118. After nearly a decade of unexplained infertility, painful fibroid complications, and the grief of miscarriage, Sarah shares how she navigated private IVF and donor eggs to become a first-time mom at 44. Living on a remote Scottish island, her story is a raw, empowering look at holding onto hope, surviving a chaotic delivery, and embracing motherhood later in life.
On episode 118, we welcome Sarah back to the podcast to share her decade-long journey to motherhood. After years of trying naturally in her 30s, Sarah and her husband faced unexplained infertility, the overwhelming grief of monthly disappointments, and the practical challenges of seeking fertility care from a remote Scottish island. When a massive, undetected fibroid disrupted their plans for NHS-funded IVF, Sarah was forced to navigate private fertility clinics, age-related pushback, and the emotional transition to donor eggs.
Sarah opens up about the raw realities of her path to parenthood, including a chemical pregnancy, the devastating loss of an embryo at seven weeks, and the high-stakes birth of her daughter via c-section. From dealing with a vehicle fire on the way home from the hospital with a newborn to tackling postpartum hormones, flat nipples, and relationship shifts, Sarah shares an inspiring, unfiltered look at why a fertility journey is not over in your 40s and how life experience shapes early motherhood.
About the Guest
Sarah Padley is a small business owner living on the Isle of Mull, an island in the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland, with her husband Andrew and their daughter, Elish. After walking through years of unexplained infertility, high-risk fibroids, and navigating fertility care from a remote location, she successfully welcomed her daughter at age 44 via donor egg IVF.
Connect with Sarah:
- Instagram (Business): @tobermorystores
- Instagram (Personal): @sarahopadley
Key Topics
- Navigating Infertility in a Remote Location: The logistical and emotional challenges of managing fertility appointments, adoption inquiries, and emergency care while living on an island in the Inner Hebrides.
- Fibroid Complications & IVF Obstacles: How a massive 10cm fibroid went undetected, burst during hormone treatment, and altered their IVF timeline and medical options.
- The Transition to Donor Eggs: Overcoming initial hesitation, choosing a donor, and navigating the emotional dynamic between partners when deciding to move forward with donor eggs.
- Pregnancy Loss & Memorialization: The emotional weight of a chemical pregnancy, losing a heartbeat at seven weeks, and bringing their baby home to bury on their land.
- High-Risk C-Section & Early Postpartum: Surviving a complicated delivery involving spinal block delays and severe blood loss, followed by the realities of newborn care, formula feeding, and postpartum hormone crashes.
- Encouragement for TTC Over 40: Sarah’s perspective on holding onto hope, tuning out age-related stigma, and leveraging life experience to navigate first-time motherhood over 40.
Resources and Links
Note: Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase. I only recommend products our guests truly love!
Instagram: Follow Over 40 Fabulous and Pregnant
YouTube: Watch Episodes HERE
Shop More: See ALL products recommended by our guests!
Support the Podcast: Donate to the Podcast
Community: Join the Over 40 Fabulous Facebook Group or get on the Waitlist to Know When the next TTC Sisterhood Circle meets on Zoom.
Transcript
Jamie: Sarah, welcome to the show.
Sarah: Hi. Thanks for having me on.
Jamie: Should I say welcome back to this show?
Sarah: Yeah.
Jamie: This is Sarah’s second time on this show. She was on Pregnancy Over 40 Roundtable, episode 100, and I thought “You know what? Let’s not do an update on Sarah. Let’s do the whole thing.” So Sarah, before we begin your story, will you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Sarah: Yeah, I’m Sarah. I live on the Isle of Mull on the west coast of Scotland an island in the Inner Hebrides with my husband and my four-and-a-half-month-old baby daughter, Elish. I’ve lived here for 12 years. I own my own business here. Just really loving life at the minute.
Jamie: Love it. So will you take us back, like when you were younger, did you want, always want kids? I
Sarah: I suppose maybe yes. I grew up in the kind of family, community that it was like a given that it was like a 2.4 children. You’d get married, you’d have children. So I suppose that’s the way that my mind always worked.
However, when I met Andrew, we gave no thought to it whatsoever. To start with we’d just got on early with our relationship. We were both 21 when we got married and we never gave it any thought to be having children. We didn’t even really actually discuss it at that early point.
Jamie: Oh, wow.
Sarah: We didn’t really discuss it till maybe a, a few years in, and then I was the one that really wanted them and Andrew didn’t really want them which caused a little bit of a friction for a while on and off.
Then we just did a few things in life that took us on different paths. We were in a very fortunate position when we both hit 30 then decided we upped our lives and moved up onto Mull. By the time we actually came round to thinking about having children, I was more 33.
Jamie: Was it time that just changed his mind?
Sarah: Yeah, I think when … We did a lot in life, we’ve done a lot. I think we both grew, it was always, we’re gonna have children eventually. Then Andrew came around as he got older. I think he realized he didn’t want to be childless all his life.
When I was 34, we decided to start trying for children. And me being me thought, “This is gonna be fine,” I was in good health. I was doing a lot of running at that time. There was nothing that I thought would stop me. They did tell me that as soon as you have the coil out, you’re fertile again, there’s no lasting damage like there is maybe with the pill or such, which is why I went for that kind of contraception.
I expected to be three, four months later on, telling my mum that she was gonna be a grandma. That’s when it all started to fall apart because that’s not what happened at all.
Jamie: What happened?
Sarah: We just kept trying and it just never worked. And so because we were 35, they say you’ve got six months.” So if you’re under 35, I think you get a year. If you’re over 35, you get six months of trying, and if it doesn’t work, you go in for the tests. That’s what happened.
