What's been happening
Thank you all so much for your lovely comments on the wedding pic :) Now to catch you up on the rest of my news...
First things first, the horrid part. Back in June Calum and I found out we were pregnant, and on the 14th of August we lost our baby.
We weren't quite expecting to get pregnant so soon. We'd decided that we could try not taking precautions and see what happened, if I did get pregnant I'd hopefully be over morning sickness by the wedding and not showing too much, but we weren't actively trying, in fact I think we only 'did it' once in the ovulation window, but like they always say in sex ed, once is all it takes!
Everything was going swimmingly and we were so excited, if a little terrified, until the first scan, at 13 weeks, on Wednesday the 5th of August. The baby was wriggling and kicking and looked like it was sucking it's thumb! and it was so amazing and real, but then the sonographer said she couldn't do the NT test because the baby was in the wrong position, could we go walk around the corridor for a bit to see if it would move. When we went back in she stated scanning again and said she was worried about something she could see that she thought was an abdominal wall defect.
They took us into a private room to wait for more news, and a midwife came in to say they didn't have any fetal medicine consultants free and had made an appointment for Friday in another hospital (this was Wednesday) She said it looked like an exomphalos, where the bowels, and possibly some organs, grow outside the abdominal wall, and that it could be a spontaneous defect or caused by another problem, most likely a chromosomal abnormality.
On Friday we saw a wonderful consultant who did lots of scans where we got to see the baby in much more detail, and then she performed a CVS test (removing some cells from the placenta via a needle through my abdomen) and we went home to wait for the results.
On Tuesday I had a phone call saying the baby had Edward's Syndrome, which is a fatal chromosome disorder that most babies don't even survive to full term with, and have lots of very serious problems if they do survive to delivery. So Calum and I then had to go back in the next morning to see the midwife to discuss our options.
We'd discussed it even before we knew the result, and had decided if the baby did have Edward's or Patau's Syndromes (another fatal disorder that exomphlos can be a side effect of) we couldn't bear the idea of bringing such a sick baby into the world, or waiting for nature to take it's course and possibly miscarrying on my wedding day or at a much later stage of the pregnancy.
So on Wednesday the 12th we went to see the midwife and she went through the results with us, and what they meant, and she told us the baby was a little girl. Then before we went home she gave me a tablet to start the process of a chemically induced miscarriage, and arranged for us to go back on Friday. On Thursday evening I started to have pains so we went to the hospital earlier than planned. Nothing happened though, so on Friday morning they started to induce me and that evening at five minutes to 6 I gave birth to our little girl.
The midwives were all so wonderfully kind to us, and made the most heartbreaking period of our lives almost bearable. There's a charity called SANDS (Stillbirth And Neonatal Death Society) for grieving parents and they provided the hospital with a room where Calum and I could stay after the baby was born before we went home. It was like a lovely hotel room, with a double bed, and it was off to the side of the maternity ward. They also gave us a memory box for the baby, with two teddy bears and two little knitted blankets - for the baby to have one and we keep the other. We've put all the cards we received, and the scan pictures in the box, and the hospital gave us a little hospital band and a sort of birth certificate with her name and the date and time she was born and how much she weighed, so we can always remember her.
We talked about what we should call her, and decided that she already had a name really - Brassica. My main symptom during the pregnancy was dreadful gas - I looked like I was at least 6 weeks pregnant most of the time! So we called the bump Brassica, joking that it wasn't a baby making me gassy but cabbage and broccoli :)
So a week later we got married, and while it was the best day of my life and I've never been happier, it was definitely tinged with a great deal of sadness. Calum said to me last night that in some ways the baby was more of a vow than the words we said in the church, and I think he's right.
First things first, the horrid part. Back in June Calum and I found out we were pregnant, and on the 14th of August we lost our baby.
We weren't quite expecting to get pregnant so soon. We'd decided that we could try not taking precautions and see what happened, if I did get pregnant I'd hopefully be over morning sickness by the wedding and not showing too much, but we weren't actively trying, in fact I think we only 'did it' once in the ovulation window, but like they always say in sex ed, once is all it takes!
Everything was going swimmingly and we were so excited, if a little terrified, until the first scan, at 13 weeks, on Wednesday the 5th of August. The baby was wriggling and kicking and looked like it was sucking it's thumb! and it was so amazing and real, but then the sonographer said she couldn't do the NT test because the baby was in the wrong position, could we go walk around the corridor for a bit to see if it would move. When we went back in she stated scanning again and said she was worried about something she could see that she thought was an abdominal wall defect.
They took us into a private room to wait for more news, and a midwife came in to say they didn't have any fetal medicine consultants free and had made an appointment for Friday in another hospital (this was Wednesday) She said it looked like an exomphalos, where the bowels, and possibly some organs, grow outside the abdominal wall, and that it could be a spontaneous defect or caused by another problem, most likely a chromosomal abnormality.
On Friday we saw a wonderful consultant who did lots of scans where we got to see the baby in much more detail, and then she performed a CVS test (removing some cells from the placenta via a needle through my abdomen) and we went home to wait for the results.
On Tuesday I had a phone call saying the baby had Edward's Syndrome, which is a fatal chromosome disorder that most babies don't even survive to full term with, and have lots of very serious problems if they do survive to delivery. So Calum and I then had to go back in the next morning to see the midwife to discuss our options.
We'd discussed it even before we knew the result, and had decided if the baby did have Edward's or Patau's Syndromes (another fatal disorder that exomphlos can be a side effect of) we couldn't bear the idea of bringing such a sick baby into the world, or waiting for nature to take it's course and possibly miscarrying on my wedding day or at a much later stage of the pregnancy.
So on Wednesday the 12th we went to see the midwife and she went through the results with us, and what they meant, and she told us the baby was a little girl. Then before we went home she gave me a tablet to start the process of a chemically induced miscarriage, and arranged for us to go back on Friday. On Thursday evening I started to have pains so we went to the hospital earlier than planned. Nothing happened though, so on Friday morning they started to induce me and that evening at five minutes to 6 I gave birth to our little girl.
The midwives were all so wonderfully kind to us, and made the most heartbreaking period of our lives almost bearable. There's a charity called SANDS (Stillbirth And Neonatal Death Society) for grieving parents and they provided the hospital with a room where Calum and I could stay after the baby was born before we went home. It was like a lovely hotel room, with a double bed, and it was off to the side of the maternity ward. They also gave us a memory box for the baby, with two teddy bears and two little knitted blankets - for the baby to have one and we keep the other. We've put all the cards we received, and the scan pictures in the box, and the hospital gave us a little hospital band and a sort of birth certificate with her name and the date and time she was born and how much she weighed, so we can always remember her.
We talked about what we should call her, and decided that she already had a name really - Brassica. My main symptom during the pregnancy was dreadful gas - I looked like I was at least 6 weeks pregnant most of the time! So we called the bump Brassica, joking that it wasn't a baby making me gassy but cabbage and broccoli :)
So a week later we got married, and while it was the best day of my life and I've never been happier, it was definitely tinged with a great deal of sadness. Calum said to me last night that in some ways the baby was more of a vow than the words we said in the church, and I think he's right.