Whether you know that someone’s trying to get pregnant or not, there’s an unspoken rule that says you should keep your questions and opinions to yourself.
If somebody opens up to you about their pregnancy journey, that’s their decision. But asking somebody about their progress out of the blue, checking in for “updates”, or worse, asking someone if they’re pregnant because they’re “glowing”, they look like they’ve “put on weight”, or they have a “fuller nose”, are all big no-nos.
You never know what someone might be going through behind closed doors.
About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage – but the overall figure is probably higher, as it’s common for women to miscarriage so early on that they don’t even realize they’re pregnant.
Asking someone if they’re pregnant is invasive enough, but asking someone who has miscarried is even worse.
Take it from Louise Warneford, a 48-year-old who had 18 miscarriages during her pregnancy journey.
Louise, from Swindon in the UK, started trying for a baby with her husband, Mark, 20 years ago, in 2001.
The couple was desperate for a baby, but it just wasn’t happening. Even after spending around £80,000 ($111,000) on countless rounds of IVF, their miracle baby never arrived.
Imagine, for two decades, knowing that your body was rejecting the one thing you wanted most.
It must have been incredibly tough for Louise and Mark, especially when doctors discovered the reason for Louise’s miscarriages in 2015.
It turned out that Louise had ‘killer cells’ in her body that destroyed the embryos it produced. While, in her heart, Louise was desperate for a baby, her body was working against her.
Speaking to The Daily Mail about her experience, Louise recalled:
“Each time I got my hopes up and thought that this was it and I was going to have the perfect family I’d always wanted – I couldn’t stop crying every time I miscarried.”
Maybe, if you weren’t too bothered about having your own child, you’d take this as a sign that perhaps you should look at adoption instead.
But Louise wasn’t about to give in – and, in fact, this news had given her hope.
Now she knew the cause of her miscarriages, she just needed to find a way to get around the problem.
She was very hesitant, though, having been through it all by this point. But her fertility doctor gave her the courage to have “one more try”.
Louise deliberated for four years before she told Mark that she wanted to try once more, before she turned 50.
She recalled:
“This time, because I was too old for certain clinics in the UK, I decided to do my own research and had embryo donation in the Gynem Clinic in Prague.”
Finally, when Louise was 47, she got pregnant – and carried the baby right through until a healthy birth.
Baby William was born at 37 weeks through a planned C-section.
While Louise said she was “constantly scared” and couldn’t enjoy her pregnancy, it was all worth it for her “dream baby”.
She said:
“We’re a perfect family now and I finally feel complete – we even have a grandchild now, and at just ten months old, William, became an uncle.”
Congratulations to Louise and Mark, and what incredible strength they must have.
You can watch the story of the couple’s journey in the video below.
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