The Waiting Game

Louise Price - 28 Jul 17

The problem with being pregnant after two miscarriages and two children is that it doesn’t really matter what anyone says the anxiety is crippling. You are so desperate to make it to that holy grail of 12 weeks because if you can make it there everything will be fine, because that’s what all the books say.

Sadly I am already a very anxious person. Works great for weight loss not so good for your mental health.

I set small milestones to begin with ‘lets just get home from Manchester’  then ‘lets get through this day/week’ but ultimately what we were aiming for was to get past 7 weeks – because that is where it had all gone wrong the last two times.

I had of course done a pregnancy test in Manchester. This will come as new news to Rachel who was away with me and we are very close so I apologise now for not confessing at the time but now you know why I didn’t want the second cocktail and why I was so long in the toilet!!

I did quite well till about 7 weeks when the anxiety took over and I had a melt down with every twinge or pain.

Rich was great and put up with a lot of crazy shit to be fair but for the sake of all our sanity we decided to opt for an early scan to see if there was a heart beat and then we would know one way or another.

The day of the scan fell on the first day of half term – you could not make this shit up. So off all 4.5 of us went to the hospital in the car. The kids both had their iphones and spent most of their lives ignoring us anyway so I felt fairly sure we could get through a 15 minute ultrasound without them batting and eye, as long as there was wifi….

I was wrong. We pulled into the car park and Emmy pipes up with “whats North Tyneside Pregnancy clinic?”  now given that she was 10 at the time I think we all know she already knows the answer to that one but like all good parents I ignored her.

We went in for the scan and was led to a little room at the back of a large house converted to a private clinic. I lay on bed and discovered that in the decade since I last birthed a child you no longer have to wait for the monitor to be shown to you as technology had now advanced enough for their to be flat screen TV’s on the wall in front of you. I remember thinking it best be good news then because in a few minutes time I will be able to see for myself in all its LG glory….

There was a jelly bean shape… and inside that tiny jelly bean was something moving, fluttering… we had a heartbeat…..I took a deep breath out, I turned to look at Rich and I will never forget that look on his face. We had done it. We were over 8 weeks and we had a heartbeat, we were really going to have a baby, and just like that I started to cry.

We went out to the car with the kids and decided now we knew everything was fine we could tell them about the baby as Emmy clearly had an idea and well there was nothing to worry about in our minds.

Emmy had this look on her face as if to say ‘ come on then…what’s all this about?’. She took the news as no surprise which means she had indeed worked it out and the fact that Finn didn’t seem shocked suggested she had used the scan time wisely to fill in everything he and his iPhone had missed. Overall though they were happy and the usual ‘I want a girl’ ‘I want a boy’ bickering began followed by ‘ Can I tell Aaliyah and Evie and when can I post it on Insta?’

We were no longer nervous about waiting for the 12 week scan because as far as I knew that was a dating scan and well there was nothing to be nervous about now because we knew we had a healthy growing baby.

Rich couldn’t contain his excitement any longer and after telling his parents and some close friends he announced it on Facebook too. We both felt instantly reassured by the scan, we knew our baby was alive and well and everything would be different this time it was third time lucky…

Louise Price

Louise is mummy to Emmy aged 11, Finley aged 9 and Amelia age 9 weeks. Amelia has Down's Syndrome and this is all about there journey from then to now....welcome to The Lucky few....

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