Hey guys,
Just thought I’d share my experiences with you. I was 21 when I fell pregnant, I had been trying with my partner and I was really excited, especially seeing as I’d been trying for a baby for quite a while with no results. My mother had fertility problems and I was scared the same thing was going to happen to me. After the initial excitement, however weird it sounds, I ‘felt’ that something was wrong. I don’t know how, I just knew. I rang the early pregnancy unit at my local hospital and they told me to come in, the nurse made me do a pregnancy test and I kept thinking that it would come back negative and I told myself that it was silly, I’d done 5 tests and all of them had come back positive. I handed the test to the nurse and she told me that it was a very weak positive. I thought it was strange, but hey, it was a positive. Then I went in to a room and they did an ultrasound, and couldn’t find anything. Alarm bells started ringing in my head, but more because I thought it was a mistake and I wasn’t pregnant. Ectopic pregnancy didn’t even cross my mind. The doctor then did a transvaginal ultrasound, and suddenly the doctor who had been chatting away to me for 10 minutes went deadly quiet and started clicking buttons, taking pictures of my fallopian tubes. He then told me that the pregnancy was ectopic, that the baby was growing inside my fallopian tube. He showed me the scans and I just sat there, numb. Everything after that was a bit of a blur to be honest. I remember I was told to wait in a room with my partner and his son. My partner’s son was about 3 and in his pushchair messing about, I remember I got so angry I kicked the pushchair. Not long after that I stormed out and went home. I can’t remember how I got home, whether it was by bus or taxi or what. I don’t remember. What I do remember is that I screamed and cried and swore and generally went temporarily insane when I got home. I’d been writing on a pregnancy forum and I sat down after I’d calmed down and wrote on the forum that I’d discovered it was ectopic. The people on the forum wrote back and told me to get back to the hospital, I ignored it. I ignored my boyfriend and sat in some kind of stupor until the hospital called me. They begged me to come back to the hospital, they told me how dangerous it was to leave the pregnancy how it was. I hardly registered anything they said, I didn’t want to go back, I wanted to savour being pregnant, I’m sure you know what I mean. I didn’t want to think what they were going to do with me and my baby. I ended up going back, and I was there for hours, waiting for a surgeon, they poked needles in me, took blood tests and then left. They originally told me that I could possibly take some pills and that would be all, but it became clear that surgery was the only option. Whilst lying in the hospital bed waiting for the surgeon to be ready, I began to experience a bit of pain, although I wasn’t sure whether this was actual pain, or me imagining it, because I’d been told repeatedly to tell someone if I experienced any pain, a nurse came along and (sorry if this too much information) stuck two fingers inside me, wiggled them about a bit, and left. It was horrible. Anyway, the time for surgery came along, and I was wheeled in to the anaesthetic room. The anaesthetist told me that he was just putting some water in to my drip, and the next thing I knew I woke up crying. My boyfriend wasn’t around, I think he was sorting childcare out or something, like I said, all this I barely remember. I woke up crying and angry at my boyfriend because he wasn’t there. Then something happened, I don’t remember what, and I discharged myself that night. They told me not to, but I did. The pain from the surgery was like doing far too many sit ups and then waking up the next morning with everything hurting. I don’t remember much else apart from trying to blank it out and not deal with it, and to be honest I did it pretty well. I didn’t get that upset over it.
Then, a year later, almost to the day, I fell pregnant again. Once again I had to go through the process of telling my mum and dad, who were not very happy as I was so young, and I went through the process of going for an early scan and finding out it was ectopic. Again. This time, the doctor went straight for the transvaginal scan, and before he even said anything, I started crying. I already knew. The doctor told me I’d now be able to have two free shots at IVF, but I’d never be able to conceive naturally. I was 22.
I’m 24 now, and it still hurts, I can’t lie. I try to bury it, but I’m constantly reminded by little things. My best friend is pregnant, conversations about pregnancy and newborns, and then my friends going silent as they remember I can’t join in, adverts on the TV. I’ve been sat eating, and I’ve had a friend say, ‘God Jade, are you sure you’re not pregnant?’ and then they remember. I don’t bare my midriff because of my scars, I fret about having to tell future partners that I can’t have children. It’s hard, and I do get upset, but I try to be strong. My problem is that I haven’t dealt with it, I don’t talk to people about it, I try to ignore it, and it doesn’t help. This is the first time I’ve really relived what I went through. One day I’m going to have to face it properly, and grieve. Until that day I will just carry on living my life, getting through each day one step at a time.
I wish all of you out there the very best of luck, and I am here to help, talk, listen or moan at if anyone just needs an ear to bend.
J
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