Hope for the Future: Pregnancy and Birth After Loss - Interview with Sophie the Infertile Midwife

Welcome back to the second series of Motherhood Exposed, where your host, mother, midwife, doula and personal trainer Zoe Cresswell explores the ups, downs and often complicated parts of motherhood. In this episode, Zoe returns to speak to Sophie Martin, known on Instagram and in the blogging world as the infertile midwife, to revisit her story of infertility, loss and the journey to her now 7-week old baby boy, Percy. To hear the previous episode with Sophie, go to episode 12.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Sophie did a frozen transfer of IVF and incredibly it worked first time. It was the beginning of December and although the UK was in the midst of the pandemic it was just “the loveliest transfer ever”! Sophie had been to the clinic so many times in the previous months, she knew the team really well and even got to choose to put Christmas songs on whilst it happened! The transfer worked and although Sophie was happy there was a mix of emotions after her previous late loss of twins, Cecil and Wilfred. She had some bleeding on Christmas Day which was frightening but at her first scan everything was luckily fine. Sophie told close family but didn’t tell anyone else she was pregnant until she was 25 weeks. She didn’t want to have to deal with people congratulating her when that wasn’t really how she felt; she felt scared. Even though Sophie suffered with a lot of anxiety she wasn’t helped by any perinatal teams after being referred three times. She didn’t have any professional support at all being pregnant after loss, which must have been incredibly difficult. At 22 weeks, Sophie suffered a threatened pre-term labour and after dealing with this she couldn’t go back to her normal job role. She had a month off but was then able to work from home due to Covid before delivering her baby boy Percy via a planned C-section. Although an experienced midwife, Sophie recognises now that there was so much she didn’t know about motherhood, especially around breastfeeding. She feels like she truly understands how relentless and difficult it is for so many mothers. After having Percy, Sophie has been quite shocked by a lot of the emotions that she has had to contented with, including both loss and relief but also immense sadness. Having a baby after fertility problems or loss is incredibly complicated. If someone had told Sophie a year ago she would now be sat with a 7 week old baby, she would not have believed them. Her advice to those in that position is that you have to have hope and if you do manage to have the baby in your arms, don’t imagine it will be the ‘fix all’ to everything because it unfortunately doesn’t work like that.   BEST MOMENTS “The transfer couldn’t have gone any better…it just felt really special, I couldn’t have asked for a better transfer” “He was very good at helping me rationalise it” “People know breastfeeding is hard…the hard bit is actually feeding, just the relentlessness of it” “You can’t necessarily process it all whilst you’re in it, it’s only once you’re out of it you have to start processing it”   VALUABLE RESOURCESwww.petalscharity.org www.tommys.org www.arc-uk.org www.sands.org.uk   ABOUT THE GUESTSophie Martin Midwife and mother IG @the.infertile.midwife www.theinfertilemidwife.comwww.petalscharity.orgwww.tommys.orgwww.arc-uk.orgwww.sands.org.uk   ABOUT THE HOST Zoe Cresswell Devoted mother of two (and a big hairy dog), UK trained midwife, doula and personal trainer, specialising in pre and postnatal fitness. Zoe was born in the UK and before moving to Dubai in 2013 and worked as a midwife in central London, both in a birth centre and a very busy NHS hospital. Although late to the scene, Zoe is an aspiring athlete having won numerous triathlons and representing Great Britain where she placed within the top 10 on the world stage. With her husband James, the couple will soon be launching their cloth nappy company, Bop & Bee, where they hope to inspire families to swap a few disposable nappies a day for the more planet friendly option of cloth. Zoe’s goal is to share her knowledge and experience, tell real life stories, manage expectations and open up those often difficult conversations. Zoe’s own motherhood journey has been full of twists and turns as she put everything on hold and went through numerous miscarriages and rounds of IVF.   CONTACT DETAILS Instagram : @zoecresswell_me Facebook: Zoe Cresswell LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/zoe-cresswell