Hello to you all!

[LHow81]

What a fabulous idea this forum is!

So a little about me my IVF journey started 6 years ago when I was diagnosed with hydrosalpinx and had to have both my tubes removed. I also had to lose around 4st before we could start the process.

I never responded well to the gonal f and had low egg collections 3 rounds with only 1 frostie from the very first round. 3 unsuccessful fresh rounds then success with our only frostie.

I had spotting on and off at the beginning of my pregnancy and never really felt at ease until I could feel those kicks even then any time he was a little less active I panicked!

I took early maternity leave as my work was less than supportive through out the process of IVF and on my first day of my maternity leave my mother fell over and broke her leg leading to an amputation. It was a very difficult time as she suffered with other conditions which would take me an age to go into. At 36 weeks I was diagnosed with obstetric cholestasis and induced at 37 weeks this didn’t work and ended in an emergency c section, 3 days after my indunction. Our son Rowan was born 03/11/2016 at 7lbs 3. With all the stress with my mother who was in the hospital at the time of my sons birth with a water infection (which had sent her bonkers and quite mean to me) I failed with breast feeding and Rowan lost 20% birth weight we were in hospital for another week after he suffered with jaundice and I was placed on antidepressants.

Flash forward to now I’m son is 3 he is amazing, difficult, loving, naughty, cheeky, funny little boy. I still get asked will you have more children and it still stabs at my heart, I still see pregnancy announcements and they will still get to me (not on the IVF forum those make me so happy). I wish I had a chance to have another but my heart can’t take it.

Sorry this ended up being a lot longer than I meant it to thank you for taking the time to read!

[Foodie23 Ambassador]

Welcome LHow81! How lovely it is to see the smile on your beautiful boy's face.

Thank you for sharing your infertility journey with us. I can completely relate to the feeling of panic when your little one becomes a little less active. Several times I pried mine with orange juice or something sweet to ease my mind. When I was about 7 months pregnant I did something really stupid and took a big fall. The minutes that went by before I felt him kick were the longest of my entire life.

It's awful how unsupportive work can be during infertility experience. If they had any idea how stressful and emotional it was, they would be. Research has proven that the experience of infertility can be compared to the stress someone would experience with a diagnosis of cancer. For people who haven't gone through infertility, that may sound unbelievable. My husband even balked when I said it, but it wasn't hard for me to believe at all.

I'm so sorry to hear about what happened to your mother! I hope she's doing better now.

Your birth and postpartum experience sound extremely stressful. It would be surprising if you didn't end up with some postpartum depression after that. I'm sure your experience will enable you to be a great source of support when other people on here are going through something similar. I'm sure we'll be getting more ladies on here who are still pregnant looking for support soon.

I think many others on here will be able to relate to the desire to expand their families, but not wanting to go down that emotional roller coaster again. For me, I could say it won't matter if it works, since we already have one miracle baby. But, I know that wouldn't be true. As soon as my heart decided it wanted to invest in expanding our family, I'd be setting myself up for another loss. I hope when the time comes, I'll be brave enough to do it anyway.

Thank you for taking so much time to share your story with us. We're still quite small (when you consider active members), but I'm sure that will change and you'll have more responses in subsequent posts. I'm looking forward to connecting more with you! Xx

[LHow81 in reply to Foodie23]

What a lovely response thank you! Unfortunately my mother passed away January 2017, my blues were not postpartum fortunately more about other stresses. I can’t imagine how scary a fall would be so glad it all worked out ok!