She had an ectopic pregnancy?
I absolutely hate birth control. Us ladies have enough to worry about without having to consume a hormone that makes me a tad crazy and mood swingy, gain a little bit of weight (you know those 10 we are always trying to loose.. then we would be perfect... (Eye Roll)). It just makes me all around a bit weird.
I thought that I had it all under control. I was taking my pill right before I went to sleep so that the hormones would be at their worst when I was asleep. This caused some mild night sweats, but lets be real, anything is better than day sweats! The only catch was that, if I ever could not fall asleep in the first 1 hour of taking it, I was up all night. But as lots of us do, I took this pill religiously, for obvious reasons.
After Christmas I went to the gym and had a really great workout. The kind where you sweat profusely and look gross but just FEEL SO GOOD. On the way home from the gym I got hit with a wave of nausea. I had to eat! Now! I ate, felt better, then super full. This feeling was just all to familiar... I thought, hmmm I feel pregnant. Could I be? The next morning I took a pregnancy test. There were two lines! WOW! You can imagine my surprise!
Really, I mean I should not have been too surprised. To a regular person birth control is 99.9% effective. To someone with my genes I think its about 70%. I blame my Mom for this one. (Have I made too many life decisions now that I can't blame my parents for anything anymore?!) My Mom's Grandma had 14 children and my grandma had 8, my Mom had 3. (Also fun fact, my Mom is a fraternal twin, thats the genetic kind!) I know it was a different time and all but still, very fertile. I remember my Grandpa saying something completely over my head at the age of 7 or 8. He said "Every time I look at your grandma she has a baby!" I remember thinking, "Really! Then went around (probably very creepily) trying to impregnate the ladies in my life with my eyes!
Although it was super unexpected and took a bit of time to digest, I was really happy. I love my partner, and my family is melding so well, it ended up feeling very right. My partner and I had a weekend where we digested, got a chance to take a good look at our lives, plan a little bit and be in the moment of what is to come. Me in my truest form planned milestones for the next two years over one weekend, house, income, lifestyle, and dreams about this new bottle machine that when your baby is ready for formula you just place a a bottle under a spout and it fills up with milk to a perfectly heated body temperature. Similar to a Keurig or Tassimo coffee machine... unreal right?
A couple days later I woke up in the middle of the night with some sharp pain and cramping specifically on my right side. Then I started bleeding. It was very scary and I felt very out of control. My initial thought was, "I am miscarrying." My partner and I went to the hospital at 2:00am and we waited. Initially the doctors and nurses suspected the same thing, that I was miscarrying. They did an ultrasound which showed nothing. They said that is okay because I am so early in my pregnancy that they probably wouldn't see anything anyways. The good news at that point in time was that they did a blood test and it showed that I still had high pregnancy levels in my blood. They asked us to come back the next day for a full ultrasound and do some more investigation. This one was an internal ultrasound and... not on the belly... let me tell you, not the most comfortable experience! The ultrasound results came back and all of a sudden the doctors started to prioritize my care above other patients. That was a bit alarming in itself. My partner and I got whisked into emergency and actually called in an on call doctor/surgeon. To be honest, he was really such a good part of this whole experience. He truly made it all bearable and made me feel normal and okay.
The doctor explained to us that I had an ectopic pregnancy. An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilized egg attaches itself in you fallopian tube instead of the uterus. They are sometimes called tubal pregnancies. The fallopian tub is not designed to hold a growing baby. Its very dangerous. The mom and the child both have no chance of surviving. The doctor told me I would have to get this shot called a methotrexate shot. This shot dissolves the egg into the body.
The doctor told me that the potential cause of me having this pregnancy was actually the birth control I was on. When you go on the pill, it tightens up your tubes so that its difficult for the baby to travel up to the uterus making implantation not possible. But CLEARLY every once in a while one gets through! Did I mention I hate what birth control does to the body? I probably should not have been too surprised at this one either, my partner never does things "status quo" so the little guy was probably just as free spirited and stubborn as him.
Learning all of this, I literally felt like I died a little inside. Here is this little unexpected thing that was a part of me and a part of my partner that I just learned about 5 days earlier. There I was getting a shot in both of my legs to remove it. It was quite devastating.
That night we went home and expected some symptoms from the shot like bleeding ect. But something just didn't seem right. I was experiencing some super severe pain still on my right hand side where the pregnancy was. We ended up going back into the hospital.
I got another ultrasound and it turns out the baby was still growing and my fallopian tube was looking like it may rupture. On top of that I had a lot of fluid in my abdomen area and that was concerning. The doctor was taking my hemoglobin level and it was dropping every time we tested it. Basically he told me that I have about 5 litres of blood in my body and my test were only showing I have 4 litres, but I'm not bleeding on the outside, so where was it going?
I'm sure you guessed, the liquid in my stomach turned out to be internal bleeding! Yikes. Into surgery I went. Thankfully the doctor was able to save the tube, remove the blood and every thing went as well as it could have.
My partner (who totally deserves a shout out here) literally slept beside me every night in the hospital, did every single chore in the house, cleaned up my daughters puke (oh yeah she had the flu when I was recovering), called my work, called my family... such a superstar.
