Hi everyone, my name is Emma and I have primary vaginismus. I have never had penetrative sex, but I have had some success with trainers/dilators and have been working with these on and off for the last few years.
I wanted to write this post about trying to get pregnant with vaginismus as I have found there is not a lot written about it and some conflicting information. I am in no way a medical professional; I am just going to share my experience so far. I live in Scotland and whilst I pay privately for my psychosexual therapy, everything else I talk about has been through the NHS.
For a long time I wasn’t sure whether I wanted children. The closer I got to 30 the more of my friends had at least 1 child and I felt so much pressure, but didn’t feel ready. I’m sure having vaginismus was a contributing factor to that, or maybe my confusion about whether I wanted kids was a blocker to making as much progress as I wanted with my vaginismus – I’m not sure I’ll ever figure that one out.
So about 18 months ago I started seeing a new psychosexual therapist, my second attempt, and she has been brilliant. We have addressed both issues side by side. I took the pressure off myself a bit and started to realise I did want children but on my own timescales, not everyone else’s. My husband has always wanted kids, but has been so patient and supportive and has been dragged along to every therapy session even though he rarely gets a word in!
I had always felt I wanted to ‘fix’ my vaginismus and have children the traditional way but after I turned 34 my therapist started to encourage me to look at my options. After a brief panic that I’d left it too late and I was now suddenly ‘old’ I decided this did feel right and the idea of not being able to have children suddenly became quite scary and more important than conceiving ‘naturally’.
Every medical professional I have seen about vaginismus has always put that option on the table and said if having children was my goal, there were routes open to me so I felt confident that I could get the help I needed.
I decided to try and get a referral to my local fertility hospital to discuss options and after some challenges from my GP, I found a ‘back door’ route in and got a referral. Ahead of even getting on the waiting list you have to have fertility tests, so I got sent a list of tests and arranged these myself through my GP. (I’ve included further info below for those wanting to know more about these tests).
Luckily all tests came back fine and we made it onto the list. The wait time was only 12 weeks which seemed liked nothing compared to the times I have waited for other appointments and with a holiday and Christmas in the middle of that, it felt like no time at all. Early January, we got a call from a nurse saying we could have a meeting with her and could probably ‘make a start’ whilst waiting for the Dr appointment. At this point I wasn’t really sure what we were ‘starting’ but jumped at the chance and got an appointment that week.
The nurse was lovely, it was a pretty short appointment where she taught us how to do artificial insemination at home! You can buy kits off Amazon and just get on with it yourself, but I wanted the support of the clinic and to make sure I was doing it right and had a route if it didn’t work.
Our Dr appointment came through shortly after, but there wasn’t much she had to add other than to try for a few months and then go back if nothing had happened. She could also answer some of my questions around being pregnant with vaginismus and going through labour so that was really reassuring.
We started trying in January, and after our third try, we found out we were pregnant. It was a confusing few days as I felt different and my period was late, but the first 2 tests I did came back negative. However, the third and fourth were positive and I was so excited. I had a lot of fears about being pregnant – not being in control of my body, worrying about coping with the vaginismus, getting doubts about whether I really wanted a child – but none of these materialised. I felt less anxious than normal, I was taking better care of myself, reading a couple of pregnancy books, but not obsessing and things felt really positive. I phoned the Dr and they pointed me to the local midwife service and I had my first midwife appointment and scan booked in.
However, after two weeks I started to bleed, it was very slight at first and I phoned up the midwife service (I’d still not met anyone yet or had an appointment at this stage). They reassured me it was quite common and just to monitor it. However, it soon started to get much heavier and it was clear something wasn’t right. Unfortunately, I lost the baby.
I’ve been quite open with people close to me about it, because I’ve needed the support and I don’t want it to be such a taboo subject. As with any grieving process, it takes time, even when you think you’ve coping, it can suddenly hit you and you need people to be aware that you’re not going to be yourself.
I was obviously devastated and it was a horrendous week, I’ve never felt so lost and hopeless, but I had an appointment with my psychosexual therapist and she was fantastic; talking through it all has helped me see some of the positives. These were mainly that I was able to get pregnant and that I was absolutely certain I was now ready and had no doubts.
I don’t want to people to think this is a negative story, but I wanted to be totally honest about everything that I have gone through so far. I know so many people who have miscarried and then gone on to have successful pregnancies so at this point I’m feeling optimistic about the future. I’ve no idea where my cycle now is, so I’m going to wait until I get a period and then hopefully try again the following month.
Hopefully I’ll have some happy news at some point again and I will write again to share my experiences once I have more to tell. In the meantime, I’m more than happy to speak one-to-one with anyone who has questions I’ve not answered and I would love to hear from other people about their own experiences. Feel free to reach out to me at: emma.hoare@outlook.com