Third Time Lucky

Louise Price - 25 Jul 17

It was April 1st 2016 ( no I am not joking!) and I was pacing the floor waiting for Rich to come home. We had been trying for baby since last November and I had exciting news, we were pregnant!

It was a Friday which meant Rich was home earlier than usual and I handed him the little pink and white test with two lines and his face lit up. I had two kids from my first marriage but Rich had none and we both desperately wanted a baby (or three) together…and it would seem it was finally happening.

I will always remember that weekend, because that Saturday the two kids went off with their dad and Rich and I went off to Birmingham to see Adele, me, Rich and the little bump.

We were so excited we told a few people and sent the odd photo of the pregnancy test as you do to our closest friends who all wished us well. We had a good feeling this time.

This was our second attempt at expanding the brood. I had been pregnant earlier on in the year and miscarried at 7 weeks. I am ashamed to say we didn’t handle it well and didn’t support each other in the way we should have. We were utterly devastated by the loss, myself in particular, and I shut down for a long time. I think with hindsight having never experienced a miscarriage I was in shock to some extent a kind of ‘ how did that happen?’.

The next week passed in a blur as it was half term and we all went away camping and had a very muddy cold wet fantastic time.

I woke up on the Sunday morning about 7 weeks pregnant and I started to bleed, and that was again the end of that. Here we were again. We were devastated. One miscarriage seemed almost normal ( not that it feels that way to either of you at the time ) but two in six months? It hurt. A lot.

We sobbed and sobbed. While Rich could express how he felt quite easily I bottled it up and I drank wine to cope and sleep because if I was numb it didn’t hurt quite as much. All talk of babies was banned and I looked at all pregnant women with half jealously half contempt.

I think looking back at this point, and I am sure Rich would agree, I was seriously depressed and not in a great place. I drank a lot of wine, mainly to have an excuse for not being able to get pregnant and to help sleep because if I was asleep I wasn’t thinking about not getting pregnant or having another miscarriage.

I sunk lower and lower and I started to blame myself. I followed a ridiculously healthy diet, I was at the gym 5 times a week, I was a keen runner, I took vitamins, I wasn’t overweight, I even drank fucking green tea!! I hadn’t ever had a problem getting pregnant before so what the fuck was wrong now?

The next few weeks were hard on us both but somehow we muddled through by the skin of our teeth. We stopped crying and the pain got a little easier with each day that past. Then it got a bit worse….

Someone who I was very close to, who had supported me through all of this, and I would describe as a best friend, became pregnant. Now yes that would be hard but what made it impossible was the fact they weren’t at that point for reasons I wont go into sure about what they wanted.

This meant I had to stand by for the next few months and watch them behave like a non pregnant person while they decided what they wanted to do. I can honestly say I almost had a nervous breakdown at that point and for the sake of my own sanity I had to cut them out my life.

They needed time to decide what to do with their life and I needed to not be judging their behaviour and lets face it I wasn’t going to be an ideal support if they decided to not go ahead with their pregnancy?

Rich would try to boost my confidence and he would tell me not to lose hope and he was convinced this would happen it would just take a bit of time, but deep down inside of me somewhere, I started to lose hope.

Thankfully the summer came around soon enough and off we all went to France and I continued to ban all talk of babies, I was so angry, at everything and everyone.

We were convinced we would come back pregnant for no other reason that that’s what people say to people trying for a baby, ‘ go on holiday forget about it all and I bet you come back pregnant!

But we didn’t.

There was however some good news around the corner and for some crazy reason only known to him Rich proposed to me. I was over the moon and felt so lucky. Rich desperately wanted a baby and despite my inability to produce one he was signing up to a lifetime with me, with or without a child, and I couldn’t have loved him more for that.

I threw myself into wedding planning and decided that what we all needed was a huge party with loads of friends and family and wine ( there’s a theme to my coping strategies). We needed an ‘engagement party’. We actively decided to forget about trying for a baby for now and focus of the wedding and for the first time in months I was happy and had something to look forward to.

The engagement party rolled round and we had a fantastic night with the kids and our family and friends. If I had one complaint I seemed to get very drunk ( yes Chink thanks for the shots!) and I had to be carried from the taxi by my new fiancé witnessed by my children and future in laws….carried…unconscious….oh and from the FLOOR of the taxi… where I had slept like a dribbling mess in my Coast dress.

The next day was worse and the hangover was horrendous. Not even a Macdonalds breakfast and a full fat coke could fix it. I was like death all Sunday.

Monday came and I was back at work but realistically no better and had to face some of my lovely co-workers who witnessed the 35 year old mother of two being carried unconscious into a taxi….mortified doesn’t quite do it justice to be fair.

By the Wednesday I was off to Manchester overnight with work and felt a little brighter but not much. I settled onto the train with my supervisor and we cracked a chilled prosecco ( I was convinced a hair of the dog would sort this shit out) and as I sipped that first mouthful something was wrong….the prosecco tasted odd and the more I sipped it the worse it tasted.

Then I knew, ….either the prosecco had gone off (not likely) or if prosecco tasted odd to a semi functioning alcoholic like me then it could mean only one thing….I was pregnant again….maybe, just maybe, it would be 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....

View profile for posts, events and more info