This story is part of The Wall of Wombs, our 2024 exhibition sharing honest, deeply personal journeys of motherhood.
What you’re reading is a direct transcription of a spoken story — shared bravely, in the speaker’s own words.
Listen to this story and explore others at wallofwombs.com.
I think I always thought it would be tricky to have a baby. I was never initially upset about that, but I just had a feeling that it would take a while. It was one of the hardest things I had to do, feeling like I was sitting on the sidelines of my life while people around me were pregnant or able to get pregnant, and we just couldn’t get there.
And then when we did finally get there through IVF, we lost the baby.
I feel very grateful to have access to public IVF. It was terrifying to think that there was that much money being handed over without a guarantee, and I think that being able to go to a public provider really gave us the breathing space to focus on the process of IVF, which was huge in itself, and took away that stress of money and allowed us to be really protective of our embryos.
So after our first two transfers didn’t take at all, I refused to let them put any more embryos back in until I had surgery to check for endometriosis. It was the only thing through the whole journey that we hadn’t really ruled out. And I was very grateful that my doctor listened, and I was able to book that surgery. They did find endometriosis.
So having that removed and then going for that next transfer, which ended up being our angel baby, I guess for my journey showed me that something had shifted and that finally something was identified and potentially that was a roadblock that had fallen over.
But then when we had the loss again, I advocated for testing to check if I had any clotting or if there was something else that was going on. And a test that I know sometimes takes more than one miscarriage for that test to be offered or for someone to even know that it exists.
So to be able to again ask for that and to be backed in a sense that my doctor can order it with no questions asked. And then that allowed me to go on Clexane, a blood-thinning injection every day for the first 20 weeks of the pregnancy with my daughter, and gave me some reassurance that again, I was listened to, and that the protocol had changed and adapted to the circumstances or the new information that we had. And that allowed us to move forward.
The day I found out that I was pregnant, it sounded a bit woo woo, but I could feel this voice telling me that it was okay. And I didn’t need to worry. This kind of calm and relief came over me. And I’d never experienced that on the day of a call because if anyone’s gone through IVF, just waiting for that nurse to call is just the most horrific. You know, the day you’re just waiting by the phone, but you don’t want to wait by the phone, and so much hope and expectation and everything just rolled into those calls. It took me until 20 weeks to even announce it on social media. I felt like I just needed one more scan.
And I got to the point where I was like, “I just have to trust that this baby’s okay and they’re coming.” It’s so easy to go to the negatives when you’ve had four years of trying and so much disappointment and loss, and that to really start living in the joy side of it. I feel like after that 20 weeks, I really was able to relax into the pregnancy a bit and really enjoy it.
I had a really beautiful birth. It felt otherworldly, you know? I birthed in a hospital. I ended up being put on the drip. I was induced; my waters broke naturally at home, but nothing progressed. So the next day, I went into the hospital, and I was put on the drip until my daughter was born. I remember standing in the shower inside the birth suite and just having my first shower and looking into the mirror. With so much pride, I had tears coming down my eyes because I just couldn’t believe that I’d done it. And I was so proud of myself. And that was really beautiful as well, to be like, “Oh my gosh, she’s here.”
So there’s just all of these things. I feel like there is not one defining moment, but I’m proud of who I’ve had to be. It’s not always been rosy, and I can pull all of this together now, but when I was in the depths of it, it was the most incredibly challenging.
I completely and utterly lost hope for a long time. I used to ask people to hold that hope for me. I just couldn’t see my way through it. And I know that so many people, I have people really close to me that are still in the depths of it. And I know that when you’re there, no words help, no platitudes help, no success stories help because you just don’t know, and nobody can tell you, and nobody can predict how it will go.
And we are just so grateful to have her, and I look at her with that gratitude every single day. I think it’s really shaped this early phase of motherhood for me because I just have this lens of gratitude for her being here and being alive, and me getting to do this because for so long, I truly was not sure I would get to.