Daughter Takeover: Pregnancy from the beginning.

Hi All

I have decided to take over my Mum's blog and share with you my story on my pregnancy, the birth and everything since!

The pic above is of me on the day I found out I was expecting!

I found throughout my pregnancy, that I actually knew shockingly little about pregnancy and childbirth. So here it all is, from my point of view. This is not for the faint hearted. I mean, it won't all be gross, but it will be honest. So don't expect flowers and fairies throughout, here goes!

I found out that I was pregnant on a sunny afternoon at the beginning of February 2015. I used a clearblue test which showed that I was 1-2 weeks pregnant. I have since realised that this is the conception date, and I was actually around 3 and a half weeks pregnant, an amazing early pregnancy detection.

It was not planned and I was not with the father, but I didn't doubt for 1 minute the decision I had made to go ahead with the pregnancy, and motherhood with or without the father.

The father had very different views to me, he said he didn't want to be a Dad and needed to think about what he was going to do.

Now, we were never together, but we had been seeing eachother on and off for a year, and had known each other for around 10 years. The first few weeks of pregnancy were very hard for me, I was so happy to be having a baby but constant arguments with the father, on top of hormones increasing day by day were taking its toll.

I had some weird period like pains not long after discovering I was pregnant, and some sharp pains around my ovary area. I called my doctors who referred me to the early pregnancy unit at East Surrey hospital. I wanted to go on my own, which I did and here they would do a scan.

As I was only 5 weeks, all they could see was the empty sac. They assured me that this was normal at this stage and took a blood test as from here they could check my hormone levels. If they doubled 48 hours later, this meant it was likely to be a viable pregnancy. If they only went up slightly, it was likely to be an ectopic pregnancy, and if the levels were to stay the same or decrease this could be a sign of a failing pregnancy.

I called anxiously on the day the results were due 48 hours later, to be told that my hormone level had doubled and I could have another scan in a week to see if they could see anything yet. I had the scan, and this time at 6 weeks pregnant they could now see the "Yolk", but still no sign of baby. Again they reassured me that this was normal this early on.

They booked me in for a further scan 2 weeks ahead so that baby would definitely be visible by this point. However, 1 week on from the last scan, my worst nightmare became a reality. I had popped to my mums after work where my cousin and her son were also. I was getting all excited about the baby as my Mum and my cousin were talking about their pregnancies and getting excited for my experiences to come. I was just about to leave my Mums, but dashed to the loo for a quick wee before leaving. I will never forget this moment, when I suddenly saw blood on the tissue.

To be continued in my next blog.