Our story began 9 years ago when we first decided to have a baby, after our first year of trying to conceive we felt disheartened. but not hopeless…⁠
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After our 2nd year of trying, the hope had dwindled and we were struggling, struggling to deal with our problems conceiving, so we turned to our doctor, we were then referred to a fertility specialist.⁠
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We were put on fertility medication and after our 3rd year of trying we finally! fell pregnant with our little girl – we were over the moon, ⁠
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I was coming up to 30 and it felt like we had everything in place, our business was successful, we had a home, a loving and supportive family who were just as excited as we were for our new addition. The pregnancy was going fine and milestones were being reached, I had plenty of symptoms to remind me that she was on her way and with all the kicking she was doing I felt as though I had absolutely no reason to worry about our 20-week scan which came when I was 20 weeks and 5 days. ⁠
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That’s when our world fell apart, we were told that our baby had a form of hypoplastic left heart disease, our doctor had only seen this once in his lifetime and the outcome would not be good.⁠
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In my naive mind I thought we would get through this, she will be fine, the doctors will help her when she is born, unfortunately, this was not the case ⁠
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We were given two options; we could end her life whilst in the womb or we could let her pass away after she was born…. This was a question of how do you want your baby to die and I didn’t feel like I was capable of making this decision, In my state, I somehow reasoned that maybe my life could be exchanged for hers, it couldn’t and that was extremely hard to come to terms with because I would have given my life for hers in an instant. ⁠
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We reluctantly made the decision that we would end her life whilst still in the womb where she was warm and safe with no knowledge of pain or suffering, even now writing this it is a decision that I question every day, did I make the right choice? ⁠

I gave birth to Isla at 22 weeks, we got to spend some time with her which I cherish forever, we had photos taken and keepsakes made that I will keep forever.

After some time we started to try again and this time we conceived quite quickly. We were amazed and grateful beyond belief, we thought we had been “punished” enough and it was our time, we deserved this little one, however once again our hearts were broken and suffered another miscarriage at 12 weeks.

This then became the pattern of a further 6 more miscarriages with each one becoming more frightening. at one stage I ended up in the hospital with an AVM of the womb after a procedure to remove tissue that was stuck in my uterus, this lead to me almost bleeding to death… twice…