Please note: this piece contains descriptions of loss that some readers may find upsetting.
I stared at the two lines on the pregnancy test strip, and time stood still. My heart raced with excitement, and my skin prickled with goosebumps.
I was pregnant!
It was June 2011, and this was my first pregnancy. The test was from a multipack I had bought online, so I did another two tests to be sure. They were both positive, and I could barely contain my excitement. I started to wonder if the baby was a boy or a girl, calculated the due date, and even looked at baby clothes online. I told my husband, who was delighted at the news.
At work the next day, I felt like I was floating on air. My mind was full of everything baby-related, and I found it difficult to concentrate on anything else.
The world felt different.
I felt different.
Once the doctor confirmed my pregnancy, we only told our close family and friends. We were aware that the risk of miscarriage was high before twelve weeks, but we tried not to think about it. We spent most of the following week discussing baby names and looking into finding a bigger flat. We had so many plans and so much hope for this baby.
On Monday morning of the following week, I awoke with some mild pain in my stomach. I researched it online and read that pain during pregnancy can be due to muscles stretching to accommodate the baby. This gave me hope that this was what the pain was. However, later that day, the pain turned into cramps. We went to the local A&E, but the doctor could not tell us anything as I wasn't bleeding, and he sent us home. All we could do was wait and hope for the best.
I awoke from a nap a few hours later with severe cramps in my stomach. I went to the toilet, and my heart sank when I discovered I was bleeding heavily. We went to A&E, where a doctor told us it was highly likely I was having a miscarriage. He ran some blood tests, and we clung to a glimmer of hope that maybe the baby might still be okay. If we were honest, we already knew it wasn't, but we didn't want to believe it.
The next day, the doctor confirmed I had miscarried. We were devastated. Our already much-loved and wanted baby was gone.
Baby names did not matter anymore, and we no longer needed to move to a bigger flat. All the plans we had filled with hope just a few hours earlier were now obsolete. It felt so cruel. As soon as I saw the line on the pregnancy test, I felt like a mother, but was I ever really a mother? I felt confused. We were grieving for someone we had never met or would never meet, but the baby was "real" to us. We loved that baby. In our minds, I was still a mother, and my husband was still a father.
Online peer support and reading success stories about couples who went on to have healthy babies after a miscarriage gave us hope for the future and the strength to move forward and try again.
In September, I was pregnant for the second time, but fear and anxiety overshadowed any excitement we felt. We clung to hope that this time would be different, and with trepidation, we started discussing names and looking at baby clothes again.
There is a well-known saying that lightning never strikes in the same place twice. However, on this occasion, this did not prove to be true for us when, a week later, I miscarried again. Everything felt hopeless, and a successful pregnancy felt like an impossible dream.
As the weeks passed, we saw pregnant women, parents pushing prams, and playing with their children in the park, and we hoped that this was going to be in our future. We wondered if we would ever have a child and questioned how many more times we would have to endure this heartbreak. The uncertainty got overwhelming at times. We knew we had a difficult road ahead, but we clung to some hope that one day, we would have a healthy baby.
In December, I stood in the same spot, looking at yet another positive pregnancy test. This time, there was no excitement or any planning for the baby. We didn't dare look too far ahead. All we could do was hope for a successful pregnancy.
A week later, I started having stomach cramps. We went to the hospital with little hope that we would be leaving with good news. We could not believe it when we saw a baby with a heartbeat on the screen! A wave of renewed hope and excitement swept over us. It felt surreal, as we had never got this far before.
The following eight months were a rollercoaster of emotions. Every pain and twinge terrified me, and the fear and anxiety felt torturous at times. We couldn't bear to lose this baby too. Every scan where we saw a heartbeat gave us hope. We even dared to start feeling excited as the due date grew nearer.
On August 26, 2012, I gave birth to a healthy baby boy weighing 10 pounds and 2.5 ounces. We called him Aiden. Two years later, we welcomed twins whom we named Emma and Sophie.
Hope played a significant part in our journey to parenthood:
We hoped for a positive pregnancy test.
We hoped for the positive test result to be correct.
We hoped that each pregnancy would be successful.
We hoped that every pain and twinge during my pregnancy was not an impending miscarriage.
We hoped there would be a heartbeat at every scan.
We hoped for a healthy baby.
We hoped for a safe birth.
Hope gave us the strength to keep trying for a family during our darkest times and brought our three children into our lives.
If you've been affected by this piece, please see our support page (this link will open in a new window)for help and advice.