I always knew I wanted lots of babies but, like so many women of my generation, I put it off because I was having too much fun in my early thirties.
My fiancé Ben* was ready to try before I was, but during the years when my friends were having kids I wasn’t yet ready to give up my independence and party lifestyle.
By the age of 35, we were settled into domestic life and agreed it was now or never. Still, I remember freaking out after the first time we had unprotected sex.
‘My God, I think that worked,’ I immediately thought – and I was right.
We found out we were expecting a baby boy in January 2021 and were so excited to meet him. Everything just felt right – we got married when I was seven-and-a-half months pregnant and deeply uncomfortable, with our family and friends around us and our baby in my belly between us.
At 39-and-a-half weeks, I’d just finished a hypnobirthing meditation and was walking to meet Ben when I had this sudden sense of foreboding.
Something was very wrong.
‘I’m really scared, I think he’s going to die,’ I blurted out as soon as I reached Ben.
The next day we lost our boy.
I was at home, we’d just cooked dinner and were cosy on the couch when my stomach suddenly lurched into a triangular shape. Ten minutes later I went to the bathroom; there was blood everywhere and I started vomiting.
I was rocking back and forth, the agony of labour was unbearable and even worse was the feeling that ‘it doesn’t matter, he’s gone’.
My husband drove me to hospital where ultrasounds showed what I already knew in my heart. Our angel baby had left. Instinctively, I knew our baby had died but when the doctor said it, I saw Ben crumble before my eyes. He still had hope.
The pain was indescribable. I was haemorrhaging so they pumped me full of morphine and said it would be better for my body, and my next baby, if I birthed him rather than undergo a caesarean.
When they pulled him out, they put him straight onto my chest and my instinct was to put him on my breast so he would wake up. I kept saying over and over, ‘My baby, my baby, my baby.’ I wanted to let out the biggest scream of my life but I remember thinking, ‘Be a good girl, stay in control.’ The midwives were surrounding my hospital bed with tears rolling down their faces.
We stayed in hospital with our baby for the next day doing all the little rituals you would do with a live baby: cuddling him, dressing him and changing his nappy. Ben said he had a moment where he sensed the child say, ‘Don’t worry, dad, I’ll be back.’
I left the hospital in a dark, dark place. I wanted to start trying for a baby straight away. I knew another baby wouldn’t take away from my love of my little boy, but I just felt as though I needed to be pregnant again.
It took four agonising months for my period to come back and for nature to give us the go-ahead to try for our baby and I felt hopeful that I’d be pregnant again soon.
Then reality hit.
The idea of getting pregnant again suddenly became very scary. I was involved in stillbirth support groups, and the anxieties of the other women would affect me on a deeply personal level. ‘Oh f**k, I didn’t think of that,’ I’d utter to myself.
The first time Ben and I had sex, I cried.
It wasn’t about having sex for fun or connection anymore; it was having sex to create a child because your other child died. It wasn’t sexy; it was torture.
We’d fallen pregnant so fast the first time that I just figured it would happen quickly again, but when I found out I wasn’t pregnant after those first few attempts, it was heartbreak on heartbreak.
Ben doesn’t do well under pressure at the best of times, and he was freaking out. His performance was essentially a gatekeeper to us moving forward and he could sense my desperation every time either of us initiated. It was certainly not a turn-on, and I completely understood why.
By month two, the pressure was building. Ben could perform but sometimes couldn’t finish no matter how long we went for. I would be staring at him during sex thinking, ‘Come on! What’s happening?’ I was so frustrated.
One time he couldn’t finish and I had a full-blown panic attack; I couldn’t think straight and everything was spinning around me. ‘Oh, my God, how am I ever going to get my baby? I’m going to be stuck in this sad, dark world forever.’
I climbed out of bed and did what I’ve always done when I feel overwhelmed – I put it into Google and found a Reddit thread. Reddit is always useful when you want to know you’re not alone; there’s always hundreds of threads of people just like you, feeling the exact same way.
I went on forums about TTC – trying to conceive – and there was plenty of practical advice, some good, some bad. Then I read about a strategy I had only heard of in movies: using a ‘turkey baster’ to get sperm inside you instead of having sex.
The so-called turkey baster method is medically known as intrauterine insemination, or IUI. The tool used by professionals isn’t an actual turkey baster, which is usually too large to be effective, but a needleless syringe.
I was shocked to discover IUI is about as effective as conception via standard sexual intercourse – or 12 to 13 per cent chance of success each month.
The dark clouds started to open and I thought, ‘I can do that.’ I even spoke to a friend of a friend who was in a lesbian couple and had a five-year-old son from this method, which strengthened my resolve. This is real. It actually can work.
