Kirsty’s story
After two very early losses, Kirsty had an ectopic pregnancy, where one tube was removed and the other found to be under-developed. She then had an IVF pregnancy, which miscarried.
I tried to tell my doctor how I felt, but unless you say it plain as day they won't open up the topic for discussion. I had no follow-up in terms of how I was dealing with it - no one asked.
I had an ectopic pregnancy that ended with surgery in January of 2018. It was the first time that a pregnancy had ever made it to six weeks. After the initial worry about my symptoms and persistence that something was wrong, shortly after the new year our exciting prospects turned into a life-threatening nightmare.
It was discovered the baby was in the left tube. As it turns out the only viable tube to get me pregnant. In hospital I felt truly alone, especially when my husband had to leave for the night. I had no one to talk to and to be honest, the staff didn’t have the time to talk to me. One nurse came to me the next day and said with no expression ‘sorry for your loss’. It hadn’t even occurred to me what I was about to lose.
I tried to tell my doctor how I felt, but unless you say it plain as day they won’t open up the topic for discussion. I had no follow-up in terms of how I was dealing with it – no one asked. Luckily my family were there to support me because there was no professional involvement whatsoever. Once my husband returned to work I was left to overcome my physical and emotional scars before starting a new job- so not being able to overcome it at work was simply not an option.
I didn’t get any support with the loss of my first round of IVF, which I found hard as I just assumed that IVF would work, which was a silly thing to think. I went to the doctors to talk about it as the clinic had suggested some tests to see if there was an additional problem but they never got done because my doctor simply said – and these were her words – ‘IVF fails’ and all I’d had was ‘three bog standard miscarriages’. So after that, opening up to my doctor wasn’t really an option for me.
The fertility clinic offer two or three free counselling sessions with the package but they weren’t the best at keeping in touch or getting back to me with worries about other things so I didn’t rely on them either. My husband and I paid for one private counselling session together but couldn’t afford anymore after that (£50 an hour!) and we had a lot to talk about!
The truth is – unless you are brave enough to talk about it, people simply don’t ask and I want to change this.