We tried. Six months later, nothing had happened. We went to have all the tests. It’s an all-day trip to the hospital here because you have got to get ferries and a drive into the main town of Glasgow. It was a lot of back and forth to Glasgow for tests. Andrew, he’ll kill me for saying this, but Andrew’s tests came back and he’d got super sperm. Even in his 40s he’s got 10 times the amount of sperm than he should have. So we knew that I was probably the problem. My AMH had come back fine. They just came back with unexplained infertility and just said, “Keep trying.” And that’s just what we did.
By point, I’d been obsessed with dates, times, tracking, making sure that you knew where everything was. I’d cut things out of my diet. I’d put things into my diet. I’d started on vitamins, all these sorts of things. And every wives’ tale or anything like that you can imagine, we tried. And it just wasn’t happening. Every month was like a grieving process. Them first maybe three years, I didn’t take it well at all. I was really battling with not being able to cope every month. It’s the two-week wait. You’re analyzing your body, everything different. Oh, I’ve not had that symptom before, so maybe this is the month, and it just never was. By which point, all my friends had started to fall pregnant and have all their first babies, and there was me still trying. Thankfully my friends were very understanding. They knew why I wouldn’t necessarily always at their baby showers.
Then an opportunity came up to buy my business that I’ve got now. And Andrew and I sat down and we spoke, and I just said, ” I need this to save me. I need this to put myself into something here that’s…” ‘Cause I was working from home and predominantly on my own. Andrew was out at work. I’d become in this little bubble of that I’d go out if I needed to, but this whole infertility thing was just crushing me. I just knew it was exactly what was gonna help me. And so I bought the shop, and then I’ve just plowed everything into that. Everything that went wrong has just resulted in me pushing it into the business. It’s what saved me.
I had to stop that so that’s what I did. I took a break from it all. We kept trying, but my head space had changed in the way that I was more accepting. Maybe we won’t have children. Andrew said he was never gonna go through IVF. We looked seriously into adoption, so we’d spoken to the adoption agencies and I rang 11 adoption agencies and there was only one adoption agency because of where we lived.
Jamie: Oh, wow.
Sarah: Even though where I live is absolutely perfect for bringing children up.
Jamie: Yeah. How old were you when you researched the adoption?
Sarah: It was between 37 and 40 is where we’ll start to look at other options. Life fell into a nice little thing that trying for children had all of a sudden was on the back burner and everything else had come forward, which was great, and really helped me change how I approached it all really. We could have IVF on the NHS in Scotland you get three rounds up to 42.
Jamie: Wow.
Sarah: You get three rounds free. Yeah.
Jamie: Okay. Did you ever get pregnant?
Sarah: No, there was one, only one time, we’d been away on holiday and I was five days late, and that’s the only time. ‘Cause I am like clockwork. There’s no, even after giving birth, four weeks after giving birth I was straight back into my cycle and everything, and it’s to the letter. No chemical pregnancy, no nothing.
When we both got to 40, we sat down and had a real discussion about the fact that do we stay t- even together? If you want children and I can’t give them you, do we call this time on the relationship? Yeah. Because at that point you … And it’s weird because nobody really thinks about this, but these are the kind of conversations you have when you’re dealing with infertility.
Jamie: Yeah.
Sarah: Andrew came round and said we’ll go for IVF. I said, “Okay, that’s great.” So we’re down on the list and then COVID struck and shut all the clinics down. I was 40, and we were working through that.
Then it got to 2022 and things started to open up and straight away I’m back on the phone to the IVF clinic saying, Can we get back on the list?” I’m really pushing it at this point, ’cause this was January I’m 42 in March.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: I had also found a fertility acupuncturist close to me so I’d started to have that. While she was sticking the needles in one day, she found the mass in my stomach and was like this shouldn’t be here.” So I rang the doctor. They got me straight in for a scan and said, ” you’ve got this huge fibroid on your womb that’s 10.8 centimeters by nine centimeters. So it was massive. It was huge.
Jamie: Did you just want to yell at all these doctors? Like, why didn’t you find this before?
Sarah: When I had my initial scans there was a fibroid there at two centimeters, but they told me not to worry. Now, had I had that fibroid sorted there and then, I would not be in the position that I’m in now. But they said, “No, you don’t need to worry about a fibroid that size.”
When she found it, it was huge. Within the week the NHS had referred me for a scan. They’d found the fibroid and there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t remove it because it’s too big. It would’ve been opening me up like a C-section to remove it. It was too big for keyhole ’cause it was over 10 centimeters. So- I was a bit taken aback by that. I wondered if I’d found the cause.
Jamie: Yeah.
Sarah: You’re not given renewed hope I suppose, but you’re given a reason. There’s a reason why you’re not getting pregnant. And then the week after the doctor rang, I was like, ” What can we do? What’s gonna happen?” And they said, “We can’t put you on the list because we cannot get that sorted in time before your 42nd birthday.” Oh. So at that point I’d just lost the NHS way of IVF. It’s awful for all of us that within that COVID period lost the opportunity.
Jamie: Yeah.
Sarah: Now because we’d set up for this we decided we’d go private. We decided we’d have a go at private. And so that’s what we did.
Jamie: When they found the fibroid, did they say how it would impact your fertility?
Sarah: They didn’t say because they’d said I can’t go on the list now for IVF, so then I’m referred to gynecology to start to get it sorted.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: We’ve found out down the line that’s a full hysterectomy to get rid of it because it’s too big. If it bursts, which it’s done once before it could cause more damage than just leaving it. So it can’t just be left basically.
We decided that we were gonna have IVF. We just need to see what happens here and just go for it and we’ll see what happens. So you’ve gotta go in for all your tests and appointments with private clinic. The clinic was awful from start to finish.
Jamie: Oh.
Sarah: They really patronized me for being older. They really hated that I wanted to try with my own eggs first. They’d got no interest in helping. Once I get into the IVF clinic at 42, they’re like, “Oh no, it’s dropped dramatically. You’ve so low now that you’re not gonna get pregnant with your own eggs.”
