After a miscarriage last year, I found out that we were expecting again.
At 8 weeks pregnant on 11th June 2024, I had a brown discharge but was aware of spotting so I did not worry about this, until that evening I had developed a sharp severe pain down lower left side. The next morning I contacted my GP who referred me onto the Early Pregnancy Unit, they told us to come in that afternoon for an internal scan. At the scan, there was an empty sac, the midwife told us this was ‘Pregnancy of Unknown Location’. She took bloods as a baseline and told us to come back 48 hours for more bloods, she explained if the number of hormone levels go up, this would indicate an ectopic or my body responding slowly to a miscarriage. We were devastated!
We returned 48 hours later and our levels went from 1917 (Wed) to 2021 (Fri).
We were told to return the next day to see the Consultant, after an internal scan, the Consultant confirmed Ectopic. We were informed I could not pass this myself and were given 2 options of medical intervention; Methotrexate or surgical but with surgical they would need to remove my left fallopian tube. So we opted for Methotrexate.
The Consultant had said numerous times that we were lucky we caught this early as if it had ruptured it could have been life threatening.
I had to get more bloods done prior to injection to ensure liver, kidneys and blood were ok which meant we had to wait around for results. Sitting in the waiting room with heavily pregnant women and new born babies was VERY difficult! So one one of the nursing assistants eventually took us into a private room. We got the injection and went home.
We had to return on Day 4 and Day 7 for more bloods to ensure levels were dropping. Thereafter, we had to attend weekly bloods to ensure levels were still going down. I ensured the staff knew we were grateful for them looking after us but was not good and very hard to be sitting in a waiting areas with heavily pregnant women, babies that were days old and family members of women in labour asking us, “if we were waiting on good news too?!” I needed to get that point across as that was emotionally hard to do, not only for me but others in my situation also!
My levels dropped well, and I was finally discharged from the hospital yesterday.
In one sense, I am happy to be healthy as I had been in severe pain for the last few weeks, not able to move, bleeding very heavily, but on the other hand, absolutely devastated we have lost our wee baby , and being discharged from hospital, that is closure. It is comforting to come on to this site and read stories that other families have went through. It helps alot with grief and reading success stories has given me hope for the future that one day we can start a family too.
Thanks for reading and please comment if you wish to as Ectopic seems to be very common and no one knows much about it until it has happened to their family.