Sue's success story

My story

My other half would have been so proud and loved every moment. If it was not for him this journey would not have been possible and, without Complete Fertility our plans would never have come true.

In 2002 I returned from Kosovo after a six month tour and I then met a man I fell in love with before my next tour.

Plans in tatters

Later that year I came away from the Army and made the decision that he was the one for me and worth leaving my career for. We moved in together, we settled down, he retired from the Army and, a few months later I found him fighting for his life on the sofa. He had suffered a brain haemorrhage and three days later I left Queen Alexandra Hospital without the man I loved and all our plans in tatters.

After a year of trying to find out who I was without him I started dating. I had nothing but good memories of a life-lasting love. I just wanted to love and be loved again. But it was too much for some men to realise I was an Army widow and also a veteran myself.

So I picked up the plans my deceased partner and I had and, decided to run with them. If anyone wanted to join me and accept me then so be it but I was not waiting or stopping. This was now my life and I was going to fill it with happiness just as we had planned.

I knew I would have to go private and chose the nearby Complete Fertility Centre in Southampton, with success rates for donor insemination treatment well above the national average and an excellent and compassionate reputation for treating and supporting single women.

Questions

I walked through the doors and I was welcomed by the reception staff and waited nervously. Questions were racing around my head.

Will they take me seriously?

Will they drag this out?

Will they reject me for being single?

No, I was seen and booked in for investigations and then a few weeks later my red day arrived. The call was exciting but my nerves were there too.

So my first IUI cycle started. Injecting was strange the first time but I thought it’s the start to my next chapter, the biggest step to realising our plans of a family.

I had everything we needed and with the support of the fertility team at Complete Fertility it was not as hard or difficult as I thought.

Just over a week later it was insemination day and I had no idea what to expect. The nurses were informative and made sure I was at ease.

Then came the 'two week wait' (2WW), the longest two weeks ever that came to a swift end a few days before the day I was to take the test. I had joked the first one would be a rehearsal and it was.

Two days later, IUI cycle two started and then the dreaded 2WW. As it got to day ten, I could not help myself and took a test. The control line came up and nothing else after a minute. Maybe it was still too early. I went down stairs and a few minutes later I went back up and caught a glance of the test in the bin. There were two lines, one very faint but two lines all the same.

Result

The next day I took another and there again two lines.

It worked, I was pregnant!

I had my scan a few week later and there was one odd looking little foetus.

On Christmas Eve my little lady arrived. I whispered to her 'just me and you kid'. This time I left Queen Alexandra Hospital with nothing but happiness, something that was so far away years earlier.

My other half would have been so proud and loved every moment. If it was not for him this journey would not have been possible and without Complete Fertility our plans would never have come true.

Being an only parent is one of the best and easiest things I have ever done. The once deafening silence of an empty house is now the noisy busy home we dreamed of. When you lose the one you love, remember what you planned only stops when you do.