I’m a mum to all those little ones…I’ve been a mum since my first positive pregnancy test

Being a mum is all I’ve ever wanted and something I was never shy to admit.
I got pregnant for the first time in 2018, the year after Colin and I got married. We were elated. We’d had this plan and we thought it was working perfectly.
But our excitement didn’t last long. I had some bleeding and after a scan showed the pregnancy wasn’t developing as it should be, I had a miscarriage during a holiday to Croatia.

Because it was the first time, we told ourselves it just wasn’t meant to be. 

I was OK quite soon afterwards.
We decided to try again and conceived quite quickly. A 6-week scan showed everything was fine but on Christmas Eve of 2018, we had more bad news.
Colin was working that day and I was driving up to my mum and dad’s for Christmas. I decided to go for another scan.
I knew something was wrong when the sonographer said they needed someone else to come and check what they’d seen. Then they told me the heartbeat had stopped at 8 weeks.

A difficult Christmas

Colin called me just after the scan to ask how it had gone. I had to make the awful decision not to tell him the truth straight away.
He’s an actor and he was just about to go on stage in panto, so I told him everything was OK. I said I’d talk to him later, when he got to my parents’ house.
That was a really difficult Christmas.
Our families were wonderful and looked after us, but the second miscarriage was a really tough one to cope with. And we didn’t want to ruin everyone else’s Christmas.

Trying to move forwards

We waited a while before trying a third time. I wasn’t ready straight away, emotionally or physically.
When that third pregnancy also ended in an early loss, I was eligible for the NHS tests that are offered to people who have 3 consecutive miscarriages. They couldn’t find anything wrong.
We paid for more tests and a private consultation, and in the early stages of my fourth pregnancy I had treatments including blood thinners and progesterone.
Sadly, they didn’t prevent another miscarriage.

Looking for answers

I had lost 4 babies, all before 10 weeks. They all had heartbeats. It was obviously not a problem falling pregnant, it was a problem carrying a pregnancy to full term.
I did a lot of research online and decided to ask for help from Tommy’s National Centre for Miscarriage Research.

I wasn’t expecting miracles – I just wanted answers. If I wasn’t able to have children, I wanted to know that.

Colin and I flew down to the centre in Coventry and saw Professor Jan Brosens. He and his team were amazing.
I had more tests – and again, they suggested there was no reason I shouldn’t be able to go through a full-term, healthy pregnancy.
I had a course of hormone injections at a particular time in my cycle, to help my body sustain a future pregnancy, and I was also prescribed a steroid treatment from early in my next pregnancy.

Our Rainbow Baby

By January 2022 we had another positive test - and this time our little baby stayed with us. This time we got to meet our little girl, Sophie.
When Sophie was born, it was as if everything that had happened had led me to that moment. It felt as if things had turned out the way they were meant to be.
But I’ve been a mum since I first saw that blue line on a pregnancy test back in 2018. I know I’m a mum to all those little ones.

Tommy’s has changed our lives. We had done everything in our power to bring a little one home and just needed some extra help from this wonderful charity.

We now have the beginnings of our wonderful family and count ourselves lucky every single day.