In the beginning...
Well, where do I begin? It all seems like a long time ago when we both
sat down and started talking about having a family together. The plan was
to get married and enjoy each others company for a short while before opening
our arms to another family member. Getting married was the easy part, both
me and Sarah knew we wanted to marry each other from really early on and so the
time finally came when we both decided now was the right time to extend our
family.
The negative pregnancy results seemed to be becoming a regular occurrence
every month, and every one of them seemed to be that little more harder to take than the
one before for Sarah. This was equally hard on me as I could see her
beginning to long for children of our own. Sarah has always been really
good with children, and it seemed like the most natural thing for her to be, a
mother... which made it so much more confusing when it slowly became more apparent
that we were having problems.
And so we eventually got referred to Northampton hospital for
treatment. Things started off with a couple of rounds of Clomid, which
made Sarah ovulate at specific times each month. Unfortunately with all of
this she also had extreme mood swings and would often change from minute to
minute. Again, it started to become apparent that this wasn't going to
work for us as we had first hoped and so we moved on to a treatment called IUI.
When this also looked like it wasn't going to work for us, Sarah was informed about
an operation she could have to investigate what was happening and maybe
give some explanation to the previously labeled "Unexplained
Infertility".
Finally a date came through for the procedure and the results came back
negative, which meant that there was nothing wrong with her at all, although we had
heard on the grapevine that this procedure can often unblock the tubes
all-together even when results had come back negative. This gave us a
small glimmer of hope.
A couple of months later it was decided that we would be referred for IVF
treatment in February 2004. We were quite anxious about this but were
desperate for children of our own, so we decided to sit it out for a couple of
months and concentrate on getting the house in order and enjoying Christmas
together. Christmas came and Sarah was a week late. This wasn't a rare occurrence
so we didn't think too much of it, but decided to wait until after Christmas to
do any pregnancy tests so that we wouldn't be disappointed over the Christmas
break. After Christmas had gone we both decided that it would be a good
idea to do the test before Sarah's birthday the following week as if she was
pregnant then she wouldn't be able to have any alcohol, and so we did the test.
We couldn't believe it at first and just sat there looking at it for ages
wondering if what we were seeing was right.... so we did another, and the result
was exactly the same. It wasn't the reaction I thought I would have, I
thought I would be over the moon and jumping down the street when we found out,
but I guess I just couldn't believe it and wanted to protect mine and Sarah's
feelings if we were wrong. The doctor confirmed our results the next day
and it still didn't sink in, so we bought another test, a different brand, which
also came up positive... it was a great feeling and something we had waited for
for a very long time, but it still didn't seem real some how.
The Pregnancy
So finally we were going to be getting the baby we had hoped for. Every
scan we went to was another step closer, and seeing "Baby G" on the
screens was great and slowly started bringing it home to us. The 20 week
scan was fantastic and we really got to see the Baby move inside Sarah and kick
around. Everything appeared to be normal and so we left feeling happy with
how things were going. Although Sarah's pregnancy hadn't been the easiest
in the world, it seemed as though it would all be worth it eventually.
Sarah soon became quite poorly and was soon struggling to walk due to her
swollen legs and feet. At the time I didn't think she was all that
swollen, but looking back on pictures now I was quite wrong. Sarah's
Niece's thanksgiving seemed to be a turning point as she had now got quite large
in comparison, however it was the weekend after that when things really started
to get worse. When Sarah was struggling to sleep and getting up in
the night to be sick I couldn't help but wonder if this was going to be the same
all the way through the rest of the pregnancy. It seemed like such a long
way away before the Baby was due and it felt quite daunting thinking that Sarah
should have actually been blooming in the second trimester, when in fact she had
reached quite a low. Luckily we managed to get an emergency appointment
for her on the Monday morning at the doctors after an extremely long and tiring weekend.
Sarah shuffled in to the doctors room in her slippers and I waited outside
thinking that maybe they would just prescribe her some antibiotics or something
to make her feel better. When the doctor came outside and called me in, it
dawned on me that something might not actually be right.
The Hospital
I'll never forget that feeling I had in my gut when the doctor explained
about pre-eclampsia and how we could be having the baby that day. I'd read
the books and seen the articles and I knew that we wouldn't have much of a
chance at 24 weeks gestation, but we kind of put all that to the back of our
minds and went off to the hospital in complete silence. Thankfully someone
was waiting for us at the hospital with a wheelchair when we got there and they
wheeled her straight in to the labour ward. The doctors seemed to be
coming in every few minutes or so, looking over Sarah and then disappearing
again. After a lot of prodding and poking around they finally confirmed
what we already knew, and that was that Sarah had severe pre-eclampsia.
