Monday's Moment of Wisdom - Pearl Number 67

 “I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living,
my baby you'll be.”
― Robert Munsch, Love You Forever

This quote is from a beautiful book that was given to LC when she was born, the author is Canadian and comes from LC's godmothers home town of Guelph, we love reading this book to her and it reminds me so much of time when she was newborn.

Today's Pearl of Wisdom is a little different, it's on a really personal note, because we have been thinking a lot about new babies lately as I'm pleased to tell you all that I am expecting a little bundle of joy again! This will go to explain why I've not been blogging or tweeting or really doing much in the social media world or anywhere else in my life lately, I have been growing my baby and it hasn't been an easy journey...

As some will know who read the blog I have struggled with secondary infertility over the last 3 years, and our heartbreak of failing to have a second baby was intensified last year when I miscarried. Well exactly a year later I have got pregnant again and we are so thrilled but it hasn't been without some scary and intense moments along the way!

At 5 weeks we had a reassurance scan, only to be told that the pregnancy might not be viable again, a week later we being scanned again and told we may be having triplets - wow, you can imagine our heads were spinning!!! Shocked was a complete understatement!

After more scans we eventually found out that I had in fact got 3 gestational sacs all nestled in and growing, only two had babies developing in them so we told that we conceived twins, unfortunately only one of our twins got a heartbeat and I was told that it would most likely be a case of vanishing twin syndrome and by the time we had a dating scan the other sacs and baby would of gone. We had some more scans after and with each one you could see them get smaller and smaller and sure enough, by 12 weeks only our one precious baby could be seen.

In the bigger scheme of life we are just so happy and grateful for our happy healthy baby that is doing so well, after everything we have been through we are still anxious and I know I won't fully feel relaxed until this baby is in my arms  and then a whole load of other worry and stress will be coming our way - I must admit I'm not looking forward to sleepless night again!

Little Miss LC is thrilled about being a big sister but don't even think about talking to her about having a brother, apparently it's a girl and she won't hear anything else said about the matter, god knows how she will react if it is a boy, I think we'll cross that bridge when we come to it! What ever we have she may have to end up sharing her birthday as this little beauty is due around her 4th in September and of course with mine being only 4 days after LC's it may share it's birthday with it's mama!

For now I am feeling relaxed a little, trying to rember how to care for a newborn, trying to shake off the tiredness that comes with pregnancy and getting my head back in to blogging, I really hope I can bring you some great stuff this year, I had so many plans for the blog but hoping to still keep going with them, plus I'm still going to Blogtacular in May so if you're going too I'll be the short lady with a big bump, you can't miss me!

Oh and any advice you have on having two do share in the comments below as I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to handle this!

Mondays Moment of Wisdom - Pearl 56

Photo by Kristin Hohenadal

 We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. 

It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

W. Somerset Maugham

Tomorrow my husband and I celebrate our first wedding anniversary, just the two of us in a strange and exciting new city, away from the stresses and strains our lives, it couldn't get more perfect!

A year ago so many things were very different, our life has changed in many ways since our wedding day and our relationship has endured some of its biggest challenges so far. I am very different to who I was last year, I don't think I am today the woman that my husband married and I think the same goes for him, I think he would agree with me when I say that being married has changed us both and how we live out our relationship but I'm glad it's for the better though and that 365 days later we are still in love with the two people we have become...

PS - Did you know that this week is National Infertility Awareness Week? One in 6 people suffer with infertility problems and I am one of them. Today I feel honoured have been asked to write about my experiences with infertility for my good friend and fellow blogger Gemma Guscott so do go check out my guest post over on Mission2Mum, you can raise awareness too by visiting the campaign website to find out more and using the hash-tag #NIAW on Twitter, Facebook and anywhere else you want to.

