger, thought I…I am wearing a horrendous Mothercare nightie and haven’t got any make up on!) I shan’t go into details of what his job entailed that morning, but needless to say I could NEVER look him in the eye again without blushing!
My blonde haired, little pink beauty was born at 3am, weighing 7lb and 1\4 oz. The cord was tightly wrapped around her neck and she had been in some distress, which is why the birth had taken so long. Many stitches were required for me afterwards whilst our daughter was cleaned up, wrapped up and brought to us for a cuddle. Fantastic! The Consultant let us into a secret, that he had booked the theatre for an emergency caesarian and I would have been in it 10 mins later if things hadn’t moved on. That was quite a scary thought.
6am, January 24th 2003. I was transferred to a ward, propped up, drugged up and given some toast and a cup of tea. Hubby cradled a sleeping baby Olivia May in his arms and said to me with a wry smile…
“I reckon if we try again now, we could have another one by the end of this year!”
