SWEET REAL LIFE
Gina McGuinness, 39, from Hartlepool, suffered 14 heartbreaking miscarriages, but she never gave up hope.
Feeling a twinge in my stomach, my heart sank. It’s happening again, I thought sadly.
Grabbing a pregnancy test from my stash in the bathroom cupboard, I closed my eyes and prayed. But three minutes later, there was no mistaking the result. Negative.
Comparing it to the positive test I’d taken just days earlier, I felt my heart break.
Another miscarriage.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to my partner Simon, now 40.
‘It’s OK,’ he reassured me. ‘We can try again.’
‘There must be something wrong with me,’ I said, tears in my eyes. ‘Don’t say that,’ he said, giving me a big hug.
I couldn’t help but think it.
I’d had a little girl Katiee, now 22, back in 2001 –but since then, I’d struggled. After an ectopic pregnancy in 2010 followed by nine miscarriages with a previous partner, I felt like Iwas cursed.
Si had been my best mate and supported me through it all –and when my partner and I went our separate ways, we ended up falling in love and getting together in 2014.
Given my issues, we’d decided to start trying for a family of our own straight away, and when I’d quickly fallen pregnant, we were both thrilled –but Iwas scared.
And then the same thing happened again.
Despite having seen lots of doctors and having numerous tests over the years, the results never showed anything wrong –it seemed Iwas just unlucky.
Every time, it was the same heartbreaking pattern –a positive test, followed by bleeding and then a negative test. Alot of the time, it was such a quick process that I didn’t even have to go to hospital.
I never even got far enough to think about what gender my baby would be, or start shopping for tiny clothes and cuddly toys.
In October 2014, after a second miscarriage with Si, I decided to look for answers.
The only thing left to try was the ‘natural killer cell test’ –it was used in unexplained cases of recurrent miscarriages. Si and I travelled to Coventry, West Midlands, and paid privately to have it.
I lay awake, in pain, as the doctors probed and prodded me to get the cells they needed.
But Iwas greeted with what had become an all-too-familiar sentence from doctors.
‘Everything is fine,’ Iwas told. My heart dropped –my hopes had been pinned on this test.
By now, Iwas 31 –around me all my friends were having babies, and working in Asda, I felt like every customer Isaw was pregnant. It was hard.
But I refused to give up on my dream of being amummy again, and in April 2016, I thought my prayers had finally be