I was so frustrated that they didn’t do anything in them early years when I was in my 30s to say If it’s unexplained fertilities, let’s get some eggs out now. Let’s see if we can get some eggs out now and let’s put them on ice because this could be a long-term thing. Or even just give us the option.
Here I was at 42 walking into a clinic and they’re telling me, now you ain’t gonna preg…” Back in the beginning that wasn’t the problem as to why I wasn’t getting pregnant. The unexplained infertility wasn’t because I got low AMH or poor egg quality or massive fibroids. I hadn’t got all that back then.
And I said to him I’d read the book It Starts with an Egg. I’d said, “Yeah, but I’ve read about this. If I take this, will this help my egg quality?” And he turned around to me and said, “You can’t improve your egg quality.” I’d read all these American papers and without being political, the UK just don’t have the money to throw into fertility, the Americans do. So you guys were getting all these results, and “no, the studies aren’t big enough. We can’t do that. We can’t prescribe you this or do this.”
Andrew didn’t want to try with my eggs either because the doctor had told him that there was not gonna be any chance of us getting pregnant, and so he just wanted to go straight for donor eggs, and I just, I didn’t wanna give up. I was like, “Wait a minute. No, I can do this.”
Jamie: Give me a chance.
Sarah: So and I tried all these things and so it caused a bit of friction between Andrew and I. ‘ We both took some time to give it some thought and I just said to him, “Look,” I says, ” if I don’t at least try with my eggs, I will never know. And even if we try and it doesn’t work, I know that it won’t work.” Then we’ll try donor, because I don’t want to feel as if I’m giving up on myself.
Eventually he came round and said, “Okay, we’ll give it one shot with your own.” When you start the IVF, you have to take tablets for a week to stop your cycle. I got immense pain with this. It was so strong. It was like I’d be collapsing down on the floor because the pain was so strong.
I was just like, “It’s just gotta be the IVF. It’s just gotta be what’s happening. It must be normal.” I was ringing them. They’re saying, “Yeah, you do get a bit of discomfort,” but this was agony. You take them for five days, and then you have to wait five days for your period.
So you bleed within that five days before you start your injections to grow your follicles. I knew at this point something wasn’t right. Something was very wrong. And we were going out with some friends over to one of the other islands in a boat. It was a Sunday, and I was like, I’m not gonna say anything until afterwards, because I needed to go to hospital. it was getting that serious. But I really wanted to go out because if the IVF worked, I was being really anal that I kept putting these things as memories for when the IVF worked and I got pregnant.
It seems silly now, So we went out on the boat, but we got through it, and I got home, and I said, “Tanja, I’m gonna have to ring the doctor. We’re gonna have to get the ambulance out.” I rang up, and they said, “Yeah, we need to get you off island. We need to get you to Glasgow to A&E.” But because I knew that in five days I needed to start the injections on the Wednesday night at 6:00, the drugs had to be kept in the fridge. They were on Mull in the fridge, and I was in Glasgow.
They said, Okay, drive yourself to Glasgow. We’ll give you the space on the ferry and drive. So I drove down in absolute agony. I was really bleeding heavily. By the time I got to Glasgow, I was stopping and changing every four to five minutes, an hour. It was serious and I just kept driving, and they got me into A&E. They got me in, and then they were doing tests. They’d given me medication at this point and got me onto the gynecology wards, and that’s when they found out the fibroid had burst.
The drugs had made the fibroid react and had burst. They said, We’re gonna have to remove the fibroid. And I’m like, can you take it out and leave my womb in? And they’re like, No. We can’t do that. So I said you’re not taking it out then and I need to be home by Wednesday because I want to start my injections for the IVF. Hindsight, I should’ve canceled the round. So they just pumped me with drugs, tried to stop the bleeding, tried to get the fibroid under control, and eventually they did, and I managed to discharge myself on the Wednesday morning to get home for 6:00 to start taking injections. My left side didn’t give me any follicles whatsoever because of this fibroid, but the right side gave me a few.
When they put me under and retrieved the eggs, we came out with five. And I was like, “Pfft, I only need one,” that the fibroid was the problem. The fibroid had got so big, it was pulling away the fallopian tube from the hangover thing where the egg goes in. So I thought, All they’ve gotta do is take my eggs out of one place, put them in the other, and it bypasses the problem.
Jamie: How old were you when you did this egg retrieval?
Sarah: I was 42 at this point now.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: I don’t think you get set up properly for the disappointment, or you don’t get told. And so I was like, “Five eggs, we only need one.” And then they rang us up and they were like, “Okay, so only three of them have fertilized.” You’re like, “Okay, that’s fine. We’ve still got three. That’s great.” And then they ring you the next day and they’re like, “Okay, so one’s failed overnight, so now you’ve got two.” And in the five days, by the time it comes to the end of it, we’ve got one, and that’s it. Just this one little guy in a Petri dish.
Jamie: Did you decide to do testing on the embryo?
Sarah: No.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: I was so frightened that if we put them to another stage of testing- … we’d lose them. Okay. And I just … I was like I don’t wanna put them through anything unnecessary.
We’d already made the decision personally about what happens if there’d been something wrong with the baby. And so we didn’t. We just let them be. We just let them grow and then just had them transferred.
So we had it transferred and sadly that one was chemical. He took, It did implant but didn’t make it.
Jamie: Okay. How was that? Because that was the first time you were pregnant.
Sarah: I was really excited ’cause I’ve never had two pink strips on a c-pregnancy test, of all the thousands that I’d done no, I’d never had one. We’d been to the hospital for blood tests and on the way home I was in so much pain and cramping. It was the day before I was due to take a urine test.
I woke up the next day, went downstairs, and I’d started to bleed. Andrew had said “I kinda thought on the way home yesterday ’cause you were in so much pain.” I was the opposite. I was like, “Oh, I’m in so much pain. It must really be embedding in there. It must be really working its way around.”
