Hellobee

This post was originally written during Summer 2017. It has taken me a while to get comfortable with sharing this experience. Finally, I feel like I am in a place to put this out there in hopes that others who may have experienced or are currently experiencing an ectopic pregnancy can find comfort in my story. I do want to mention that some details may be graphic.

Mr. Cheesecake and I had been going back and forth about having a third. StarCakes just celebrated his fourth birthday and GemCakes was now two and a half, so we were out of the baby phase and in the thick of toddler-little kid territory. I loved watching my kids’ sibling relationship grow. They really seem to be each other’s playmates and will look for each other around the house. When we’re out, StarCakes will ask about GemCakes if she’s not following him around the playground. I wouldn’t want to ruin the bond that they are creating right now, but I felt like there was someone missing. I looked at pictures of the two of them and thought “Would a third one complete this picture?” There was no easy answer to this. After some discussion, we decided to let things take their course and try for our third and last baby.

After a couple months of trying, I was excited when my period was a couple days late and jumped at the chance to confirm it with a positive home pregnancy test. The test came out positive and we were excited. I knew that this would be our last pregnancy and started to think about documenting it with weekly bump photos and blog posts on Hellobee about my pregnancy progress. I started thinking about names, whether we would be team green like we were the first two times or if we would find out the sex since this would be our last one. However, elated I was about the pregnancy a red flag remained in the back of my mind – I had severe cramping and abdominal pain that left me bed-ridden a couple weeks before which made me wonder if my cycle was a little off or not. I remember reading somewhere (probably on Dr. Google) that cycles that were particularly painful may not end with viable pregnancies. I continued to have on and off cramps leading up to the positive pregnancy test, but attributed that to the pregnancy implanting in my uterus.

A week later we told our immediate family about the pregnancy. Their excitement for the new addition fueled our excitement as well. I start looking at maternity clothes online and figure out what the next nine months would be like for us as a family. I looked forward to the expected early March due date and thought about potential names.

Then to my surprise, a couple days later I woke up with spotting. This wasn’t odd since I’ve had spotting before with my first two pregnancies, what struck me was that the spotting was first dark brown and throughout the day it progressed to bright red. I had to start wearing a pad since there was so much bleeding. That’s when I knew things weren’t right. I went to the bathroom later that day and when I wiped it was even brighter red and there were blood clots and white clots (which may have been fetal tissue) on the toilet paper. Was I miscarrying? What was going on?

I called our insurance provider and spoke to a nurse who recommended that I go to the ER. However aside from the bleeding, I had no other symptoms of a miscarriage like back-pain, cramping and light-headedness and since we had a family gathering to go to that evening I asked if I could go to the ER the next morning and the nurse said that would be fine. We went to the party, my bleeding stopped while we were there and I felt fine the rest of the night. I even took another home pregnancy test that showed I was still pregnant. I also continued to have pregnancy symptoms like nausea, extreme hunger and thirst – so I still had a little hope.

Early the next morning Mr. Cheesecake and I went to the ER. They did some blood-work and an ultrasound. The blood-work said that I had hCG levels that indicated I was pregnant, but the ultrasound didn’t show anything in my uterus that resembled a developing fetus or sac. They called my situation a “threatened abortion.” They asked me to take the next couple days off work and told me to continue monitoring my symptoms. The doctor said I would need to have another blood test in two days to determine if my hCG levels were decreasing as in the case of a miscarriage, or increasing as in the case of a normal pregnancy. We left the ER not knowing if I was having a miscarriage or not.

I stayed home from work the following day, got my blood-work done in the morning and went back to work the day after. For the next couple days I barely had any spotting so I thought things would go back to normal. I played phone tag with my provider and eventually got a call from them saying that I needed to come in for another ultrasound and that I would see the ob-gyn right after. Based on my blood-work results my hCG levels were not dropping as if I had a miscarriage and they were concerned that I might have an ectopic pregnancy so they wanted me to come in the very next day. It felt like everything was moving fast and that I didn’t have time to think and to calm my nerves.

I went to work in the morning and then to the hospital for my ultrasound. The tech was really nice, but I knew as I saw her conducting the ultrasound that there was nothing in my uterus even though I had the hCG levels of a pregnant lady. I met with the ob-gyn after and that is when she told me that she was sure that I had an ectopic pregnancy. The ultrasound results showed fetal tissue in my right Fallopian tube, less than a centimeter away from my uterus. This was most likely what was causing the pregnant hCG levels in my blood-work but the lack of sac in my uterus. She told me I had two options – take Methotrexate to help the body absorb the pregnancy tissue or have surgery to remove the affected Fallopian tube. I choose the Methotrexate because it seemed like the less invasive option and got the shots that day at another hospital. She told me that i will need to have blood-work done in 4, 7 and 14 days to make sure my hCG levels are dropping properly. If they didn’t drop then surgery may need to be considered. The doctor warned me that sometimes the Methotrexate doesn’t work and that surgery may be needed, but that is rare.

But more pressing for me was that we had our annual trip to Chicago to visit my family coming up in a week or so. I had asked the doctor if I could fly after having the Methotrexate shots and she said no because she didn’t want me to risk flying with a Fallopian tube that can potentially rupture if the pregnancy tissue enlarges. She said ectopic pregnancies can be life threatening and if the tube ruptures I could die if I don’t get immediate medical attention. She also told me that we would have to wait 3 months after taking Methotrexate if we wanted to start trying for another pregnancy.

On top of all this, not only was I upset and disappointed that I was losing the pregnancy, I was also angry that this was imposing on our family vacation that we had been planning and looking forward to for a while now. We cancelled our flights and told my family what was going on. They understood why we had to cancel, but were still sad that we wouldn’t be able to see each other that summer.

The worst part about the whole situation though was waiting for the Methotrexate to lower my hCG levels to non-pregnancy levels and then trying to figure out when we could start trying again. I wanted to rip the band aid off and be done, to get on with my life. But it took almost two months for my levels to go down, and while that may not seem like a while it felt like forever going in for weekly blood-tests and seeing the number go down but not enough. Patience is not my strong suit and I had thought that taking Methotrexate would be the quicker option, but apparently it wasn’t.

So here I am now months later – not pregnant. I’m not quite sure where to go from here. I have been feeling mostly numb and in denial for the past couple weeks about what has happened. I firmly believe that good and bad things happen for a reason; that there is always something to learn from our experiences. This was one of those things.

Thank you for giving me the space to share my experience.