I found out I was pregnant in March of this year, and I was over the moon. I skipped straight along to Boots and bought all the pre-natal vitamins, cooed over baby clothes and lingered in the nappy aisles, imagining my new life with a child.
The next few weeks were exciting. We worked out our due date to be 15th November, and I received an appointment from the hospital in the post for our first scan, which was booked for 6th May. The weeks went by and I was ecstatically happy but also suffered with some terrible sickness. I had to rush out of the room at work and hoped nobody noticed, as we didn't want to tell anybody until I was three months gone.
As the date of the scan approached, I was excited but extremely nervous at the same time. My symptoms had pretty much faded by this point - the sickness had gone and my breasts, which had basically just felt like two huge bruised lumps on the front of my body, were no longer tender, but I had been told it was normal to lose symptoms at 12 weeks so I tried not to worry.
I remember clearly having to lay in the cold bed in that dark room and having to stuff tissue paper down the front of my leggings to protect them from the jelly, which was also cold. My other half holding my hand as the woman ran the transducer across my tummy, I remember thinking "Ouch, she's got a firm touch!" and about how much I needed a wee!
When, after a while, she hadn't said anything or turned the screen around, I instinctively knew something was wrong. After what seemed like forever, she asked me if my periods were regular and if I was sure of my dates. She told me the reason she was asking was because she could see a pregnancy sack, but no baby, and she suspected it was too small to be seen yet and that she would need to do an internal scan. At this point, I knew exactly what was wrong and just said outright "Is an internal scan really neccesary? I really don't have a good feeling about this."
My poor fiance then clutched my hand tightly and the lady put her hand on my shoulder and told me that she had to treat it as a pregnancy from a medical point of view and that I could just have my dates wrong. I was extremely doubtful but had the internal scan anyway (it was great to relieve my bladder, anyway!).
The baby was only measuring around 5 or 6 weeks. I knew this wasn't right. I was told to come back again in a week for another scan, but I knew I just had to let nature take it's course.
How I held it together back out in the waiting room I don't know. We had to wait to be seen by another lady who just gave us some leaflets and sent us on our way. It was when we reached the car that the tears came. I can honestly say I've never cried like that in my entire life. Me and my fiance cried all the way home, then sat and held each other and cried for the rest of the day.
All my baby magazines I had bought as well as my Bounty packs were sitting there, but I couldn't bring myself to get rid of them. I have never felt such grief in all my life. I was given a week off work and by the end of it, I was physically and emotionally drained. It was towards the end of that week that I actually started to bleed, and to be honest, that part all seems like a blur. I had a lot of pain and just wanted it over with. The whole process took around two weeks.
I was very depressed for at least three months afterwards. Initially I wanted to try again straight away, then I realised it would be better for both of us to give ourselves time to mourn for our little one we lost, we nicknamed her Ladybug (we both had a feeling it was a girl).
Whenever a ladybug landed on me I thought of her, and me and my fiance always share a look with each other if we see or hear anything to do with these pretty little bugs. I've even got little ladybug necklace.
It is now 11th November as I am writing this, and I would have been due to give birth in four days time. All those feelings came flooding back and so I decided to write them down.
We do feel like we are ready to try again pretty soon, but we'll never forget our ladybug, and will always feel a little sad at this time of year.
To anyone who has been through this, my heart goes out to you. and I send lots of sticky baby dust to all of you xx
