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Writer's pictureTatty Von Tatchenstine

Starting in the middle..

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a blog for years, only now in Lockdown after one of my precious children has been diagnosed with a rare cancer, I’ve finally decided it’s time to not worry about putting myself out there and just do it.

I wanted to start from the beginning, but just like Star Wars I’m going to start in the middle.


Jack new when he got involved with me, I always wanted six children just like my nan. We started young, 20, due to my numerous medical issues it was advised, I’d had my cervix lasered numerous times, I Polycystic ovaries, only one remaining fallopian tube and an under-active thyroid, oh joy. But with endless focus, determination and above all medical assistance and fertility drugs we were overjoyed to have four babies between 2004 and 2010, but that wasn’t six.


Nine months after having Oscar our fourth baby and third son, we started trying for baby number five, knowing it would take time, but the fertility drugs took no effect and it didn’t happen. Most people would have been happy with four and accepted that baby number five wasn’t meant to be, but eighteen months of trying followed by a year of tests proved that my one and only remaining tube was blocked.


I’ve always had my suspicions that the NHS surgeons had taken it upon themselves to sterilise me by damaging my one remaining tube, without my consent because they felt four children and four C-section was enough, there’s no proof but with every child I had, we always had to have the chat about sterilisation.


Jack and I were not deterred, at that time we had been recommended to Dr Michael Dooley, one of my favourite men to date. A kind jolly man, that saw joy rather than judgement in Jack and mines enthusiasm to have a big family.


At the time in 2012 the Dorchester Winterbourne hospital still had a working IVF unit, set up and ran by Dr Dooley, we worked our way through the mind field that is IVF, we had landed at his office at the young ages of 28 and two years later, after endless investigation, and careful drug stimulating, we had seven embryo’s.


Hurray! We were excited and positive, it was going to work but over the first two days the numbers depleted, leaving us with one mid-grade embryo that looked like our best chance, and two more viable embryos that would be frozen for a later date. Uncomfortable and bloated from the egg collection, I anxiously waited for any news on the embryos, waiting for the morning updates was a killer.


Day two they rang to say they didn’t like the rate the cells had been dividing, they didn’t want to risk the embyro not reaching day five and making it to blastocyst stage, so they popped the little embryo back in early, cushioning it safely into my velvet lined prepared womb, perfect conditions for the embryo to flourish and we hoped for the best.

In my complete naivety I had no doubt, despite their reservations that it would work, even though a day three transfer was deemed less desirable and it wasn’t a top of the range embryo, I just knew it would work and I was right, that little embryo because our strong willed embryo Dexter.


Never did I ever think before that the odds were against him from the start, but I’ve been thinking it lately.

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