Warning: pity party ahead. Could be annoying and frustrating to women who lost a planned pregnancy. I’m sorry.
I had a hormonal IUD. 99.7% effective. I didn’t want to get pregnant - I’m in graduate school, getting a PhD. I live with my long-term boyfriend and we’re in a very stable and loving relationship, but not very stable financially.
Last week I went to a walk-in emergency clinic for abdominal pain. I thought I had severe constipation or something, but I knew something was very wrong. I was bloated with a hard belly, in intense pain that was radiating throughout my body, light-headed and nauseous, and generally just feeling like I may be dying.
They suspected appendicitis but gave me a pregnancy test which came back positive. They told me and my boyfriend to go to the ER immediately.
The ER doctors were terrible. Despite the fact that IUDs significantly increase the risk of a pregnancy being ectopic, and I KNEW from my body that this pregnancy was not viable, they did not put this on my chart. Every nurse and technition began by congratulating me and would not refer to the situation as anything other than “my baby”. I was trying to disassociate. I knew they wouldn’t survive and I didn’t want to spend any time talking about them. The staff wouldn’t let me. But. My uterine lining was too thick to get a clear image on the ultrasound. So they could not confirm it was for sure ectopic immidtaley and they were influenced, I think, by my state’s conservative laws on abortion. No one would even entertain talk of surgery to remove the pregnancy until they were 100% certain it was ectopic. Which meant admitting me to the maternity ward and monitoring my hormones to see of they rose or dropped. All the while, I was bleeding out the end on my fallopian tube, filling my abdomen with blood. Writhing in pain, being given morphine and stronger. And just waiting.
I didn’t know what i was hoping for. I couldn’t process anything. I couldn’t imagine caring for a baby at this stage in my life but… I just couldn’t engage with any thoughts, feelings, or hopes. I just cried.
And then, the next day, they told me my hormones levels were dropping. They said they still didn’t know where the embryo was (I told them right tube because I could freaking FEEL it, but i digress) and so they went in for exploratory surgery. They found the mass and removed it (in the right tube by the way), without rupturing my tube. Best possible outcome. And I thought all was well. Back to normal. Carrying on.
This was a week ago and I have spent the entirety of today in bed. I can’t think about anything else. My shoulders hurt (from the residual irritation of internal bleeding, I think). I am crying and can’t identify quite why. I think I am in mourning for my baby that wasn’t. That I didn’t even want right now. That i didnt even want to call my baby. She would have been so loved though. My boyfriend will be such an amazing father, and when the possibility of a pregnancy arose he handled everything so well. Way better than me. He accepted it and started talking about ways we could work it out so i wouldnt have to quit school. How our parents would help. And i just couldnt even talk about it. But now I’m just so sad. I just wish this hadn’t happened at all. I can’t shake the thought that we created a little living thing, and now it’s gone. What could they have been? They would have been so freaking cute. They would have been so loved. Someday, our babies will be so loved. But it won’t be THAT baby.
I’m pro-choice. But I didn’t have a choice here. I dont know what choice I would have made, and that makes me feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to feel sad. I’m not like the other women on here. I feel some relief over it not being a normal pregnancy, and that makes me feel terrible. I don’t know how I feel. I can’t process anything. I’m so conflicted and so, so sad.