Dear SG,
I am so sorry to hear of your ectopic pregnancy and loss,
When we experience ectopic pregnancy we are suddenly faced with a life threatening emergency and it’s treatment, reduction in fertility, concerns about the future and the loss of our babies. Experiencing any one of these is an ordeal, putting them together is immense and your feelings are completely normal.
Unfortunately I am not medically trained so I cannot give you specific advice, however I will try my best to answer your questions.
1, unless you have been told otherwise by a fertility doctor, I guess we would always say there is hope for a natural conception. We do hear stories of women who are told it will be very difficult to conceive but do go on to have a healthy pregnancy. I would suspect however, that these are in the minority of those seeking help from fertility specialists, but don’t rule of our completely.
2,Yes you can still conceive naturally from one tube. Agreed, the nurse was very unhelpful and actually factually incorrect. Generally, when a person has only one fallopian tube and both ovaries, they are still able to get pregnant from an egg at the opposite ovary as an egg from one ovary can travel down the tube on the other side. The fallopian tubes are not attached to the ovaries and, at the point of ovulation, some very delicate structures called the fimbriae begin to move gently creating a slight vacuum to suck the egg toward the end of the tube it is nearest to (like lots of little fingers waving and drawing the egg towards it). So, if you have only one tube then there is only one set of receptors working and one set of fimbriae creating a vacuum and so the egg is much more likely to find its way to that tube, whichever ovary it is produced from. Conservative estimates suggest that an egg produced on the tubeless side manages to descend the remaining tube around 15 to 20% of the time.
3, I am not sure on figures, I am not sure if chances of ectopic pregnancy are higher with IVF, per say. There is a chance of ectopic pregnancy with IVF and sadly, if women have experienced ectopic pregnancy in the past, The risk increases but this would be The same concieving naturally too.
4, This would have to be directed to your fertility specialist, from my limited knowledge of IVF, I cannot see why having an ectopic pregnancy would directly affect the actual transfers of embryos.
I hope you have follow up with your fertility specialist too and I would take these and other questions you have written down, to ask directly so you get more personalised answers as they will have access to your medical notes.
For now, be kind to yourself and allow time to , to heal both physically and emotionally.
We will be here for you for as long as you need,
Sending much love,
Karen x
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and i just don’t know what next. I firmly believe i could fall naturally without IVF - i feel my stress over it not happening meant it didn’t happen and i almost rushed into IVF and got on this train and it’s runaway with me! So i guess i have a few questions: