I did.
I started going out with my husband when I was 16. It was absolutely imperative to not get pregnant, as my parents were very strict Roman Catholics.
We married when I was 26. I had always had long, (10 days) agonising, extremely heavy periods, but assumed I was just unlucky. I was on the pill on and off, during that time, but did try the cap and the dreaded Femidom!
We had been married exactly a year, and were struggling with the enormous rise in the mortgage rate, ours was 16 and a quarter percent! I realised I might be pregnant, very much unplanned, as I was the higher earner, so my salary was vital.
It turns out that I’d conceived on our first wedding anniversary! A failure of the Dutch Cap.
Even though this was a shock, we were delighted and very excited and welcomed our beautiful daughter in June 1982.
I switched from days to nights as a Night Sister, and only had six weeks off after the birth, because we needed the money.
I never got pregnant again, but didn’t seek any treatment, she was in and out of hospital regularly with severe asthma for her first 10 years or so, so we were preoccupied with her health.
Fast forward to 2013, when I was 49, the periods had become even worse, which I didn’t think was even possible, and the gynaecologist recommended a hysterectomy, after monthly injections, the Mirena Coil etc had done no good at all.
At my six weeks check up, he told me he had taken the uterus, tubes and ovaries, because everything was all stuck together with extremely severe endometriosis. He said he’d never seen it so invasive, right in the tubes and all over the pelvis.
He then said it was an utter miracle that I’d ever conceived!
When I told him we hadn’t been trying, he said that it was a total miracle! She is most definitely our miracle ??