Liz’s Story
Liz Fairley is a GP in Liverpool, and an adoptive mummy to her two beautiful children.
“Well you definitely were pregnant. “
Bizarrely - the consultant’s words comforted me as I cramped and bled, and our hope of a baby ebbed away. I needed someone to tell me it really had happened. I had only had a positive pregnancy test for 4 days but they were such hope-filled days.
Now, I was devastated that I was miscarrying, and the only evidence of this much longed for pregnancy was a stick with two lines on it and the confirmation from my consultant.
Work were a little incredulous that I needed 2 weeks off for what many would have thought of as “just a late period”. But I knew, my body knew, that for those few days I had carried life in my womb and I grieved that baby.
Our precious pregnancy was the result of 3 years of trying to conceive, then surgery to unstick my womb and pelvis where endometriosis had glued it together, and now 2 months of hormones to help me conceive.
Even at such an early stage, losing that pregnancy was heart breaking. I never conceived again.
A monthly rollercoaster
Those who walk through infertility are all too familiar with the unavoidable emotional rollercoaster that happens each month. I noticed every twinge in my body, each month hoping it would be early pregnancy symptoms not just PMT., and each month crying myself to sleep when it became clear I wasn’t pregnant.
My period didn’t just bring emotional pain, but a severe, physical one, as endometriosis left me curled up and spaced out on strong pain killers. IVF failed at the first hurdle - my ovaries didn’t have enough reserve left to justify NHS treatment. Age was not on my side and my barrenness felt like failure.
But we prayed and we hoped. We just couldn’t get away from the deeply held conviction that we were meant to be parents. Medicine is often about statistics rather than absolutes - so no one would say “you’ll never get pregnant”, it was just that it was extremely unlikely.
We did have our family
But ultimately we did have our family. We adopted 2 beautiful children. To be honest, adoption was always a possibility for us - I just assumed we’d have biological children first.
Adoption has not been easy, but nor has it been second best. It’s been a different rollercoaster ride - exciting, nerve wracking, exhausting, heart breaking and heart warming. Often all in the same day!
Our house is finally full of noise, toys and discarded clothes. But adoption is not a “cure” for infertility. Children who wait for adoption have already lost too much to also carry the burden of fixing an adult’s broken heart too. The inability to bear a child has to be grieved in its own right.
But at the same time, maybe some of the pain of our battle to be parents helps us as we parent two children who have their own brokenness that needs healing.
