My Fight for a Family – Eleven Pregnancies; Two Babies

This story of repeat miscarriages, still birth and incomplete cervix was shared by one of our Stay at Home Mum community members, Danette.  We thank her for sharing her story with us here at Stay at Home Mum. If you would like your own story featured on the Stay at Home Mum page, please send your unique story to [email protected]. 

Miscarriage and still birth – it’s another area of pregnancy that doctors don’t talk about and a lot of GP’s that I have spoken to believe it’s only something that obese women face.

I had a lot of problems having babies. Falling pregnant was easy for me it was keeping them inside me that was the issue. In a 5 year span I was pregnant eleven times. Impossible-  no,. Strange – yes. I really wanted to be a mum, I felt it was my right as a woman to be able to have children. I always wanted a boy and a girl. Just two and when I did find the person whom I thought I would be spending the rest of my life we got a positive test on the first serious try at making a baby. At 12 weeks I lost the baby and within two months of losing the baby we tried again and continued that way…..

I had four first trimester miscarriages, four second trimester miscarriages a baby born at 22 weeks and two ‘full-term’ babies which I hold in my arms today. Eleven pregnancies; one still birth; two healthy children.

My main issue was that I lived in a small country town. My closest main hospital was Mt Isa over 2 hours away, and whenever I told the GP in town where I lived that I felt like something was wrong, she would tell me it was all in my head. And after a while losing those babies between 14 and 18 weeks, it really did play with my head. But I never gave up.

On my ninth attempt at having a baby I packed my car up and drove straight to my mothers house 22 hours away as soon as I reached the 14th week mark. When I finally settled in and went to the local hospital and told them what happened in the past and they sent me straight away for a scan. The scan revealed what was possibly the problem with all those previous pregnancies; at 18 weeks I was already 2 centimeters dilated. Could this have been what had happened every other time as well? They diagnosed me with an incomplete cervix – where the cervix dilates before it’s time for baby to come out.

They couldn’t rush me into having any surgery as the baby’s foot was also poking through; however the membrane was intact so they didn’t want to risk breaking it.  So I was admitted into hospital on complete bed rest and fingers crossed that I would make it to 24 weeks. However as much as I tried, it wasnt meant to be, and on going to the bathroom out he came.  At 22 weeks and 3 days my baby boy was born into my hands and passed away in my arms a few minutes later.

As we made it over the 20 weeks we had to do the birth registration and death registration and also funeral. It was all hard to deal with but I managed with the great support around me.  Also, on advice from the doctors I started taking the pill and we stopped trying for a while.  But now I knew what I had to do and what needed to be done. And I couldn’t give up on being a mum.

Twelve months later we decided to start trying again and once again on first attempt we got the ‘jackpot’;  this time, however when I reached the 14 weeks I had the surgery known as “cervical cerclage” which stitches up the cervix so it was closed up completely and also ordered to have complete bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. All went well.

At 37 weeks they took the stitch out and a week later had my boy.

A few months later I discovered I was pregnant again (so much for the effectiveness of both the pill and breast feeding) so I went through the same process again of having my cervix stitched up. I was also a bit more concerned this time round as I was already 2cm at 14 weeks but all went well and once again at 37 weeks, they took the stitch out and 3 days later I had my baby girl.

I have since then taken everything possible NOT to get pregnant again and even went to the lengths of having my tubes clamped. But I am happy. Happy that I am finally able to be a mother I longed to be. I only have the one regret and that is that I didn’t follow through with my motherly intuition and act sooner and went against the advice of my GP and sought a second opinion. I also hope that my daughter doesn’t have to go through what I went through when its time for her to have children.

Thank you so much Danette for sharing your story.

Please, share your thoughts in the comments below and if you would like to share your story about the life as a parent, please email [email protected]. We look forward to reading them. 

Photo Credit: Steven Mileham