She looked like a perfect mix of both of us and we are absolutely in love with her
As soon as my husband and I got married, we started trying to conceive. My husband has always been very broody and we both love kids so we both really wanted to start a family.
My cycle had always been regular but when we started trying to conceive it became irregular; making it harder to predict when I was ovulating and hence making trying to conceive a lot harder for us. We decided to start looking at why this was and went to our GP about it. I had some markers for PCOS but not all of them so I wasn’t diagnosed initially. I was referred for a few blood tests and a scans however the NHS waiting list was so long we decided to go private and ended up having a couples MOT at CREATE Fertility Birmingham.
I was finally diagnosed with PCOS and offered a cycle of Clomid. However, because my husband travels a lot we were unable to go for the Clomid cycle. The doctor recommended we opt for IUI instead, but as we wouldn’t be eligible for NHS funded treatment we were recommended to have this treatment privately.
We decided to go with CREATE and started our first cycle of IUI as recommended. I found the treatment process easy enough however the first cycle ended up being unsuccessful. The second and third cycle were successful and I did fall pregnant, but they both ended in a miscarriage.
After things had settled and my natural cycle returned again we decided to go for another cycle of IUI. Sadly this cycle was also unsuccessful and that’s when we decided to take a break from fertility treatment for a while.
When we decided to try again, we went back to CREATE. My husband was no longer travelling and so we wanted to try to fall pregnant naturally but we also knew we needed some help with that. We spoke to the doctor and she created a plan for us where I would still take stimulating medication and we would have monitoring scans as usual, but instead of IUI we would try to conceive naturally alongside this help. This cycle ended up being successful and resulted in us bringing our daughter into the world.
After experiencing miscarriage it’s really hard to enjoy your pregnancy. I was constantly worried that something would go wrong and didn’t really want to share the news with anybody. I also didn’t really show so that made it a bit easier keeping it to ourselves but after 20 weeks I did start to enjoy it a bit more and we did end up telling our family and close friends. We both couldn’t believe it and, honestly, the reality that we were going to be parents only set in once I gave birth.
Holding her in our arms was just the biggest relief. She looked like a perfect mix of both of us and we are absolutely in love with her. She turned 8 months yesterday and she’s slowly becoming her own little person - it’s so exciting to watch!
The miscarriages were very difficult. Lucky for me I had made a good friend who was also going through fertility treatment and also had a miscarriage; we had each other for support. We both have dogs so we went for long walks and talked a lot and that helped us both get through it.
When going through fertility treatment, you whole life becomes about your treatment. Having her here now makes everything worth it and we can finally just relax and enjoy her. I will forever be grateful to CREATE and the team. They were all brilliant and having a patient coordinator who I could always contact was really helpful too. I would highly recommend CREATE.
