Life Update | TTC Upset

It's been a while since I last wrote an update on where we are outside of blogging and where we are in the bloggy journey. You may have noticed some changes to our blog theme, and also the physical content and direction. This is because of our continual struggle to conceive, well actually not conceive, but our struggle to maintain pregnancy.

I know we're not the only one to go through these struggles, but I figured that maybe writing more about this topic and, our journey - albeit it's a very hard one to swallow, may, well I hope, will help someone else going through the same.

And that brings me to the change of direction for Sweet Elyse Blog. Before we focus on beauty and generic lifestyle. Going forward we will still cover lifestyle in all forms, food, drink and shopping wishlists (love a good wishlist) but we will also focus on the whole 'trying to conceive' aspect, maintaining pregnant, miscarriage, and the struggles that come with the whole journey.

It's not been an easy one for Connor and me. In the last year, we've had five miscarriages. All wanted but they couldn't survive for whatever reason. The first two were super early, as soon as we had our BFP (big fat positive) it faded towards a miscarriage. It's easier to accept as denial can be used, you can blame bad tests or treat the MC (miscarriage) as a period. Burying your head is easy to do although it still hurts.

Two of our miscarriages were hard on us physically and emotionally.

The first was on Christmas Day 2017. You can find my post on that here - Surviving Miscarriage. The second was a mere week and a half ago. The last one destroyed me emotionally.

Now as a backlash I find I am super ill, I had a chest infection when I fell pregnant, but when you are pregnant the immune system protects the foetus - making you, the host, unable to feel the poorly symptoms that you'd normally get. When we MC, I then felt like I had flu, I was burning, my chest and kidneys were killing me. To accept that I was 'ill' to others showed just how ill I was. Heading to the doctors I was told I had a chest and kidney infection and put on antibiotics. Tablets will make me feel equally as crap. It's been a long time since I felt healthy.

The last miscarriage again was emotionally difficult as we went to the hospital hoping to see our baby on the scan. We were told it's not viable, and our HCG dropped once again. I miscarried two days later. I had struggled with intermittent spotting which I believe was relating to my immune system, the chest infection bacteria or dropping progesterone. No-one wants to listen though within the medical field. They believe it will progress or it won't and miscarriage will ensue. No consideration that it takes a prescription or further testing to save most threatened miscarriages.

After our miscarriage at Christmas, we were told by the NHS we would care for future pregnancies more thoroughly next time. Granted I was referred to the recurrent miscarriage clinic in January. This appointment was cancelled. I was given five more appointments - all of which were cancelled without any reason by the NHS. So six appointments were cancelled, six appointments that would have put a pregnancy care plan into place. Appointments that would have saved our pregnancy.

After our recent MC and of course our complaint, the NHS said to me 'in instances of complaints, we as a department look into whether we could have done more to have given a better outcome, or to have saved the pregnancy. In this instance, we absolutely could have'

This hurts, I told them more needed to be done, I continually contacted them to tell them I was pregnant, that something had to be done. No-one listened. When I started bleeding, I contacted them and was told 'monitor at home for 48 hours, we are too busy to see you'

So going forward we await our next appointment (if it's not cancelled), we await the results of the cytogenetics that is being done on our lost baby, we await more testing and a treatment plan. If I got to choose, I'd absolutely opt for Crinone Progesterone and Prednisone. One to boost my progesterone, the other to stop my immune from attacking.

Clearly, Connor and I are fertile. We struggle with getting to the second trimester. It's so hard for both of us but we've yet to crumble. We remain strong, we remain optimistic even though every loss and shitty experience we've gone through over the last year or two should have broken us, it's only made us stronger in our relationship.

Sending baby dust to all those going through this hard journey!