I didn’t realise BV could be serious

I  just want women to know that BV isn’t just some small thing that doesn’t matter. I have had a lot it since I was young and it used to be embarrassing and horrible but I didn’t realise it could be serious until I had a premature baby.

Luckily he is fine, he was born at 34 weeks and of course we were worried sick but although he was underweight he is a little fighter and he was soon home with us and has no problems now.

I don’t know for sure that BV made him premature but my friend in America told me that it can happen so I read about it online and found out that BV can also mean babies are too small. I asked the midwife and doctors but they basically didn’t know –  anyway I had a healthy baby. But what if I wasn’t so lucky? What if he was smaller and had problems now because he was premature? I get scared when I think about it and when I think about having another baby.

BV is not an STD it’s just too much bacteria but it’s super embarrassing because of the fishy smell. My boyfriend at school was a bit older and he ran a mobile disco with 3 mates who were single and I remember them making fun of girls they’d slept with because they smelled like fish, so I was really sensitive to it.

Doctors kept giving me antibiotics which kept giving me thrush and made me feel totally rubbish, sick and tired all the time. When I was pregnant it was even worse. I didn’t always know if I had BV but sometimes if I wanted treatment for thrush they’d say the BV had come back too. So maybe I had BV when I was pregnant and maybe that’s why I went into labour so early and why he was so small.

I think they should do tests for BV for all women when they are pregnant especially people like me who get it a lot. Maybe it’s not a big problem but imagine if you lost a baby because of something that’s not a big problem, how would you live with that?