Monday's Moment of Wisdom - Pearl Number 51

I have been sick this last week, an early autumn cold or a late summer one, anyway either way you see it believe me it was no fun and I took to my sick bed for a few days! (Although I did manage to get out again for champagne and theatre fun to celebrate my SIL's upcoming wedding!) Now that I have successfully passed my germs on to Miss LC poor love, I am suffering with another type of sickness, the broken hearted kind. You see its all a bit difficult this week, an anniversary, a moment in time I don't really wish to acknowledge or comprehend, something that should of been so different for us. Anyway, I'm going to heal my broken heart with a little help from my darling husband who shows now end of kindness and understanding and my sweet girl who is very proud and excited to be turning 3 on Friday! She is our tiny miracle and shinning light in all of this...

This week going I'm to find the strength, the courage and the power to take care of me because I know inside that with the love from others around me I will and to anyone else facing a tough week, something they would rather forget or wished was different... be kind to yourself, be patient with yourself, know that it will not always be this way.

P.S - I promise no more sad posts this month, lots and lots of lovely and exciting celebration posts coming up!

Mondays Moment of Wisdom - Pearl Number 45

"Sometimes good things fall apart, so better things can fall together" - Marilyn Monroe

I love finding these little pearls of wisdom that really mean something to my life. This one means a lot to me and I'm trying hard to apply it's meaning to my life right now. If you read my blog regularly or follow me on twitter or Instagram you'll know that me and my little family have just been on holiday and it was a much needed and deserved break. My OH booked a luxury five star stay in Portugal as a treat to make up for our heartache over losing our pregnancy earlier on in the year and it has really helped these last couple of weeks having this break to look forward to.

We left for the airport in the middle of the night, LC woke up when we did and got very excited while we all got ready to go, she slept a bit in the car on the way but considering the lack of sleep she had had she was amazingly well behaved at the airport, on the plane and generally for the first 3 days of our trip whilst we stayed in the first hotel in the city of Faro which is beautiful by the way. We found the locals so friendly and helpful and just enjoyed shopping, eating and lazing round the pool in the sunshine. On our last night there we went to an open air concert, LC loved it and surprisingly fell asleep in the middle of it all in her stroller! OH and I got very drunk and danced the night away with each other which is something we rarely have the chance to do these days, it was magical and so fun!

The next day we moved on to the Hilton resort with hideous hangovers and that's when it all started to unravel a bit, as you can imagine we felt awful, dehydrated in hot weather and had to wait 3 hours to check in so we just vegged out on the huge sofas in the lobby. LC coped with her parents being hungover very well but it was no fun for her, poor baby and we felt rubbish about wasting a day then to top it off my period which was two days late reared its ugly head which obviously for someone who is hoping to have another baby was not well received...

The 3 days following became quite odd and I lapsed a bit into a funk, I felt moody about about my time of the month, a princess was having a baby and the whole world was celebrating, people announced pregnancies on Facebook and to top things off there we several heavily pregnant mums sat round the pool in their bikinis serving as a constant reminder of what I didn't have and after almost two and a half years of trying, just couldn't achieve...

As always my wonderful OH took care of me, he gave me space to think while he went swimming with LC who just adored having several swimming pools to choose from each day. He made me laugh, he held me tight when I needed to cry and he let me pour my heart out when I wanted to talk. He also helped me to put myself back together again, look to the future and most importantly inspired me to start enjoying our holiday once more, which I did. In the time I had to lounge around while they swam I read and read so much about healing, mindfulness, fertility and moving on from feeling low and I have come across some ideas that have really stuck with me. One decision I have made is to actually start writing more about my experiences with secondary infertility and miscarriage, in the past a few people have encouraged me to write on my blog about this but I have always felt there was never a place for it here BUT now I'm starting to feel that there is, more than anything I just feel now that the processes of doing this will really help me to heal a bit, so from time to time I will be posting more on this and I hope maybe, it may help others too. I have also decided to take control of my future fertility and I am excited to be going to see a fertility specialist next week so more on this coming soon!