What they then went on to explain was that if Sarah had got this level of
pre-eclampsia at week 28 or over then they would have delivered the baby
immediately, but they wanted to give the baby as good a chance as any of
survival, and so the plan was to keep her in for the duration of her pregnancy,
whether that be an hour, a day or a month, nobody seemed to know or be able to
give us an answer to. We knew that at week 24 we would have a 25% chance
of the baby surviving, but for every day that the baby was inside her gave us an
extra 2%. We clung on to this knowing that every day was
another 2% over the previous day.
On the Friday I remember it had been quite difficult as we had seen a
consultant in the morning and he had painted a rather grim picture for us.
We knew that the doctor had to be honest with us, but it felt like he left us
with no chance at all, his exact words where "it doesn't look very good
does it, and even if the baby does survive it will have many problems". This was the only time in the whole week we had
both been weak at the same time and it hurt a lot. I can honestly say that
this was the lowest point in my whole life and I really didn't know where we
were going to go from here. I remember phoning Sarah's mum and breaking
down in tears, something which I had rarely done, and I think she knew this as
it wasn't long before they turned up at the Hospital to give some moral
support. Thankfully, the Gosset ward staff came along and invited us to
take a tour around where our baby would be taken to upon delivery so that we
were prepared. Although they were honest with us about our chances, they
gave us a lot of hope and we now had something to look forward with and
started building our hopes once more.
Saturday night and Sarah really was quite ill. I left the hospital that
night and instinctively put the phone by the side of my bed. I think I
managed to get about a 1/2 hours sleep before the phone rang at 2:30am with one of the
Midwives telling me not to panic, but she thought I ought to go in to the
hospital to see Sarah. I don't really remember much of the journey, but
luckily I got there without incident to find Sarah surrounded by a team of
doctors putting drips in to her left right and center. There was a
particularly nasty looking line stuck in her neck which looked painful.
They informed us that they had to administer her some Magnesium Sulphate to stop her
fitting which we had previously been told that the only down side to this drug was that the baby would have to be delivered within 24
hours. Thankfully it settled her down though and she fell asleep, although
we now knew that our lives were going to be changing forever that day. I
tried to sleep in the chair next to her bed, but it was so uncomfortable and every
little noise in the ward would make me jump out of my chair. It was also
extremely frightening to close my eyes as my mind seemed to be playing tricks on
me.
The morning came and the doctor came round to visit us. There was a
deadly silence for about 15 minutes whilst he looked at his notes, looked at
Sarah, looked at his notes and returned to look at Sarah again. He piped
up eventually and informed us that it was no longer in the Babies or Sarah's
interest to continue like this and the decision was made to perform an emergency
caesarian. Within the hour we were kitted up and in the operating
theatre. Thankfully they were allowing me to stay with her throughout the
operation, but what use I was to anyone in there I don't know. I remember
vividly sitting there next to Sarah and telling her everything would be ok, but
my arms and my legs were beginning to feel like they were about to drop off
which I think was down to the anxiety and stress of the situation, I really felt that if I had stood
up at that moment I would have fallen over.
Alfie was born
Finally the moment came where we knew something had happened when I heard a
small cry. It was for only about half a second and very faint, but I thought to myself did
I really hear that or was it a chair creaking or something? The Anesthetist
leaned over and told us that the baby was out, but it was very small and we
should be prepared. We both cried at this point and looked at each
other... I remember saying to Sarah that nothing could ever change the fact that
we were both a mummy and daddy now. We both asked if the baby was ok and
he replied that he couldn't see anything at that point as the Paediactric nurses
were all crowded around the baby. A few moments later he leaned over again
and said to us that he could see some wriggling going on over in the corner
which made us cry even more. The midwife came over and congratulated us on
the birth of a baby boy, and asked if we had a name for him yet. We both
replied at the same time, Alfie John, where she sheepishly asked if she could
just put Alfie on the tag as it was too long for the tag made out for
him.
And so began Alfie's life. Its great being able to watch every aspect
of him grow and develop every day, and its fascinating to watch. Every day
I thank my lucky stars that he beat the odds to get here safely, and we know its
a long way still to go, but we intend to enjoy every step of the journey and
help Alfie to be a happy person throughout his whole life. Thankfully
Sarah is well on the mend now and Alfie is too, I am just looking forward to the
day when he can be at home with us and we can try and learn to be the best parents that we can be for him.
