We only ask for one child… by Catherine Midgley

The following article is written for all the women out there with no children. Not the ones who have one child and have then experienced miscarriages and not the women who have experienced miscarriages and then had a child or children. It is written for the women who are still trying for a first baby, the women who continue to have miscarriages, the women who, according to specialist doctors and rigorous testing, ‘have nothing wrong with them’.
I am married to a man who is 35, he is fit and healthy, his sperm count is good, he doesn’t smoke or drink and he is not over weight. I’m 38. I eat healthily, I exercise a lot, I don’t drink, I’ve never smoked, I have a perfect BMI, my tubes aren’t blocked, my ovaries work as they should, my womb is the correct size and shape and I have a regular and painless 28 day cycle. I have also had 7 miscarriages.

The doctors tell me there is nothing wrong; that I have proved time and time again that I am fertile. After the first one, I was told it was bad luck and that lots of women have one. After the second I was told it was really bad luck. After the third I was told I was extremely unfortunate and they would do tests. After all the tests showed there was nothing wrong, I was told to go away and try again. I had a fifth miscarriage at the end of last year, a sixth in the Spring and am now about to experience a seventh. After the last miscarriage I was still being told by specialists that I would get there in the end. Recent scans show I am pregnant once more, with a pregnancy sac but with nothing growing, as I write this, I am waiting to miscarry again.

I have approached each pregnancy differently. I have carried on as usual, I have rested, I have moved to the country, I have got a dog, I have taken one aspirin, two aspirin and progesterone. I’m now at the point where emotionally, I just cannot try again and I am having to deal with the knowledge that I won’t ever have my own child. The physical pain and loss of blood of losing a baby at 14 weeks is too much to bear. Cycling from John O’Groats to Land’s End to raise money for the Miscarriage Association whilst having a miscarriage is something I never wish to experience again. Finding out you are pregnant, and then three days later finding you aren’t anymore is emotionally exhausting. Being sent home to wait for a heartbeat to stop because the scan has shown a heartbeat that is too weak to ever survive and that if doctors remove it before the heart beat stops, it counts as an abortion and you won’t be eligible for recurrent miscarriage tests, leaves you distraught.

But it is not only the medical details of each miscarriage and dates that live with you. It is the wider experience too. I had to pass heavily pregnant women smoking outside the hospital scanning unit while on my way to having a D and C. Every time I visit the hairdressers I am asked if I have children. Neighbours are forever telling me that when we start a family, our priorities will change. Others are telling me how amazing a pregnancy is. My friends plan their lives, saying things like that they will travel to developing countries now because once they have children they won’t be able to. Other friends say, next month we are going to try for a baby, and then they tell you they are pregnant and you have to pretend to be happy for them when really you are thinking – why can’t it be like this for me? How can it be so easy? Others, trying to be helpful but obviously not understanding at all, suggest IVF – “BUT I CAN OBVIOUSLY CONCEIVE AND AM THEREFORE NOT ELIGIBLE” I feel like shouting at them. ‘IVF is for those that cannot conceive’ is a sentence I have to repeat so often. Doctors suggest support groups that may help me. But I dread meeting these groups because they are full of women who have a child, they may have been trying for years to have another without success, but they still have one.

There must be a group of women like me out there. You rarely read about them between the pages of this magazine or hear them speak at support groups. I am part of a minority group who just carry on with their day-to-day life, trying to suppress the pain of failure that eats away at them inside. WOMEN HAVE BABIES. We only ask for one child….
It has taken me 4 long years to be able to write this. Even 6 months ago, I could not have trusted myself to write these words down without crying. Our recent decision to adopt has helped with this. People are interested in the procedure, they ask questions and express shock at how long the process takes. But for us and our experience of recurrent miscarriage, at least we get a living child at the end of it all. Who knows, perhaps I will finally get to meet this group of women at the adoption meetings. I can only hope that in the future, more funding is made available for research into recurrent miscarriage. It’s a hard lesson in life to learn that doctors don’t have answers to everything.