So in the end, after I fell apart a bit, I found a way, with a bit of help to pull myself together and our holiday started to go great again. We got upgraded to an apartment suite when we checked in at the Hilton which was so lovely and we really made the most of it. I bought some beautiful jewellery from the local boutiques, we made friends with another family and we left feeling relaxed and invigorated but also inspired and positive about really going for the things we want, we made some decisions about the next steps in our immigration plan and what may come next and came up with some ideas on how to balance our chaotic lives a bit better, now I can honestly say I'm feeling excited and motivated!

Unfortunately I did bring a tummy bug home though so I've spent the weekend getting over that but I think a little bit of extra rest has done me some good. So now it's time to see how all those better things will fall together as I have this tingly feeling inside that the next half of this year will really start to get good again! 

Mondays Moment of Wisdom - Pearl Number 32

 "That which does not kills us makes us stronger" - Friedrich Nietzsche

Firstly my apologises for being absent for a while, if you have been a regular reader of my blog (if there is actually anyone out there who is!) then you might be wondering why I have dropped off the end of the blogging world for the last month?

I have been on a journey, a difficult one and now it's the right time, I feel, to not only share but hopefully move on by just getting it down and setting it free.

Some of you may or may not know that over the last couple of years I have been struggling to conceive and had been diagnosed with secondary infertility, we had been told we could have IVF facilitated by the NHS this year but would have to pay for it ourselves so on the 1st of January we were shocked and delighted to have a definite positive on a pregnancy test, we had done it naturally and believed that it would be the perfect start to an exciting new year.

Two weeks later I started spotting a little, not much but my GP got me in for a scan at the end of the week at our local Early Pregnancy Unit as all the fertility testing we had last year showed my right tube is blocked and wanted to be sure it wasn't ectopic. We went for a scan on the 18th January which showed an empty sac but it was still early so it was decided that my hcg levels would be tested. Over a period of 4 days I had blood tests that showed they were rising but very slowly and on the 22nd we got a call at 8pm that night asking us to come in and see the head consultant the next day as they were very worried about me.

So the next morning I had more scans done by the consultant himself and he believed he could see the pregnancy in the left overly/tube. He diagnosed ectopic and I was booked in for an emergency laparoscopy the next day, he also insisted I be admitted that night incase something happened. We were gutted, he promised that if it was in my tube he would do his best to save it as he knew my right was blocked but at this point my chances of conceiving again were looking virtually impossible....

The next day I went down to theatre immediately and was in bits, I couldn't stop crying at the thought that I was about to lose a very important piece of me and had a lovely anaesthetist who calmly got me to think happy thoughts as I drifted off to sleep...

I woke up after my op very groggy and asked the nurse where they had cut me and she told me just at the belly button and on my c-section scar so I thought a least I don't have a new scar to add to the collection but still didn't know what had exactly happened. An hour later my consultant came to see me and told me there was good news and bad news..

The good news?
It wasn't ectopic!

The bad news?
He didn't know where the pregnancy was!

Ummmm, excuse me?

He then went on to tell me that it was actually most likely in my womb and although the blood test had indicated ectopic it could just be one of those ladies who have low levels and I would need to go back 10 days later for another scan to see if baby was definitely in my womb. Well you can imagine the look on my OH face when he came in to see me and expecting me to say the worst and then in fact tell him I was still pregnant! I was allowed home later that day and spent a week or so recovering, my mum came to stay to help look after us with some help from MIL as well. At this point so many things were going through our head as we tried to take in what had happened, we felt joy at the prospect of still having a baby but fear that as I had had anaesthetic at 7 weeks what it would do to baby and the pregnancy, on top of all this LC behaviour understandably went downhill and we experienced some her biggest and baddest tantrums yet, thank goodness granny and grandma were on hand to help!

