Alessia's Story
Trigger Warning: Early miscarriage / baby loss
Apparently, having unprotected sex once doesn't get you pregnant?!
We are in our seventh month of trying to conceive and it's been challenging. I'm in my early thirties, my husband in his mid-thirties. While I do pay a little more attention to eating all my veggies, it's fair to say that on average we both live healthy lives. Neither of us currently have any concerns that conceiving naturally could be a physical problem.
It all started with the realisation of how little knowledge I had about the TTC process. Apparently, having unprotected sex once doesn't get you pregnant? Who knew, when this was what I had been taught and shown (thanks Hollywood!) for years and years. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand the need for this narrative and why we teach this to children and young people. Part of me wishes though that this was covered in a bit of "Life CPD", where you get taught how to pay your taxes, maintain a decent credit score and, if you wish to do so, conceive.
Following this realisation, my response was to read the entire internet to learn all the tips and tricks. YouTube became my best friend with videos titled, "How to get pregnant fast", "My TTC journey", "TTC: What did I do differently the month I conceived" and once these videos no longer satisfied my need for knowledge, I moved onto more scientific material and ended up watching hour-long lectures on the female reproductive system aimed at medical students....it's safe to say, I was driving myself nuts rather than helping the process.
My friends who have kids, knew that we had started trying, so I contacted them to find out whether what I was experiencing was "normal": whether it's common to worry so much, become obsessed about peeing on a stick and reading about other people's detailed symptoms on an app, never mind having to learn a new language in the process considering the amount of acronyms and designations there are...DPO, EWCM, Baby Dance, Aunt Flow etc. They reassured me that they had felt the same when trying, that they had felt crushed every month the test was negative, that the scheduled sex became a chore but that with a little patience I would be pregnant in no time.
However, it kinda just got worse and started to take a toll on my mental health, especially with the ever increasing lockdown boredom, infinite time to worry and ruminate. After month four a friend of mine said "You have to relax!". I understand for lots of people this is a frustrating and/or triggering exclamation, but at the time it really resonated with me. I was fortunate enough to have a regular cycle and Mittelschmerz to tell me that I was ovulating, I questioned why I was even stressing so much when my body was telling me all I needed to know. I was ready to let go and let my body do it's thing. By the end of the next month I was pregnant!
Pregnant for all of five days, if you count the days I had a positive pregnancy test or five weeks if you were to count from the first day of my last period.
I believe that I experienced a "chemical pregnancy" or very early miscarriage. When the test was negative on the sixth day, we were disappointed and frustrated. We never really had time to wrap our heads around being pregnant. I just felt confused and exhausted from the roller coaster of emotions and hormones.
Unfortunately, in my case, my GP and the Early Pregnancy Unit were of no great help. I explained that I understood that my test was negative, but that I was phoning to try and find out what would happen next. Would I bleed a lot, a little, will my hormones be out of balance, will we be able to try again or do we need to wait? I just wanted some reassurance from a Health Professional that everything will be OK, but that never happened, so I ended up turning to the Internet once more to read anything and everything I could find.
Overall, I have come out of this experience feeling positive in the sense that I now know that we can get pregnant (Yay!); a bit angry and let-down by my experience with the local health professionals; and very anxious losing the comfort of my previously regular cycle and the uncertainty of what was to come. It's only been one month since then, during which everything was different: cycle length, ovulation, intense PMS - mentally, it has been the worst month of them all, but we move on and try again...and again...and again until we get there!
We will get there!
Written by TTC Diaries blogger, Alessia
Alessia is 31, based in Scotland and has been TTC since August 2020. She is a pizza fiend, and a lover of walks and podcasts!
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