For a long time, Jo Parker (43) wasn’t sure if she wanted to have children. She met husband Ben when she was nearly 30 and he was six years younger. The couple waited nearly a decade before they were ready to start a family.
“I got pregnant in February 2009 and I was both excited and panicked about the reality of motherhood,” says Jo.
“Two of my best friends conceived at almost the same time – both were so sure about their pregnancies I felt guilty when they suffered miscarriages within the first eight weeks. Compared with them, I felt I did not deserve to be the one to carry to full term.”
That guilt was short-lived. Two nights before Jo was due to have her 13-week scan, she found herself in the local A&E, bleeding and frightened.
“The doctor told me there was nothing they could do to stop it. Shell-shocked and alone, I got a cab home and waited for what would be.
“The word ‘miscarriage’ sounds so gentle and sad, but my first one was violent and bloody. I experienced strong contractions and stood gripping the radiator in the bathroom, then later curled up on towels on the floor, crying.”
Ben, out of town, sat on the phone with Jo during the night, comforting his distraught wife.
“It was just so sad,” she says. “I had no idea I had connected with the expectation of a family, no idea how much I wanted to have this child, until we lost it.”
Bruised and confused, the couple decided to try again. Six months after Jo had lost the baby, she fell pregnant.
“I was elated and this time, I knew I wanted to be pregnant,” she says.
However, at the 13-week scan, although there was a baby visible, Jo says it looked as if the foetus was lifeless in her womb.
“Ben and I cried, stared into space, but we couldn’t console each other. We had to arrange a D&C (dilation and curettage), a procedure after miscarriage, where I was put on a drip, given the pessary to bring on the bleeding, and eventually taken to theatre where the foetus was removed. I went home, where I cried nonstop for three days.”
By April 2010, Jo was pregnant again, for the third time in a year. Once again, she “steeled” herself against any heartache and was “almost relieved when I miscarried quietly and gently in the shower at eight weeks, because at least I wouldn’t have to go to hospital.
“I felt like a baby graveyard. I had tests for everything, which showed no reason for me to keep miscarrying.”
Then, one day, Jo got a message from an old school friend. He’d heard about her third miscarriage and explained that his wife had been having the same problem before giving birth to their daughter.
“He told me she had been referred to St Mary’s Paddington, in London, where she had been given a test called a ‘thromboelastogram’.
“All the results came back abnormal and seemed to suggest her blood was clotting before it reached the placenta. She had been prescribed 75mg of aspirin every day in her pregnancy, and had a healthy baby.”
The friend’s wife sent Jo links to various research projects that suggested no harm could be done to the baby as a result of taking aspirin.
Desperate for anything to help her, Jo gave it a try and she and Ben made a fourth attempt to have a baby.
“I was nearly 40, so if we didn’t get pregnant, or if we lost the baby if we did conceive, that would be it. The same tests were not available to me where we were living at the time, but I told my doctor what we had chosen to do, and he said he would monitor us as far as was possible.”
Three months later, Jo was pregnant again. She says she took aspirin every day and felt more positive.
“It was great to feel I was actively doing something other than just crossing my fingers. I decided not to have an early scan so we went for our first at 12 weeks.
“I was furious in the car all the way to the hospital, trying to prepare myself for the worst. My husband was more positive: ‘It will be all right this time; I’ve got a really good feeling about it.’
“When the sonographer turned on her machine, I looked away from the screen and bit my lip, waiting. But she said, ‘Here is your baby and no problems at all from the looks of things.’
“I spun my head around to see a tiny bucking, leaping little jumping bean flickering in black and white. I burst out crying. Tears of relief and joy flew out of me. All I could say over and over was, ‘It’s not dead. Look. It’s not dead.’”
It was a tense pregnancy, says Jo, with the anxious mother reacting to every movement, and panicking when she didn’t feel as much as the day before.
At 31 weeks, as directed by her consultant, Jo stopped taking the aspirin and on June 2011, Arlowe James was born.
“He has been a smiling little star from the beginning,” she says. “As I felt all the love rush in, I could look back and think the pain had been worth it.
“We knew, at my age, that he would probably be our only child so paid attention to every smile, every movement, every day.
“He is a sweet, sensitive and kind little man, incredibly energetic and fun. He has made us better people and fulfilled me in a way I had never expected.“
But to Jo’s surprise, she found herself pregnant again last year. The old fears came back and she was distressed for the first few months, once again turning to the aspirin every day. But to her joy and relief, Ben and Jo’s second son, Kitt, was born safely and is now four months old.
“We can never thank our friends enough, or put into words what they gave to us when they told us of their experience. They are the reason we are a family.“
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