LOUISE THOMPSON: I will never have the ‘perfect family’ I dreamed of… I will never be able to recover from what happened to me during childbirth

Do you have a trigger date in your life? For me, it was always Valentine’s Day, the date on which two of my most serious relationships ended. Every year, on February 14, I couldn’t stop crying.

However, my distaste for V Day faded into insignificance when I was confronted with an experience that struck me with a deeper kind of sadness. The anniversary of a traumatic event can trigger visceral reactions – fellow members of the hapless PTSD club will be familiar to you – and now the ultimate test is my son’s birthday: November 15.

It’s a day that should be filled with pure love, but instead it’s charged with so many complex emotions. Leo turned three last Friday – but it was also three years ago that I almost lost my life giving birth to him.

As her son celebrates his third birthday, the influencer shares the pain of secondary infertility

The first year I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I had a child. It was his birthday. All the other people I knew were throwing parties for their kids, so I should do the same. It took a lot of planning and some panic, but we did it. Apparently I didn’t seem that normal, but I had a few moments of joy and I thought I was doing a good job of pretending to be happy.

We call year one denial.

The second year I wanted it to be quiet and comfortable, so we had a small family gathering at home. I cooked a laughably bad hedgehog cake. It had chunks of butter in it that I tried to pass off as white chocolate. We even managed to go ice skating at Battersea Power Station. I got through it, but was one step away from a panic attack for most of the day.

We call year two survival.

This year, however, was different. I felt really excited at the idea of ​​doing something nice for my son. Not just because I ‘had to’, but because I wanted to. I’ve created some mental space around the anniversary, and I’ve been able to embrace my emotions instead of hiding them. My partner Ryan and I planned a weekend in Somerset, bringing together all sides of our family for a knee up.

We call year three sobriety. Or reality. Or maybe even, dare I say it, happiness.

But as third year approached, I felt something bigger than a celebration looming over me: the fact that I would never have the “perfect family” I always thought I would have.

Louise with her son Leo, who was three on Friday

Nothing emphasizes the passage of time more than your child’s birthday, and I can’t deny that when I look around at other friends bringing out countless children, it becomes clear that this is not a reality for us. I always thought I would have four children.

I liked the idea of ​​a big family with lots of noise and different personalities. People said it would be hard work, but I liked the idea of ​​each sibling raising the one behind them. I wanted to be like the Von Trapps. This will never be my life.

I used to believe that if you work hard enough you can achieve anything, but that’s not true: I will never be able to go back and fix what happened to me. There will always be a sadness that I will not live to see the birth. That sadness is part of who I am today and I have to learn how to carry it with me into the rest of my life.

There are parts of me that are beyond repair (I say that both literally and figuratively because I sat in front of a doctor from Womb Transplant UK who told me I wasn’t a candidate). People have said that no doctor would come near me if I tried to have another baby. Even the NHS hospital where I gave birth said they would not be willing to carry out another hysteroscopy (a surgical procedure to examine the uterus) as it would pose a threat to my life.

Even though I try to accept the facts, I can’t help but compare my family to the one I grew up in – my younger brother Sam and I with an age difference of two years and five months – and long for the same. I once found out that for this to happen, I had to be pregnant in August of last year.

Both of Ryan’s brothers have two kids four years apart, so maybe we can aim for that? But that would mean you would be pregnant in February. I can’t tolerate pregnancy so my next step would be fertility treatment to freeze eggs and embryos, but I’m currently experiencing an autoimmune attack so who knows when I’ll be healthy enough for that? Then there’s the hassle of finding a surrogate mother… let’s just say a February conception seems unlikely.

It’s made more difficult when people ask, “Are you going to give Leo a brother or sister?” Honestly, I’d like to say, “None of your business,” but I’d like to discuss it here, if only to try to ease the pain for others, because secondary infertility is a very real problem. .

Recently I was at an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Birth Trauma Association when someone said to me, “Don’t worry, things got much better when I had my second child.” I replied, “I’m not sure if that’s a possibility for me,” in the most courteous manner I could muster. This morning someone came into my DMs asking, “Are you ever considering having another child?”

Even the two women I relied on most during the worst months early in my recovery—who suffered from debilitating PTSD and postpartum depression—went on to have second children. I can’t avoid the problem – it’s everywhere – but I can’t compare myself to them either, because I’m lucky in so many ways.

While a big part of me wants to grow our family, the emotional investment feels enormous. Discussions about fertility can evoke such strong emotions, fear and sadness that Ryan and I usually shy away from talking about it. We don’t need any more unrest.

So for now, I’m trying not to live in the pressure cooker of other people’s expectations. If you’re constantly wondering if you’re missing something, you’ll never be happy. If you start looking for the five-bedroom semi-detached house in Surrey with double doors and a garage, a boy, followed two years later by a girl, I’m sure you’ll end up feeling like you’ve entered the world of you are in the world. biggest failure when life has other plans. Or when you simply discover that checking every box on the middle-class lifestyle checklist is not a shortcut to happiness.

I once blithely assumed that this was all I wanted too, but the hard lesson I had to learn is that health, stability and inner peace are important – no luxury Crittall door can give me that.

As some of you may know, after writing this column I became ill and was hospitalized. I’m happy to say I’m now recovering at home and Leo still had a blast on his birthday. And no, I didn’t try to bake a cake!