I knew Ben would be resistant to the idea so I started to drip-feed the information to him. I knew he would think I was questioning his manhood – I wasn’t – and that he would feel gross about bringing himself to climax solo and ‘transferring’ the sperm into me, but I was desperate to conceive and the process of trying was agony.
‘Would you ever consider this?’ I asked him. His first reaction was a definitive ‘no’.
The following month, he was suffering anxiety in the lead-up to me ovulating, knowing that the pressure was building. I was already borderline depressed and we were both so sad, so I said to him again, ‘Would you consider it? What’s the harm? Why don’t we do both options and take the pressure off?’
I got him to read a couple of forums and he agreed to try it, but swore me to secrecy.
In the movies, they always use the term ‘turkey baster’ so I bought one off Amazon, but I freaked out when it arrived – it was too big. I also have vaginismus – a condition where the pelvic floor muscles around the vagina involuntarily tighten when you try to put something into it – and I could have wept with frustration. I’d finally got Ben over the line but my vagina wouldn’t work.
I spoke to my GP who had never heard of anyone doing this so I couldn’t get advice there. Again, I hopped back on the forums and discovered you can use a regular Panadol syringe from the chemist.
We learned that sperm can survive for an hour outside the body, so Ben was able to go off on his own, do his business, catch it in a cup, pull it into a syringe and bring it to me in our bedroom. Because of my vaginismus, I couldn’t insert it myself, so I’d have my bum on a pillow with my feet on Ben’s shoulders, we would look into each other’s eyes and do deep breathing and say, ‘We can do this, let’s make a baby’.
Look, it was definitely another level of weird, but we made it meditative so we felt connected.
By the fourth month of ‘trying’ the wheels were really falling off. I was starting to feel really depressed, wondering if we’d missed our only chance to have a baby. I was having meltdowns, crying all the time and unable to pick myself up.
We booked in for IVF and they said, ‘If you don’t get pregnant this month, then in two weeks we need you to come in and we’ll start monitoring your blood levels’.
We focused even deeper on connecting with our bodies and calming down. My friend had given me a baby mantra recording on Spotify that chanted, ‘I can feel my baby, I can see my baby, my baby’s coming,’ and so I had that playing in the background every time we inserted Ben’s sperm.
At the same time, I suddenly started seeing rainbows everywhere, which felt like a sign. Babies born to parents that have experienced pregnancy loss are often called rainbow babies, which references the beauty after a dark time. I started seeing them painted in murals, on sailing boats and in the sky, and started to get an overwhelming feeling that I was going to get pregnant.
I did a pregnancy test a few days before I was due for my period and saw two lines. Ben was on a work call that I couldn’t interrupt and I just needed to tell someone so I turned to my cat and blurted out, ‘I’m pregnant!’ Then I ran outside and was staring at the sky laughing – I was so elated.
Then Ben came outside and I held up the stick and he kept saying, ‘What? What? What?’ We were laughing, like ‘What the hell? it actually worked!’
I went for a blood test that afternoon and when I arrived at the pathology centre, I saw two rainbows on the floor and I remember thinking, ‘I’m pregnant. This is real.’ Finally, there was some light at the end of the tunnel.
It was a roller coaster of a pregnancy, as I flipped between elation at being pregnant to fear that something would happen to this baby as well. We had a scheduled caesarean at 38 weeks. We took a video of him being born and you could hear the heart rate monitor in the background – when I heard him cry, my heart was beating so fast.
We were besotted with our baby boy. Even when we were sleep deprived, I never cared or thought ‘I miss my old life’ like you hear other new parents say. Having him was the best thing in the world; I’ve been grateful every day.
Our eldest is now two and it gets better: we’ve just welcomed his baby brother, conceived using the same technique.
Again, it took a few months, but this time with a toddler and work to juggle, we didn’t have the time to be meditative and gaze at each other in the eyes. I would jump in bed, propped up with my laptop beside me watching Real Housewives of New Jersey, and Ben would deliver the syringe; this time I was able to insert it myself.
‘Thank you for your seed!’ I’d yell after him.
I don’t know what would have happened to us if we had continued trying to have sex to fall pregnant – the pressure may have proved too great, not to mention the financial toll IVF may have taken.
As for our sex life now, I’m happy to report we’ve got our groove back. Of course, it’s never been the same since we entered the grief space and have been juggling a toddler and a newborn – it won’t be just ‘us’ for a while, but I’m fine with that. Ben is such a wonderful guy and we still feel connected; he’s my lifeboat.
- As told to Kimberly Gillan. *Name has been changed
