LOUISE THOMPSON: I will never have the “perfect family” I dreamed of… I will never be able to go back and fix what happened to me during childbirth

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

However, my hatred of V Day faded into insignificance when I was confronted with an experience that struck me with deeper sorrow. The anniversary of a traumatic event can provoke visceral reactions – members of the unfortunate PTSD club know this well – and now the ultimate test is my son’s birthday: November 15th.

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

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

We call the first year denial.

The second year, I wanted it to be low-key and cozy, so we had a small family get-together at home. I baked a ridiculously bad hedgehog cake. There were bits of butter in it that I was trying to pass off as white chocolate. We even managed to go ice skating at Battersea Power Station. I got through it, but I was on the verge of having a panic attack most of the day.

We call it second-year survival.

But this year it was different. I was actually excited to do something adorable for my son. Not just because I “should”, but because I wanted to. I created mental space around the birthday and was able to accept my emotions rather than hiding them. My partner Ryan and I planned a weekend away in Somerset, bringing all facets of our family together for a kneel.

We call the third year weighting. Or reality. Or maybe even, dare I say it, happiness.

But as third grade approached, I could sense something bigger than a party waiting for me: the fact that I would never have the “perfect family” I always thought I would have.

Nothing highlights the passage of time like your child’s birthday, and I can’t deny that when I watch other friends bring out countless children, I realize that it’s not a reality for us. I always imagined I would have four children.

I loved 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 up 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 can never go back and fix what happened to me. There will always be a sadness at the thought of not going through childbirth again. This sadness is part of who I am now and I must learn to carry it forward into the rest of my life.

There are parts of me that are beyond repair (I say this literally and metaphorically because I sat across from a doctor at Womb Transplant UK who told me I wasn’t a candidate). People said 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.

As much as 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 gap of two years and five months – and to aspire to the same thing. One day I realized that for this to happen I would have had to be pregnant before August last year.

Ryan’s two brothers have two children four years apart, so maybe we could aim for that? But that would mean being pregnant by February. I can’t carry a pregnancy, so my next step would be fertility treatment to freeze eggs and embryos, but I’m currently suffering from an autoimmune flare-up, so who knows when I’ll be well enough for that? Then there’s the difficulty of finding a surrogate…let’s just say a February conception seems unlikely.

It’s even harder when people ask, “Will you give Leo a sibling?” Quite frankly, I’d like to say, “It’s none of your business,” but I’m happy to discuss it here, if only to try to ease the pain of others, because secondary infertility is a very real problem . .

Recently I was at a Birth Trauma Association 20th anniversary event when someone said to me, “Don’t worry, when I had my second child it was much better.” I responded, “I’m not sure that’s a possibility for me,” in the most courteous way possible. Just this morning, someone slid into my DMs and asked, “Are you ever thinking about 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 postnatal depression — had a second child. I can’t avoid the problem – it’s everywhere – but I also can’t compare myself to them because, in many ways, I’m lucky.

Although a large part of me would love to expand our family, the emotional investment seems enormous. Discussions about fertility can bring up such strong emotions, anxiety, and sadness that Ryan and I are usually hesitant to talk about it. We don’t need any more trouble.

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 go looking for a five-bedroom semi-detached house in Surrey, with bi-fold doors and a garage, a little boy followed by a girl two years later, then you’re sure you’ll end up feeling like the world. the biggest failure when life has other plans. Or when you simply discover that checking off all the boxes on the middle-class lifestyle checklist isn’t a fast track to happiness.

I once blithely assumed that was all I wanted too, but the hard lesson I had to learn is that health, stability and inner calm are what are important – no fancy Crittall doors won’t give them to me.

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