At no point have I ever had the trigger shot. The trigger shot contains the pregnancy hormone which is why they say to wait the 10 days before testing. Because of the fibroid I’ve never had the trigger shot. We just can’t tell on the scans if I’ve ovulated because the fibroid’s in the way. So we’ve always gone on blood tests and natural ovulation- with the transfers.
So that was pretty devastating. I kinda thought, let’s just get back on the horse. Let’s just do this. . Let’s start again. But I think my practical side of my brain was sat there telling me that, but then the grief side of it was like, it wasn’t gonna work.
I thought they’d just bypass the fibroid and that’s all it was. And obviously it didn’t take. Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t think I’d cry. Because that was the only one we’d got of my egg, I knew then that- the chances of having one with my own eggs had gone. He wasn’t willing to try again. Up to this point I think we’re around about the 32 and a half mark, thir- 32,000 mark.
It was gonna be donor eggs at that point. That in itself brought its own battle because I was like, I don’t think I want donor eggs. I don’t want to have another woman’s babies, basically the way that I looked at it. It was a really hard battle that I had for quite a while. So we took some time but not too much time because we are cracking on. Then we went back and decided to go with donor eggs. So we got the catalog, as you do to flick through to see which ones we’ve got.
Jamie: How old were you when you decided to do the donor eggs?
Sarah: So I was still 42.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: So this was all happening within that year.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: So we got the catalog, bought the six eggs, five fertilized, and five got to day five so were put in the freezer.
Jamie: Wait, you had five embryos?
Sarah: Yes.
Jamie: From six eggs. That’s amazing. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah.
Jamie: I’m so incredibly jealous.
Sarah: Yeah. But the donor was 24.
Jamie: Yeah.
Sarah: And it maybe does drop the reality of that egg quality as you do get older. It was like a truth bomb hitting down there. And it was like of course there’s gonna be more fertilized because she’s 24. So I was like, okay.
Jamie: Now, your clinic had their own donors, correct?
Sarah: Yeah. There were very little of them, but again, because of COVID. So there wasn’t a huge list to choose from.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: We were told two years on a waiting list. Waiting list. Donor eggs. Yeah, so after we’d miscarried and we went in with donor eggs, they said yeah, but it’s a two-year waiting list.” So we just put our names down.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: And then within six weeks I’d got a text message to say, “You’re at the top of the list.” So I was like …
Jamie: That’s great
Sarah: yeah. “That’s probably about six, eight weeks at the most.”
Jamie: Did you get to decide on a donor?
Sarah: Yep.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: So you don’t get pictures. You don’t get to see what they look like.
Jamie: Oh.
Sarah: You get a height a height, a weight, an eye color, a hair color, a skin color, and a little bio about themselves. So they just write a little bit about themselves.
Jamie: How did you pick her?
Sarah: We printed the whole catalog out twice. And I went to one corner and Andrew went to another, and we looked through the donors and we were like, “Okay, you pick yours, I pick mine. We come together and we see what we’ve got.”
Very technical. And there was one lady that was at the top of the list for us, and she’d got … she’d got 12 eggs out. She was young. And we both picked her straight away, but when we rang up she’d been taken. She’d … Somebody else had got her as donor eggs.
So we went back and said let’s pick another one,” and that’s what we did. We just went through them and picked which ones we like.
Jamie: What was important to you, like, when you were looking at them to select one?
Sarah: I’m honest, I looked for things like, for me, if the the same height maybe as me, same eye color. Just a little bit of me in there. It’s not-
Jamie: Okay
Sarah: the donor wasn’t like that at all. The donor was actually really tall. I’m quite short. I think Andrew was really focused on the age because the doctor told me I was too old with my eggs, he’d taken that quite literally. And so every donor he looked at had gotta be under the age of maybe 25, and then it didn’t matter whether on hair color or anything.
The one we picked, was quite sporty . I think that’s why we kinda decided on that, because she was quite into into sports.
Jamie: Tell us about … So you battled with the transfers.
Sarah: So the first transfer, with with my eggs. When they brought the little tube out that the embryo was in, God, the maternal love that I instantly felt for that tube was just incredible.
Then the second transfer, It was a mix-up on their upstairs desk not telling their downstairs desk. And so I sat there waiting an hour. Then they eventually rushed me through. I think you’re just scarred and I was like, “Okay, please don’t drop it.” But I was more numb at that point. Then they transferred it, and then the doctor says, “Have you had your smear test?” And I was like, “Yeah, I’ve had my smear t-,” and I didn’t really understand what she was asking me ’cause I was busy in the mind of it had been transferred. And so she asked me again and I’m like, you have to if private IVF, you have to have all the tests to make sure-
Jamie: Yeah
Sarah: … everything’s okay. And then never thought anything about it. I got up, went out, and stayed in Glasgow that night.
As it got later in the evening I started to bleed and I was like, Oh, maybe she was a bit rough. The next day , I was still bleeding, so I was like, okay. So I rang the clinic and they said, “No, it’s not normal. We’re gonna go and try and we’re gonna try and find the doctor that did the transfer and ask what she did to see if there would be anything that would make it bleed.” So I was like, “Yeah, okay.”
So I sat in the car park for an hour or so waiting for them to get back to me. When they rang me back she said, “Oh, the doctor found a polyp and just cut it off.” And never told me.
Jamie: During a transfer?
Sarah: Yep, and never told me. Oh my gosh. And that was what the bleeding was. Now, that transfer never took. I’m not saying that is why but she never even told me.
Jamie: Oh my gosh.
Sarah: So there’s me panicking and that one didn’t take.
We’re like, defrost the next. So I waited for the next cycle. That didn’t defrost well unfortunately. Then we’re like, okay. Let’s do it again. Let’s just keep going. Let’s just keep going.” And so then I went for my … And but the second one, the nurse was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Really lovely woman, and they couldn’t have been much nicer actually. That’s the only time in that clinic that I’ve ever felt- scene, if you like.
