I Was Given A Second Chance

Helen Dixon, 35, thought she had just months left to live

- Louise Baty, Saskia Murphy

Lying on a hospital bed, staring at the screen, I gripped my fiancé Paul’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry,’ the sonographer told us, taking the Doppler off my stomach. ‘You’ve had a miscarriage.’ As my eyes searched the screen for a sign of life, I asked him to repeat what he’d said.

It was February 2015, and although Paul and I had been trying for a baby for months, we hadn’t realised I was pregnant, and I’d only been referred for a scan because I’d been bleeding heavily. But that didn’t make the news any less painful. As Paul did his best to comfort me, I could see the tears in his eyes.

For the last four years, he’d been such a good stepfather to my little girls, Lucy and Hannah, and we’d been desperate to have a baby together. ‘I feel like my chance at fatherhood has been snatched away,’ he murmured on the way home.

In the following days,we tried to stay positive and discussed trying again – but six weeks on, I was still bleeding, more heavily than a period. My GP assured me it was a common effect of miscarriage but, as time passed, it didn’t ease and I was in pain.

‘It could be an infection from the miscarriage,’ another doctor said, prescribing antibiotics. Then, in September 2015, I had a routine cervical screening.

‘Your cervix doesn’t look normal,’ the nurse said, not elaborating further, before referring me to hospital. As I went in for a colposcopy examination a week later, I convinced myself that everything was fine and it was just a precaution. I even told Paul not to bother taking time off his job as a landscape gardener to take me. Instead, his mum, Glynis, came along with me.