One year ago

So Friday marked exactly one year since we found out, for sure.

It surprised me that I even remembered and knocked me for six a bit. It wasn’t thanks to a time hop, I took a picture of my positive test but that was on my old phone. I am not one for remembering significant dates at all but as I was lying in bed the other night, wide awake, not sleeping I remembered.

Thing is it is one of my nieces birthday, so I will always remember that it was the day we found out. Suddenly the memories of that evening are more vivid than ever.

We had gone to Wayne’s mum and dads for a birthday tea, we had gammon, egg and chips. We also thought that I might be pregnant – well at least I did. I had done several of the dip tests which I had acquired from my sister and there was the faintest of feint lines showing up on them, which got ever so slightly darker over the course of the week, barely visible to the human eye and I know that Wayne was not convinced. We had bought some cheap tests from Wilko (Wayne is quite the one for a bargain!) and even after seeing the lightest of pink line on those we still weren’t 100%.  We needed a digital test to certify that I wasn’t seeing things. We had been to town the night before to pick one up and there was a gaping hole on the shelf in the supermarket where they had sold out. So I said to Wayne that after we had been and celebrated the birthday we could drive on to a different supermarket (half an hour away) and see if they had a digital test. It wasn’t that we so desperately needed to know even, but I had been looking and feeling awful for a couple of weeks and I couldn’t see what else it could possibly be. Having woken up with the worst indigestion almost every night for that period of time, so bad one night I thought I was having a heart attack, I just needed peace of mind!

The egg that came with the gammon was runny, I couldn’t not eat it though, I didn’t want to rouse suspicion and I bloody love a good fried egg. We also had Prosecco, I lied and said I was driving so only took a sip and instantly thought the whole family would have guessed, of course they didn’t but that paranoia went on until we eventually caved at about 7 weeks and told them.

So anyway, half an hour drive and the first supermarket didn’t have them either, the second fortunately did as by this point I was keen to know one way or another. We drove home and I took the test and the word PREGNANT was there in all its digital glory. Relief that I wasn’t going mad and then the sudden realisation that we were going to have a baby and our lives would change forever. Wayne has two girls already so he knows how having a baby changes things, but this was OUR lives together. From that point on our lives would be changed… little did we know quite in what way.

Friday also it turns out, marks the day that we received our appointment to meet with our consultant to review the result of Wrens’ post mortem.  The hospital had advised us that the results could take up to 16 weeks to come back, I had presumed this was a worst case scenario, a tactic to stop mums from panicking and phoning the hospital every 5 minutes to chase. I just assumed that our results would be back between 6 and 8 weeks if I’m honest. So, not wanting to be one of those annoying chasing callers, I have kept quiet and spent a lot of weeks watching out for the mail man.  An even more excruciating wait than those 12 long weeks (that feel like an eternity) waiting for the first scan to see their little heart beat.

As it was week 16 Wayne called the bereavement team to see if there was any news. The lady on the phone checked and confirmed that the results were indeed back and seemed a little surprised that we had not had our appointment through, kindly she went off to speak with our consultants secretary and 4 days later the mail man finally came through with the goods.

So here is the start of another wait, 2 weeks and 2 days to be precise before we find out if they can even tell us what happened to our baby.