It’s, it was the only time that I actually thought m- this, about more of the staff that were around me. Before that it was just all, you’re just a bit of a number. Whereas I felt quite thought of that day. And that was lovely. So when I went so, oh, so that that took. And so that was the very first time we’d had the strong pregnancy test.
I was meant to wait for the 10 days. I didn’t. I’d not had the trigger shot, so I knew fine well that if I was getting lines I was pregnant, and I was getting them well before the 10 days. But I didn’t say anything until the 10th day. Then I said, “Yeah, we’re pregnant.” And I thought, that’s it. Thank God. This is it. We’ve done it. We’re finally pregnant. We’re finally strongly pregnant. All the blood did come back.
We told the close circle, “Yep, we’re pregnant.” A couple of friends would say, “Okay, but we’ve got to wait for that 12 weeks mark.” I’m like, “No, this is it. We’ve never been here this is it.” And then we went for our six-week check and she said it’s just not grown. There was a pocket of blood as well, and she said, I don’t really know what that is.” I was like, “This can’t be happening.” We’ve got this far.
She said, “He’s not big enough, but his heart’s still beating. It’s it’s so hard to go away knowing that you’re just sat waiting for your baby to die. We’re now getting onto our ninth year of trying for children. I’m now 43 by this point.
For Alesia’s transfer. This is transfer two, ’cause one didn’t defrost. So this is transfer two.
Jamie: Okay. Third embryo.
Sarah: So a week later we had to go to the NHS hospital, and the baby had grown a little bit but the heart had stopped, so that was official end of that pregnancy.
So I’m lying there on the bed while they’ve numbed me obviously. And they’d given me a tablet that I had to take in the morning to dissolve to open the cervix. And they just removed it. I’m just laid there on the bed looking at this clinical ceiling thinking how cruel it was at the fact that I’d got to this point and then still had to be in a miscarriage club of loss.
They give you this beautiful box that’s got little crocheted butterflies in and little poems that kind people just sit and make and it’s a beautiful little memory box they call it. And they gave us the baby. Because it was an IVF baby, they didn’t have to send it away for testing ’cause they knew it was a viable pregnancy. Sorry if this is just all very graphic, but they put him in a wee pot and I took him home and we buried him on a plot of land that we’ve just started to build our house on. And that’s where he just sits now.
Jamie: Think that’s such a great memorial for you to have …
Sarah: I needed something because I knew that I’d got to get back on the horse. I knew that we had not been done. We’d still got embryos. We didn’t get time to really grieve in that way because you’ve just got to move on to the next one, and it’s really harsh and horrible.
Jamie: Okay
Sarah: But we were like let’s get back on it. Let’s do it. Let’s do a transfer. Got all ready for it, this, that, and the other, and then these marks on my boob showed up. They couldn’t get me in for a mammogram quick enough. The Friday before the transfer I had to go to a private hospital to get a mammogram, because they wouldn’t do the transfer if there was a chance of cancer. Thankfully it was nothing. There was nothing on the mammogram, and then I’m back down there on the 14th to have the transfer.
Jamie: Oh, what a relief.
Sarah: I know. Yeah, I know, it was a relief. I’d put these changes down to the pregnancy, the IVF drugs, and all these sorts of things. And it wasn’t.
Then we had the transfer, and I’m very pleased to say that it worked. I think pregnancy after loss, after infertility is different. I do believe that.
Jamie: Will you tell us about finding out?
Sarah: I could just tell my body was pregnant. I was just, “Yeah, this is working.” And If, not an anticlimax I want to say, because obviously the joy when you’ve got two pink strips, two lines on the tests is amazing. But you’ve got so much apprehension of the journey ahead that it was exciting that we’d found out that we were pregnant, but also we were extremely reserved.
We weren’t jumping for joy. We were not, “Wow, this is it. This is great.” We’re like, “Okay, so now we’re at the first hurdle of many hurdles.”
Jamie: Yeah.
Sarah: When we went for our six weeks check, you’ve got no idea now when you’re going for that scan what you’re gonna see.
Jamie: Yeah.
Sarah: What they’re gonna tell you. There’s a completely separate waiting room for early pregnancy than there is for full-term maternity.
Jamie: Oh, that’s nice.
Sarah: It is really nice, and sometimes you really need it.
Jamie: Yeah.
Sarah: But there’s this little room that they just put you in at the side of the main waiting room. So you’re not sat with all these pregnant women that are just having the whale of a time, if you like.
Jamie: Yeah.
Sarah: But we went in and she was fine. She was growing. She was the right length. She’d got a strong little heart. And we came out of there and breathed a sigh.
Jamie: What was that like hearing her heartbeat?
Sarah: We didn’t hear it at that point. I didn’t actually hear- Oh, you didn’t? … the heartbeat.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: No, they don’t. It wasn’t until I think, it was the 12-week scan.
Jamie: Oh, okay.
Sarah: And I had three scans before that then, so each time we’d gone we were just seeing the heartbeat on the screen.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: We weren’t listening until the 12-week scan when they gave us the heartbeat then.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: The midwife had said to me, no, we’ll get you in for a scan. So we went at the six weeks mark, and then they said, Do you want to come back next week as well to see if everything’s still going okay? And we were like, Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.
But we actually hated the scans. Until she was moving and until I could feel her so I knew more that she was okay, we dreaded them. We hated them. We hated going for them. And obviously with IVF you, you have way more scans than what mainstream pregnancy does. But thankfully every time we did go we just got good news.
The only thing was that when we went for our 12-week scan, she measured 13. So we knew she was gonna be a long baby. So pretty easy pregnancy.
Jamie: And how did your fibroid play into your pregnancy?
