Bride who struggled to dance or sit down at her wedding after giving birth 10 days earlier has no regrets
A bride who struggled to sit down or dance on her wedding day just 10 days after giving birth "wouldn't change it for the world".
Allie Svarc, 29, desperately tried to conceive for three years and went through four rounds of fertility treatment – three intrauterine insemination (IUI) and one in vitro fertilisation (IVF) – before she finally fell pregnant.
IUI involves directly inserting sperm into a woman's womb while IVF is when an egg is removed and fertilised outside the body before being returned to the womb.
But meanwhile, the social media manager from Nottingham, Notts and her husband had also been trying to re-plan their wedding, after their initial date of November 5, 2020 was cancelled due to the pandemic.
After moving it to two years later, it was when they had just nine months to go, that Svarc fell pregnant – with a due date that fell three weeks before the big day.
She then went into labour just 10 days before the wedding, giving birth to a baby boy weighing 9lbs at the end of October 2022, who is now 15 weeks' old.
Read more: Molly-Mae Hague reveals she had a ventouse birth but what is that?
But the physical toll her "traumatic" birth took on her meant she couldn't sit down on their wedding day on November 5, 2022, and the shattered new parents were both in bed by 10.30pm.
But nevertheless, Svarc says her little one was the "cutest addition to their guest list".
Recalling finding out she was pregnant, she explains, "We quickly realised – our wedding was also nine months away.
"It'd been so long since our original date, we thought, f*** it, we've been waiting three years for this - and we didn't reschedule.
"Wedding planning – on top of baby planning and working a full-time job – was a lot of admin. It was stressful.
"But I wouldn't change it for the world."
Read more: Joss Stone reveals her womb split during difficult birth – what is a uterine rupture?
The couple had more than 100 guests at their ceremony in Derbyshire, a day they'd waited two years for.
"Because of the Covid pandemic, our planned venue went bust," Svarc says of the 2020 cancellation.
"Then, the registry said we were only allowed six people – and we wanted all my family there as well as my partner's.
"We’d wanted a baby since 2019 and in March 2019, we began trying.
"For nearly two years, nothing happened – and we had to accept the fact that we'd need to explore the possibility of fertility treatment."
After several unsuccessful rounds of IUI (intrauterine insemination) costing £4,000, Svarc and her partner had their first NHS-funded round of IVF in January 2022.
To their joy, it worked, hence the extra-special guest at their wedding celebrations.
“It wasn’t the wedding I’d initially planned – my friends threw me a joint hen do/baby shower – as two of my friends were also pregnant at the time," explains Svarc.
Svarc went into labour in the early hours of October 23. She needed to have an episiotomy (a procedure in which a cut is made from the vagina to the anus) so the baby could be delivered safely on his side.
Svarc needed several stitches and was unable to sit down for a month afterwards.
"My confidence was really knocked on the day of the wedding," she says.
"I spent £2k on ASOS – buying my wedding dress, Spanx to go underneath, and dresses for the bridesmaids.
"I still had half a pregnancy belly, and huge boobs I had no idea what to do with.
"I couldn't sit down, I couldn't dance, and I was expressing [milk]. I was exhausted.
“The guests couldn’t get enough of my new son – he was passed from person-to-person all day.”
Read more: Woman reveals how pregnancy triggered a rare condition that made her blind temporarily
Despite feeling "exhausted" and "hormonal," Svarc wouldn't have changed her wedding day for the world.
"It was the most insane day of my life, but it was so lovely," she says.
"My new husband and I ended up falling asleep at 10.30pm.
"The adrenaline really got me through, and I really enjoyed it in the end."
Additional reporting SWNS.
Watch: 'I refuse to attend baby showers and weddings for friends and family who don't make the effort'
