The best of times, the worst of times

I have been away again for a while and a lot has happened. I will try and recreate for you all the original feelings as best I can. It will be hard as they are now tainted by what was to follow ...

On the morning of the 20th November I wake up and go to the bathroom and pee into a plastic cup. I come back and hand said cup to Mr W. Oh the romance of it! He wanted me to take a test as we were going away for the weekend, but I was not convinced it would be anything different than the normal bright white window staring back at me. So I said he could do it. I got back into bed and shut my eyes as he opened the test packet and proceeded to dip it in the cup, carefully timing all the while. He put the lid back on the test and waited. The 3 minutes up I heard him rustling around with the instructions. What was he doing? He'd seen a negative test before! 'It's negative right?' I said opening my eyes and his face turned to me and said the words I will never forget 'I think it's positive'. I jumped out of bed and snatched the test out of his hands. There was that second pink line that I really had started to think was just the stuff of dreams. The clomid had worked! We were pregnant! I went to the doctor the following Tuesday convinced she would tell me it was all a mirage, but she did another test (despite me taking mine with me!) and it was positive again! 5 1/2 weeks pregnant with a due date of 25th July. We were so excited. I can't even begin to describe the joy we felt. We made plans, we discussed names, I know it was early but we were both convinced that after nearly 2 years of hell this was our time and we were determined to grab hold of the dream and not let it go. We were ready for this, we had been ready for a long time. It seemed so natural that this was happening and that in a few weeks we would be telling our families over Christmas dinner. Those few days really were the best of times.

But it was not to last. The best of times were soon to turn into the worst of times. On Saturday 28th November I started to feel a lot of abdominal pain. I was eating Rennie tablets like they were going out of fashion thinking it was trapped wind. I was sore and bloated and it hurt to stand up and sit down. Somewhere in the pit of my stomach I knew something was wrong. Sunday came and my Mum begged me to go to the doctor. My back and shoulders hurt and when I cried because I was scared I was losing the baby, my whole body was wracked with pain. I knew this wasn't right. We went to our out of hours doctor at the local hospital who asked if I suspected an ectopic pregnancy. He took a test to prove that I was still pregnant and it was positive which gave me hope. Because I was in pain all over my tummy and it was all tender, he also suggested that it might be appendicitis which would involve an operation that could be harmful for the baby. I still hoped and prayed it was the latter and that little Bubba W was a fighter. I was taken to the ward while Mr W was sent home to collect a few things for me. I bled a little in the night and felt sure I was losing our precious baby but the nurses seemed more optimistic. I had a urine infection, they explained, and there was not a lot of blood. I was told to keep thinking positively.

Monday 30th November. Ten days after our positive pregnancy test. Two days before my 29th birthday. And officially recorded in my history book as the worst day of my life. The rollercoaster started in the morning with the doctor offering me hope. It was good that I had only bled once and it was not continuous. The pain had started to subside and she was sending me for a scan. I went down with a nurse from the Early Pregnancy Unit and another lady who was 8 weeks pregnant. She had also been bleeding. Her scan was first and it was good news. The baby was growing and she was happy. She went back to the ward pretty quickly and I felt sure it would be good news for me too. I went into the ultrasound room and it was the same lady who had diagnosed the cysts on my ovaries last time. She didn't recognise me. She moved the instrument around the bottom of my tummy and just kept moving it and moving it. I knew then it was bad news. Surely she would know where the baby was? She would be able to see it, just like with the lady before me. She then had to use the transvaginal probe camera which I managed to escape last time. But I didn't care. I just felt totally numb. She told me then that it was looking like an ectopic pregnancy on my right-hand side that had ruptured. There was a sac inside my womb mirroring the pregnancy but it was full of blood and my womb was also filled with blood and fluid. There was a layer of blood around my tubes which indicated the pregnancy had ruptured after becoming too big for the tube. And then she left me outside in the corridor to speak to the nurse. And it was there I sobbed. I sobbed because my heart was breaking into a million tiny pieces and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I sobbed because this world is a cruel, cruel place. I sobbed because no medical miracle could save my precious baby, he was doomed before his life even really began. I sobbed without control. I didn't care where I was or who saw me. I didn't care that all the pregnant ladies with their beautiful bumps coming for their routine scans were looking at me, staring at me, feeling pity for me. The nurse called me into her office but I didn't really hear what she said. She mentioned surgery and she had paged the doctor. She then took me back outside to wait for a porter to bring a wheelchair to take me back to the ward. I protested that I would walk, I knew Mr W was waiting for me, and the pregnant women in the waiting room were too much to bear, but she wouldn't hear of it so I stood in the corridor with fresh tears rolling down my face. The porter came and we went back to the ward in silence.

When I got to my bed, Mr W was there. He knew by my face it was bad news and we sat and cried and cried while someone pulled the curtains around us. But there was little time for grief at that moment. Within 20 minutes I was surrounded by nurses and two doctors and a bed showed up with a porter ready to take me to theatre. Nurses were undressing me and putting surgical socks on me and tying one of those horrible gowns that always seems to leave your arse on show. The original doctor who saw me, the registrar we nicknamed Dr Mumble, gave me some consent forms to sign and went on in his mumbling tones about the risks of bladder and bowel infections and a whole list of other potential effects of the surgery I was about to have that I didn't understand. I signed it and was helped onto the bed. In a whirlwind I left the ward with Mr W alongside the bed. When we reached the theatre doors and he was told he could go no further, he kissed me and said everything would be alright. It was only when I turned to see him for one last time and I saw his face drained to grey and his eyes filled with worry that I knew maybe it wouldn't be ok. Once inside the theatre, another consultant read out the surgery I was about to have and the jokey assistant said 'Did you get that? It's blah de blah de blah'. 'That's what I heard' I joked as the anaesthetist suddenly popped into my eyeline. He explained that because I had eaten they would have to put pressure on my throat to stop me from throwing up into my lungs when the anaesthetic was administered. I remember thinking I would not like that at all as I hate any pressure on my throat and have thrown up at the dentist when they have applied too much pressure or gone too far into the back of my mouth. However, the assistant put two fingers on my throat and warned he would have to press harder when I was going off to sleep and that was the last thing I remember ...