Sarah: Just totally well-behaved. They saw it on the early scans. No nothing. It just sat there and it just really behaved itself and it had gone to the so it had moved its position.
Jamie: ‘Cause your uterus grew.
Sarah: I think other than the first four scans, they never even checked it. At 32 weeks, she says, it had come down to nine centimeters by nine centimeters at that point, ‘Cause it had burst. It had shrank a bit. But once it had blood flow, it had grown again. They kept saying with the pregnancies the potential of it bursting again is big, but they can’t do anything ’cause I’d pulled the plug and saying you’re not taking it out until we’re done with IVF.
They’d said to me that I’d got to have a C-section at 38 weeks. When we went to see the consultant there, they said actually we’ll let you go to 39 weeks. I was so over the moon about because, ’cause we’d lost that week at 12 weeks ’cause she’d measured 13 weeks. So the fact that she got to stay in an extra week, I was more than happy with.
Being on an island we’ve got to get off before our due date. Generally it’s two weeks, but because I was having a C-section I only had to go the week before. I need to get away and just have a week to myself before baby gets here. So Andrew dropped me off, and I had a week sightseeing and doing some shopping.
And then I went to the mainland, and there’s all these shops with all this beautiful baby stuff in and it was coming up to Christmas. And I just went to town. I just enjoyed spending money on the baby.
And then the birth, so we got to the hospital for half past 7:00 in the morning. They put us in this little room. the anesthetist says to us, so there’s three of you that is having your babies today. We start at half past 9:00, but by 11:00, we don’t know where you are on the list, but by 11:00 you’ll have met your baby. We’re like, “Brilliant. That’s great.”
We were first on the list. They took us down at about quarter past 9:00, and we got into the the theater. I think the first shock with the birth was how clinical the room was. Like, it’s major surgery, but I didn’t put two and two together.
I wasn’t nervous. they sat me on the bed, and it was cold. The room was quite cold. They put the main IV in my hand, and then one of the doctors says, we’ll put a spare one in your other hand just in case we need to use that in case of an emergency.
I was fine with that, not scared of needles or anything. Then she says, Have you got your playlist? We were allowed music and then they were having problems connecting my music to the speaker.
Jamie: Ugh.
Sarah: I was like, “Okay, that’s fine.” And then they tried to start with the cannula so they could numb me to get my back ready for the spinal. And it broke. So straight away they had to use the emergency cannula. Then they’ve got a problem with the machine, and in my head here I’m sat there, I’ve never done this before, never gone through it. I was freezing and I was starting to shake uncontrollably. I was one of them women that shook controllably in a C-section. I was shaking so violently, and I was starting to get really scared because then it took them six attempts to get the spinal into my spine.
Jamie: Oh my gosh.
Sarah: I’m on the bed crouched forward whilst the anesthetist tried to get this needle into my spine. I can’t feel a thing. They have done that job right and made it all numb. But I’m sat there watching these huge needles go into my spine, and they’re struggling. And so I’ve got the cannula, I’ve got the music not connecting to the speaker, and in my head I’m like in a minute I’m gonna pull the plug on it. After the fifth attempt the anesthetist says to me, “Look, we’re gonna have to get somebody else in to put this spinal in.”
To just put a bit of context in here, about 20 years ago I had a horse riding accident on my spine, and there’s a pocket of fluid there that’s been there ever since, it doesn’t cause any pain, but it’s a bit of an issue. They were trying to not hit that pocket of fluid. But as a result they couldn’t get the needle through the ligament because the ligaments have hardened up.
I said what happens if you don’t get it in? They’re like, “We’ll put you to sleep. That’s the next course of action. I’m like, No you’re not. If you can’t get this needle in this sixth time, I’m walking out of here and I’ll just go naturally.”
But he got it in. So it was all, all systems go. And the music eventually joined onto the speaker, and shaking like mad starting to calm down a little bit. I said to the anesthetist, “Just tell me everything’s normal. You don’t need to tell me what’s going on, but you also need to tell me that it’s normal.” And then at this point it’s getting pretty late because we’ve been in there for a good hour now.
Them poor women that were behind me had got to wait even longer to meet their babies. But the C-section went fine, and they put her on me for skin-to-skin, and all of a sudden I started to feel really weird. I said “You’re gonna have to take her off me ’cause I’m gone really faint. So they took her off me and gave her to Andrew. They were a long time sorting it, and I couldn’t understand, but also didn’t think anything of it because I’d never had a C-section, so to me what they were doing was normal.
But it wasn’t. At that point the fibroid had decided to play up, and at that point I’d lost 1.2 liters of blood, so just over three pints of blood within the operation. And so that’s what the problem was is they couldn’t get the fibroid back in properly to be able to sew me up.
I did jokingly say, If you wanna take it out, by all means take it all out now, ’cause I did turn to Andrew and said, I’m not doing this again. They did sew me up and got us back up to the ward.
Jamie: What happened to the fibroid?
Sarah: Everything- It’s still in there. Yeah. No, it’s still in there. It just bled a lot and that’s what the big loss of blood was.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: But again, no pain or anything from it or anything, it just caused a bit of problem towards the end of the section. But that was it. We call it Teddy. That’s the joking name for the tumor.
Jamie: How was it seeing your baby over the little curtain? How did you feel?
Sarah: Just surreal. I was, I don’t even feel as if I was in the room, to be honest with you. It’s probably a little bit blunt, a little bit harsh, but I didn’t get that overwhelming loving feeling when the baby was born. I had waited all this time, and I don’t know whether it’s just because my brain’s so wired on loss and failure and just the way you have to train your brain to deal with all the grief and stuff.
So I was back up on the ward and by 6:00, I was showered, out of bed, walking about. I spent two days in hospital and it was just all very surreal ’cause my boobs wouldn’t work because it was just gonna take a while for my milk to come in.
