My story

My eldest son is raising money for the charity Tommy's on October 11th. Not only is this cause very important to our family, but this event sounds terrific fun! He's going to be dressing up as a jungle animal or safari explorer in his Tumble Tots class and taking on 7 fantastic, fun filled jungle themed challenges. He'll be tackling a wild safari obstacle course, swinging like a monkey and slithering through snake tunnels. Please, please sponsor him and together we can help save babies’ lives.

Here's our story....
****Trigger warning for pregnancy loss****

When we started trying for a second baby we had no idea the journey we were about to embark on. A journey of navigating a complex system and wrong information. Before even trying for our second baby I had concerns things weren't right with my fertility. Despite my concerns I wasn't able to get any answers from the GP. When I got pregnant it just didn't feel right, and at 7 weeks I started bleeding. I ended up going to A&E alone in the middle of the night because we already had a child and my husband needed to stay with him. I was given the option to either stay for a scan in the morning, or go home and come back. I stayed as I'd have felt fobbed off if I'd gone but it was a no win situation. I had to stay in the waiting room as there's nowhere else to go. I was surrounded by people either vomiting or high on whatever they had taken (or both), and someone smashing up the waiting room because they'd be discharged after falling asleep and not answering when their name was called. When I was scanned in the morning unfortunately there was no sign of a baby anymore.
I was reassured the next time it would probably be fine despite voicing concerns again. We waited the recommended time and got pregnant straight away. I started bleeding again at 7 weeks and I wanted to try progesterone which is known to reduce the chance of miscarriage. Neither the person I spoke to at the hospital or the midwife were aware of this. With encouragement from a friend working in Obstetrics I got an appointment with a GP who confirmed I should get a scan and progesterone. But unfortunately once at hospital a scan showed the baby had stopped growing at 6 weeks. The amazing lady at my scan suggested asking for a referral to the fertility team as she thought there could be something in my bloods that needed tweaking.
My GP agreed to make the referral even though they warned it may be rejected as they thought the criteria was 3 miscarriages. She also ran a thyroid blood test which was medically fine.
Speaking to the fertility team they said they would run a variety of blood tests but also said they never recommend stopping trying as you never know.
Before my appointment for the tests came up I got pregnant again. I was allowed to try progesterone from the fertility team with the instructions to ask the GP for the next prescription. When I asked for this there was concern from my local hospital and GP that I should only be on the medication if I experienced bleeding but I was allowed to continue as I had started the medication. Unfortunately I still lost the baby as again it had stopped growing at 6 weeks.
We decided to wait for tests from the fertility team. They had forgotten to warn us I'd have to wait until 3 months after miscarriage for these tests so we lost time, and won't have made the decision to try again if we had known this.
The test results showed while medically my thyroid was fine the levels weren't right in terms of fertility. I needed another blood test to confirm this. Then I was able to try a dose of Levothyroxine which reduced my thyroid levels too much so we altered the dose.
Finally we could try again!
We were pregnant straight away again but experienced a chemical pregnancy.
The next month we were pregnant again and 9 months later we had a beautiful boy.

Our eldest is thrilled to be a big brother and we are one of the lucky ones. When you are going through pregnancy loss you end up reading a lot of other peoples stories. People who are on their fifth...eighth... tenth loss...but no clue as to what is causing it. They are still waiting for their rainbow baby.

Pregnancy loss takes something from you and you are never the same again. You don't enjoy pregnancy. I didn't want to buy anything for the baby "just in case". Every scan and appointment has added stress and I usually had to go alone as (understandably) you can't take children to the scans. I was constantly thinking about baby movement in case he stopped. Then I was worried about SIDs. Only now he's nearly 6m old do I feel more relaxed.

Miscarriage is still poorly understood and any research is so important.

Half of UK adults have been affected by baby loss (YouGov poll, 2,121 adults August 2023). Just £15 per child could help fund 3 Tommy’s research midwives for a year, supporting families at high risk of pregnancy loss.

Thank you if you have got this far:) Please donate if you can. Anything helps even if it's 5p.

You can read more about the Tommy's Tumblethon here.

View my franchise

F's Tumblethon 2025 for Tommy's

Raised

£450

Target

£400

112.5% there

Achievements

Raise £15

Raise £100

Raise £200