The wait until the next scan seemed to take forever and I decided to go back to work a week after the op just to have a distraction. February 5th soon rolled round and off we went feeling very nervous and tense about what we would find, at this point I was 8+5 so if there was anything there we should see it by now. The sonographer had a look and showed us a sac with a small white bob in it, she said she could see movement and thought it was a heartbeat but measured the pregnancy at 5+4 and asked if we got our dates wrong, we explained that this was impossible as we were sure when I OV and I had actually got a positive on a cheap test on December 29th. We saw the midwife again and it was agreed we would come back in another 10 days for another scan to see if baby had grown significantly enough.

So then another week of waiting and feeling nervous, anxious and very unsure about what we had really seen on our previous scan. On February 15th we had our final scan with a very lovely lady who knew what she was really doing and who had the horrible task of telling us that in fact there was no baby, just a sac with a mass of cells, it looked as if it was a pregnancy that had gone wrong and in fact the information we had had the week before was completely wrong, in the end it was diagnosed as a missed miscarriage....

We then spent two hours in the hospital seeing various doctors and nurse who were amazing, we were prepared for bad news to be honest and I already knew that I wanted to have surgery to remove the pregnancy. They talked us through it, took swabs and bloods and booked me in for the procedure the following Wednesday on February 20th where I would be one day off being 11 weeks pregnant.

We spent the weekend doing lots of things with LC, we took her to the zoo and the beach, we wanted to do something positive and try to create some happy memories amongst all the stress and sadness we were all feeling, our little family trips were a good distraction and LC got some much deserved attention from her mum and dad.

Last Wednesday my lovely OH and myself went to hospital to finally close this horrible chapter of our lives. I had amazing care again from all the hospital staff and the procedure was quick, although the wait for a bed took forever.I had my second anaesthetic with in a month and had some trouble with my blood pressure after but nothing that tea and toast couldn't fix. It was a strange day, I felt sad that my pregnancy was ending this way after all this time of trying, if it had of been healthy I would of been due the day before LC's 3rd birthday and we had all these exciting plans about having our children close together and now that was gone. But we both also felt relief, the last month had just been one long drawn out, exhausting period of lives that we hope to never repeat, I was still having lots of pregnancy symptoms right to the end and I felt like it was for nothing and I just wanted it all gone.

Through it all my OH was as usual my knight in shinning armour going to the ends of the earth to make sure I was comfortable and had everything I needed. We have had amazing support from family and friends too which has meant the world. I have also had to go through a redundancy and consultation period with the organisation I work for which has seen me re-applying and interviewing for my job while all this pregnancy stuff has been going on but fortunately I found out last week that come April 1st I have a lovely new job to start with my current place of work which will be a positive change, they too have been so supportive through all of this.

It has taken its toll a bit on our lovely LC too who has found it a strange time with lots of comings and goings, different people looking after her a lot of time away from mummy but we have tried to keep things normal as possible, her nursery have been amazing and my clever and stubborn little Madame has insisted through all of this that she start potty training and has refused to wear a nappy all week and is in fact doing very well with using the big girl toilet, I am one proud mama!

Now we can finally move on, we have been told we can try again as soon as we are ready and the consultant we saw last week said that all this trauma on my body could possibly be a good re-start to my body and will hopefully make conception easier in the future. We are trying to look at this time now as a second chance, we had already come to terms with losing a baby weeks ago so this last part of our journey was not as awful as it could have been and I am feeling hopeful. A week before we found out about the miscarriage a dear friend of ours had a baby girl and we were excited to meet her this weekend, she gives us hope because a couple of years ago our dear friend lost her second baby at 20 weeks and now she has a happy ending and we know soon we will also get our happy ending.

Today I am back at my blog, to be honest over the weeks I wasn't really sure if I wanted to come back. I had a lot of self doubt about what I was trying to achieve with this space and lost my reasons for writing here and my belief that it was worth while, I seriously considered giving it up...
But something inside me just kept coming back here, ideas in my head about where I wanted to go with my blog and what I wanted to achieve, I realised that for me this is my space in the world to express myself and be who I want to be, it doesn't matter what everyone else around me is doing because I'm doing this for me and if others enjoy it along the way well that's just a bonus! So here is to second chances and hope lighting the way...