They were changing a nappy and they were feeding her whilst I was pumping. I was trying to pump in the hospital to bring my milk in, and they were feeding her formula and the colostrum that they could get off me and then topping it up with formula.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just going with what they were telling me, and like at one point she was asleep in the cots that they give you, and I’m like, I don’t even know if I’m allowed to pick her up.
Jamie: Aw.
Sarah: I didn’t have a clue, and she was sleeping and I just wanted to hold her. The brilliant thing, what I will say is when I came out of the theater we were skin-to-skin, so I’ll be honest, at 44 and having gone through so much internal scans and all this sort of thing with IVF, I didn’t really care in the maternity ward what I looked like, i’d got my boobs out trying to feed her. The whole day she was skin-to-skin with me which was just absolutely lovely.
I had the massive hormone drop on the second night, and the nursery nurse, God, she talked me off a ledge ’cause I had no idea at that point if I was gonna be able to walk out of there with her ’cause I didn’t have a clue. I was like, you’re gonna have to show me how to change a nappy because I have no idea.
On the Friday we wanted to go home. We’d been in two nights and they wanted me to stay in a third night, but we were like, “Pfft, no, we need to go.” We’ve got five hours trip, car journey back with a newborn. I just wanted to be home at that point ’cause I’d had the week before off. I’d had the time at the hospital, I’d had a really crap birth, and I just wanted to be home.
So on the Friday we made a run for it, and it was so funny ’cause we put her in the car seat and we’re like… Andrew says is she in all right? I’m like, “I don’t know. Let’s go and ask somebody. One of the midwives came and she’s So this is what you have to do. Then we brought her home.
I’m formula feeding her at that point Because my nipples are completely flat, so She couldn’t latch on to anything. It turned out there was quite a few problems with breastfeeding flat nipples, and the boobs just never filled up with milk. They just weren’t having any of it, which I did, God, did I try.
Jamie: Yeah, you did.
Sarah: I gave it about seven to eight weeks of really giving it a good go. And sometimes, we’d be half an hour in, she’d be screaming and screaming, and I’d just think, Just latch, please, because if you latch, it’ll all be all right, and we’ll just get through this. And she never took to it at all.
In the end, I did have to call time on it, and she is formula fed. And most of the time I’m fine with it. Sometimes I have a bit of a wobble and just think, it’s quite hard to accept that you’ve not fed your baby. But then I’ve come to the conclusion that the pregnancy’s probably the anomaly, in the way that a stopped clock’s right twice a day. It was just never gonna be. And so I come to the conclusion that’s where we’re at.
We came back on the Friday. The midwife came out to see us on the Saturday, and that’s when jaundice shown up. It started when we got home. We’ve got to go back down to our local hospital here, which is a 45-minute journey to get her checked, but to keep the car packed because they might very well ship us back off to if her jaundice doesn’t clear up or she doesn’t put any weight on.
We went down on the Sunday in the pouring rain. I’m sat in the back with Elish, and I said to Andrew, I can smell smoke. And he says, Oh no, it’s the heaters at the back, ’cause we never use the back of the car until now, so he thought it was burning off the dust.
I just turned to look and I’m like, Andrew, there’s smoke. We pulled over in the pouring rain. I’d given birth four days before. We got out of the car. we’ve not come out with any spare clothes or coats or anything like that.
So we stood on the side of the road and the back of the car’s on fire. One of the lights had had shorted and caused flames to come out. Thankfully Andrew managed to break the bumper off and put the the fire out. I was just absolutely dumbstruck, like, come on, what else? She just slept through it all, she just didn’t care. She just carried on sleeping.
Thankfully she ended up putting the weight on and she was fine.
Jamie: Let’s get into your recovery. How are you healing?
Sarah: Brilliantly. At no point Have I ever thought I’ve had major surgery? Weirdly. At no point have I had any problems. I got a wee hole in the scar where the stitch dissolved that was on the knot.
But I went down to the hospital, they checked it out and they said, No, it’s fine. It’s just where they finished off and tied the knot, and it’s just dissolved and just left a wee hole. They put a bandage on it, and in a couple of days it had sorted.
I’m back fully training. Them first few days I came out of hospital I did actually a joke and said I felt a bit like Superwoman. I dropped a load of weight. I was up and about. I was fine, I was not in any pain, just going through the motions. Don’t get me wrong, them first two weeks having a baby is like, what the fuck?
It’s like, you do not get out of that alive, honestly. And to say that women are meant to advocate for women, I really honestly think that is the worst-kept secret in women, the fact that them first two weeks, nobody’s coming out of that unscared at all. It’s awful. Yeah. It’s like the most beautiful, traumatic thing in the world.
Jamie: Yeah.
Sarah: That first night we brought her home, she just screamed the whole night. She did not settle. And you just think okay, so I’m not gonna sleep tonight,” but she did settle pretty quick.
Jamie: Yeah. Mentally how were you during postpartum?
Sarah: I think mentally I have done okay because I’ve kept going. The hormones, I, yeah, I don’t even… that’s an awful thing. The hormones after childbirth, what, just why? Why do we have to go through that?
I remember, like maybe a week in or two, seven 10 days let’s say, and I decided to take her for her first walk, and I put her in the carrier, and I cried the whole time. I only took her to the top of the driving bag, but I cried the whole time.
I’m meeting people along the way, and they’re like, “Oh, Sarah, congratulations.” I’m just in tears. I’m like, “I’m okay.” But I was just… Yeah, it was just the hormones were hard. And then the midwife kept saying to me, “Are you okay?” And I’m like, “Yes, I’m absolutely fine. I can just tell it’s hormones.” I’m crying for no reason. But it wasn’t the depression.
So I couldn’t just ever come out of the birth and think I’ve got a few months here where I can just relax and do nothing.” I’d still got things on the agenda after the birth. And so that kept me pushing forward, I think.
