The Turbulent Journey to Motherhood!

Ceri Jones - 31 Mar 19

My little man was the result of a botched fertility attempt and a five year battle of will we won’t we!. I have never written down until now exactly what my thoughts were during this time but 6 years on and the contemplation of baby number 2 it for some reason seems time!

It was by far the most stressful few years of my life; contending with thoughts of will I ever be a mum, why me, what’s wrong with me and having to hold back the tears everytime someone said “about time you had a baby isn’t it?”.

When you start off on the journey of baby making you are filled with positive thoughts, idealistic ideas of what is waiting for you and false hopes that you will soon be the mum you are ready to be. By the end of the first month you have already analysed any little symptom; convinced that by some miracle you are pregnant and have started picking baby names and pictured how you will look pushing the pram that you eyed up in Mothercare two weeks earlier.

Then reality hits home and the dreaded period arrives and you feel as if your world has crashed around you…and this is just after the first month! But you pick yourself up and get ready to try again…after all at this stage it’s still fun ‘trying’…Or is it??

If you’re like me you already have an app on your phone logging everything relating to periods, ovulation, spotting, even recording mucus consistency and boob tenderness! Seriously when did making a baby become so complicated. Meanwhile your other half is peacefully ignorant to the stress, tension and military operation planning that is going on inside your head…to him it’s just needs sex.

But month after month the disappointment continues… Fast forward 3 years and that feeling intensifies to the point where you want to scream, cry and breakdown. There is only so much sympathy you can expect from friends and family who don’t really know what you are going through and you can’t blame them. There’s only so many times they can say “keep trying”, “maybe next month”.

The journey seems endless and it is hard  to the point you almost consider admitting defeat. But giving up isn’t an option… I was meant to be a mum and I wouldn’t give up without a fight!!

Fast forward another year and we are on the fertility treatment waiting list! I have been poked and prodded more times than a pin cushion and had so many blood tests I’m surprised I still have any blood left. Tests showed that I had unexplained infertility…what does that even mean!! But luckily we qualified for treatment on the NHS and after 5 years we actually received a date to start. Bring on more tests, more injections, more scans…but this time I could see light at the end of the tunnel.

Unfortunately the treatment wasn’t meant to be and I overstimulated on the drugs so the process was aborted…all the pain and anguish I had felt to date was nothing compared to the overpowering wave of emotion that hit me. How could I get so close and then this happen? We were told we had to wait a few months before starting the treatment again.

So I told myself to take the next few months to breathe, gather thoughts, relax, gain some normality and prepare for the next stage of this neverending story.  However it seems that the universe had different ideas for me!! It appeared that those months of ”being normal and relaxing’ is exactly what my body needed and I became pregnant!!! (Although the sceptic in me still believes that the over stimulation of drugs gave me the boost that I needed).

Nine months later I welcome a healthy baby boy into the world after a turbulent start of an emergency cesarean section. It is then that I realise that my journey to motherhood has just begun and boy was I not prepared for the rollercoaster of emotion that was about to take over…but I’ll leave that for another day. Xx

Ceri Jones

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