So here I am re-capping the story for you guys and getting a bit teary while doing it. I went back and forth as to if I would share this publicly or not, not to mention an opening blog. When it was all happening, I felt like maybe something was wrong with me, what did I do to cause this? Then... something amazing happened. I started opening up to other women and learned that SO many of them could empathize and had a similar story. Many of them told me that they never told anyone, that was devastating to me. It's weird to be a part of this lost baby club, but it's also a really refreshing to know that i's not just me.
The really amazing thing about this whole experience is that I got a really good dose of perspective. I am a known workaholic, I am always moving around, I am not even 100% sure I know how to just sit down. (What?! There is ALWAYS something to do!) I feel like I am a bit of a changed person. I have my priorities straight, I love my partner and my daughter even more, if anything this has made me stronger, wiser, and more capable to tackle anything that I want. It's really made me value individual interactions and be more intentional with my words.
One side note before I go...I will say the surgery really damaged my ab muscles... so if anyone has some tips to gently rehab them... please feel free to share!
Thanks for reading and please share with other people going through hard stuff, its not just you! It's not just you!
Steph xx
I thought that I had it all under control. I was taking my pill right before I went to sleep so that the hormones would be at their worst when I was asleep. This caused some mild night sweats, but lets be real, anything is better than day sweats! The only catch was that, if I ever could not fall asleep in the first 1 hour of taking it, I was up all night. But as lots of us do, I took this pill religiously, for obvious reasons.
 |
| Preggo! |
After Christmas I went to the gym and had a really great workout. The kind where you sweat profusely and look gross but just FEEL SO GOOD. On the way home from the gym I got hit with a wave of nausea. I had to eat! Now! I ate, felt better, then super full. This feeling was just all to familiar... I thought, hmmm I feel pregnant. Could I be? The next morning I took a pregnancy test. There were two lines! WOW! You can imagine my surprise!
Really, I mean I should not have been too surprised. To a regular person birth control is 99.9% effective. To someone with my genes I think its about 70%. I blame my Mom for this one. (Have I made too many life decisions now that I can't blame my parents for anything anymore?!) My Mom's Grandma had 14 children and my grandma had 8, my Mom had 3. (Also fun fact, my Mom is a fraternal twin, thats the genetic kind!) I know it was a different time and all but still, very fertile. I remember my Grandpa saying something completely over my head at the age of 7 or 8. He said "Every time I look at your grandma she has a baby!" I remember thinking, "Really! Then went around (probably very creepily) trying to impregnate the ladies in my life with my eyes!
Although it was super unexpected and took a bit of time to digest, I was really happy. I love my partner, and my family is melding so well, it ended up feeling very right. My partner and I had a weekend where we digested, got a chance to take a good look at our lives, plan a little bit and be in the moment of what is to come. Me in my truest form planned milestones for the next two years over one weekend, house, income, lifestyle, and dreams about this new bottle machine that when your baby is ready for formula you just place a a bottle under a spout and it fills up with milk to a perfectly heated body temperature. Similar to a Keurig or Tassimo coffee machine... unreal right?
 |
| The incredible view from our Air |
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| I'm basically an ectopic pregnancy expert now! |
The doctor told me that the potential cause of me having this pregnancy was actually the birth control I was on. When you go on the pill, it tightens up your tubes so that its difficult for the baby to travel up to the uterus making implantation not possible. But CLEARLY every once in a while one gets through! Did I mention I hate what birth control does to the body? I probably should not have been too surprised at this one either, my partner never does things "status quo" so the little guy was probably just as free spirited and stubborn as him.
Learning all of this, I literally felt like I died a little inside. Here is this little unexpected thing that was a part of me and a part of my partner that I just learned about 5 days earlier. There I was getting a shot in both of my legs to remove it. It was quite devastating.
That night we went home and expected some symptoms from the shot like bleeding ect. But something just didn't seem right. I was experiencing some super severe pain still on my right hand side where the pregnancy was. We ended up going back into the hospital.
 |
| This photo cracks me up because I'm SO high on hospital drugs for my pain after surgery that I'm slightly cross eyed |
I'm sure you guessed, the liquid in my stomach turned out to be internal bleeding! Yikes. Into surgery I went. Thankfully the doctor was able to save the tube, remove the blood and every thing went as well as it could have.
 |
| He's such a dreamboat, am i right? |
My partner (who totally deserves a shout out here) literally slept beside me every night in the hospital, did every single chore in the house, cleaned up my daughters puke (oh yeah she had the flu when I was recovering), called my work, called my family... such a superstar.
So here I am re-capping the story for you guys and getting a bit teary while doing it. I went back and forth as to if I would share this publicly or not, not to mention an opening blog. When it was all happening, I felt like maybe something was wrong with me, what did I do to cause this? Then... something amazing happened. I started opening up to other women and learned that SO many of them could empathize and had a similar story. Many of them told me that they never told anyone, that was devastating to me. It's weird to be a part of this lost baby club, but it's also a really refreshing to know that i's not just me.
The really amazing thing about this whole experience is that I got a really good dose of perspective. I am a known workaholic, I am always moving around, I am not even 100% sure I know how to just sit down. (What?! There is ALWAYS something to do!) I feel like I am a bit of a changed person. I have my priorities straight, I love my partner and my daughter even more, if anything this has made me stronger, wiser, and more capable to tackle anything that I want. It's really made me value individual interactions and be more intentional with my words.
 |
| Could I be luckier? |
Thanks for reading and please share with other people going through hard stuff, its not just you! It's not just you!
Steph xx
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