And it wasn’t until all that stopped that I did start to think, I’m struggling here a little bit. I’m just, I’m getting to a point where I need to do something. And if you’re north of Manchester in the UK, between November and March, you’re not making any vitamin D, there’s no sun. Yeah. On Mull it can stay dark all day some days because the s- the clouds don’t clear. There was a space of maybe three weeks where I thought, “Something’s got to give here ’cause I’m, otherwise I’m gonna fall into a pit.”
Jamie: Was there anything… Yeah. Was there anything that helped you, or did you just push through
Sarah: I just pushed through it.
Jamie: Okay.
Sarah: I just pushed through. I, we went on holiday in January, so that helped. And s- with all the best intentions in the world, also the other thing that nobody tells you about is the grenade that goes off in your relationship when you’ve got a newborn baby. You can be the strongest couple going, but it’s like a grenade. It just goes off, and it disperses everything. Because I’ve changed. I’m now a mom, and I’ve got this whole little person that is my top priority.
I weathered it pretty well, overall.
Jamie: Good.
Sarah: I had to get Andrew on board to help. Especially if she’s had a bad day. But we’re just like, Yeah, you need to help me. And he does.
I’ve made sure I’ve gone back exercising outside as soon as I can, if we get out, leave the house at least once a day. It took me till about three months to stop setting the alarms to check on her to make sure she’s all right. But yeah, I think I weathered it pretty well. I think I’ve done okay.
Jamie: Yeah. Okay. So tell us now that you’re four months postpartum, do you have any plans with those other embryos?
Sarah: I don’t know. This is the pendulum swings so violently on this that it’s crazy. Like one minute, like in the theater I said, “Pff, that’s it. No, no more.” And then one minute I’m like, “Yep, let’s do it. Let’s have another one. Let’s get one defrosted. Let’s go through it again.” And then on the other hand, I’m like, “Pff, no, I don’t want another one.”
And I just don’t know whether it’s because I’m so super grateful for Ailish. I’m she’s so perfect, and she, and I came through the pregnancy unscathed. I’ve weathered the postpartum up to this point pretty well, and I just don’t know whether we’d be pushing our luck by wanting another one. And I just, I can’t make my mind up, and it’s not even a case of let’s give it a bit longer and let’s think about it. It’s either a yes or a no at the minute. I can’t- Yeah … I can’t put a decision on it at this moment in time.
Jamie: Yeah. That’s okay.
Sarah: Yeah, when they come into the hospital straight after you’ve given birth to talk about contraception, I’m like-
Jamie: Yes
Sarah: “Are you having another one?” Yeah.
Jamie: Okay, we have eyes open now. Okay. So we are in the super quick let’s answer these questions. Fire rapid questions. What has been your biggest challenge being pregnant over 40?
Sarah: Nothing
Jamie: That’s amazing!
Sarah: I know. hand on heart maybe because the pregnancy was so perfect, the birth was hell. And even afterwards I’ve gone through it fine and I just think that my age at no point with the pregnancy has faulted in or done anything
Jamie: I love it. Is there anything you’d recommend that would help prepare someone for pregnancy and birth over 40?
Sarah: In my case, if they’re in a situation where they’ve had losses ’cause that’s the only experience I can talk about, is that you’ve just got to hold on to hope. You’ve just got to believe that your age has got nothing to do with it, and that you’ve got to push through until the very end.
You can’t hold off because pregnancy-wise it’s not made an ounce of difference. And so for anybody that’s in my situation that’s had losses before or is pregnant over 40, just get on with it and just enjoy it. Over 40 does not mean that you should not take away from everything that you want to.
Jamie: That’s perfect. What advice would you give yourself when you were pregnant, if you could go back?
Sarah: Oh, I would say stop trying to be Superwoman. I can see why they say you’re you’re more relaxed with your second because you know what’s coming. I think that I’d have done more research into postpartum. I think I’d have asked a lot more questions that related to your body. For example, when she was screaming and like, when she was screaming at the breast at the very beginning, and she was like, she was not latching on or anything like that. It wasn’t until I saw the second health visitor that said, “Sarah, all babies do that.” If I’d have known that, I would not have been as upset as I was.
I’d have armed myself more because you question everything as a first-time mum. And you’ve gotta pull on that village because they’ve got the answers. She got a little bit constipated when she started to get more formula and less breast milk. We had a power cut here, and I couldn’t get in touch with anybody because there was no phones or anything.
But the chemist was open, and I went into the chemist and she said, “Give her water. Boil water, put it in a bottle, and give it to her.” And I’m like, “Oh, they’ve told me not to give her water, i don’t know if I can do that.” And the chemist said to me, “You have to look at the millions and armies of women that have gone before you and raised a child. You’ve got to pull on them and ask them for the advice. A few hours later, I got in touch with a doctor and the doctor said exactly the same thing, “Just give her water.”
Jamie: That’s great. For our listeners that are trying to conceive over 40, what do you say to those women?
Sarah: It’s not over. It’s absolutely not over. There’s more of us now having babies over 40, and we’re just as good, if not more wiser mums, because we’ve got life experience. I think pregnancy over 40, obviously I’ve never been pregnant to live birth in my 20s or 30s. I think in my 40s, you’ve got a lot more knowledge of life behind you to go into it.
Jamie: Beautiful.
Sarah: And I think that changes how you are as a mum.
Jamie: That’s great. And Sarah, where can our listeners connect with you online?
Sarah: So they can connect to me through my personal Instagram which you’re gonna pop the link on I think you said. So that’s just,
Jamie: Yeah. Do you remember what it is?
Sarah: Sarah LPadley. That’s my personal one. And then if they want to, they can g- go onto my business one, which is where I am a bit more active, which is just Tilburymory Stores on Instagram and Facebook. And that’s really where I am, just on them two places.
Jamie: Beautiful. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on again, and sharing your story at 44.
Sarah: Yeah, thank you very much for having me.