Molly of the Malverns: From a Last Walk Before Birth to the Long Road the Brought us Here

Most of my blog posts are mainly about walking, but this one is more about our long journey to start a family, with a bit about walking. My wife Stace was a week short of being 9 months pregnant on 15th June and our baby was due to be induced the following weekend. If you are over 35 years old they class it as a geriatric pregnancy and Stace was 40 so they didn't want to drag it out. Late births are statistically more problematic for older people so it made sense, although Stace wanted it all to be as natural as possible.

She also had wanted to walk up the 425m high Worcestershire Beacon before she gave birth and we had left that really, really late. I said it would be a bit daft this far along but there was little point in arguing about it because I would just get called a fanny, so on that Saturday afternoon in June we found ourselves plodding up the Malverns again. 

It was absolutely fine to be fair. Obviously it was for me as I wasn't pregnant and I was able to bring a can of cider for the walk. It was easy enough for Stace too and it was a cracking day for it. We made it to the highest point of the Malverns again with our dogs and with Stace carrying the weight of what would be our first child. 

Everything with the pregnancy had gone as it should so far. We'd had lots and lots of failed IVF attempts over 12 years, two of which led to positive pregnancy tests that didn't work out. It was devastating, stressful and expensive. We initially had our "free" go at IVF on the NHS and our not so local venue for that was in Tamworth. After that failed, we tried twice more there before changing to a clinic in Wales. After five or six attempts at that clinic, we started to realise and accept that it might never work for us. IVF is really expensive and the older you get, the more unlikely it becomes that it will work for you. 

I'd gone to the doctors back in the day because we'd been trying for a child for a couple of years. I had a sperm test and the results weren't amazing. They weren't horrendous either, but my doctor basically said it's a bit like betting on outside chance horses all the time. You might win once in a while or you might never win at all, so it's worth sticking some money on one that has a better chance. He arranged for us to have an IVF consultation in Hereford and I became a gambling addict (I didn't really). 

I've never been ashamed of our situation, but despite the huge amount of people that require fertility treatment, lots don't want to talk about it. I think Derek Trotter referring to Boycie as a "jaffa" on Only Fools and Horses because he was seedless hadn't helped men be more open about these things. I remember we were on holiday years ago and someone asked us why we didn't have kids yet (never ask people that by the way). I said we weren't really thinking about that yet, but he said "you're not a jaffa are you?". What a bellend. 

After more and more failed attempts, Stace had some tests done and it turned out that she was also an outside chance horse. Combined, we were basically a three legged, asthmatic, morbidly obese racing horse. There was still a reasonable chance of IVF working for us though, because they basically pick out the best you can offer, even if the pickings were a little slim in our case. 

I was pretty open about it with work colleagues and one of them told me that he and his wife had been through similar back in the day and recommended we look at a clinic in the Czech Republic. He described them as "f***ing brilliant". It was a lot cheaper over there which would enable us to try a few more times, so we got in touch and travelled over to Brno. It took two attempts in Brno before we had a positive test, but heartbreakingly that one didn't lead to a baby so we had to go back again for a third time. By then we were seriously thinking about accepting this could be the end of the road. Thankfully that third round was also positive. 

Brno is a lovely place and when you put photos on Facebook it looks like you've travelled off the beaten track a bit and people are quite impressed. Then when you go back there 6 months or so later, and then again another 6 months or so later they'd be wondering what was so good about Brno that we kept going there. 

Our trips to Brno also gave us the opportunity to visit other nearby cities and countries. We spent time in Vienna and Bratislava. I found it pretty annoying how much better it was to travel by train in this part of the world. We had our own cabin with leather seats and complimentary prosecco and it cost the both of us the around the same price as it does for just me to travel down to Bristol in a packed rattler stood up next to the bogs. As much as we enjoyed those cities though, we obviously would rather not have to keep going back. 

It was amazing getting another positive test, but there was still a long way to go and by then it felt like we were cursed and something was bound to go wrong. Stace was incredibly emotional at every scan because she was terrified it would be bad news again. They were all fine and everything was going to plan. We agreed with the consultant that if the baby hadn't arrived by the due date, we go in for Stace to be induced. That day arrived the weekend after we'd walked up to the Worcestershire Beacon.

We went into Hereford hospital. The midwife had told us she thought it would take around 24 hours which seemed fine. The nurses at the hospital told us to prepare for at least three days though which seemed like a long time. We'd been there for a few hours though when it all started to go wrong.

Stace was suddenly in a lot of abdominal pain. So much so that she was throwing up because it was so unbearable. Despite me telling the nurses that she had a pretty high pain threshold after falling off a lot of horses, they seemed to initially think it was just that she couldn't handle the normal pains of childbirth. They did some blood pressure checks though and immediately transferred us to the delivery suite because the results were astronomically high. Afterwards one of them told us it was the highest they'd ever seen. 

They called a consultant who came in on his day off and by the time he'd arrived, the pain had got a lot worse. Stace had wanted a natural birth, but was now demanding a c-section right away. The ward was busy but the consultant managed to cobble a team together and prepare a spare room for the procedure. Then the baby's heart rate started to drop off occasionally and it all became even more urgent. I'd been more than happy for Stace's mum Carol to also be present at the birth as she would undoubtedly be less hopeless than me in the situation, but there was no room for her in this little space they had made so unfortunately she had to wait outside. I was shitting myself both that it was all going to go wrong and that I'd feel sick watching a c-section. It was all over crazy fast though and a screaming, but beautiful little girl was delivered and Molly came into our world. Stace had to stay in overnight and after checking all was OK and spending some more precious moments with my daughter, I went home to get some sleep. 

Then in the morning I heard from Stace that it had all started going wrong again. The baby was fine but as there had been a data breach recently at the hospital, blood test results were taking longer to come through. The tests from before the birth had shown that Stace had something called HELLP syndrome, but the consultant said she shouldn't worry. I made the common mistake of asking Dr Google for advice and when he told me more about HELLP syndrome I immediately started to worry. I read that 25% of women with it die. 

Over the next couple of days Stace started to get more and more unwell and had to have some platelets rushed down from Birmingham for a transfusion. Thankfully, that started to turn things around and her test results began to turn back towards normal levels. We'd had 4 nights in Hereford hospital and received some amazing care. We were basically incredibly lucky to have been there when those initial pains kicked in so they could act quickly. Otherwise mother and baby could have died. We were also lucky that the data breach had delayed the blood tests, because if they doctors had known Stace had HELLP syndrome, they wouldn't have done the c-section and she'd have ended up in intensive care. All of the bad luck we'd had was now good luck. Well, not that good as it would have been better if there hadn't been any issues at all, but it's now part of the story. We got the all clear to go home and Stace broke down in tears of joy when we finally got to put our baby in the carrier to start our life as a family. 

5 months on, we decided to take Molly up to the Worcestershire Beacon. It would be nice to go back there with her after our walk there a week before she was born. We got the train from Ledbury to Great Malvern and made our way up the hills. I carried Molly for some of the way, but Stace wanted to do the final section up to the top like she'd carried Molly during pregnancy. Apparently the walk was a lot easier at nearly 9 months pregnant than it was with a 5 month old in a carrier. It was a great day for it though. A lot colder than our last visit, but a sunny, fresh afternoon. We got Molly to the summit for a photo and enjoyed the views once again. We didn't know how traumatic the birth was going to end up being when we were last there, but that just made us feel even more lucky to have our beautiful little Molly of the Malverns.