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This is the third and final installment in Life and Love: Miscarriage and Ectopic Pregnancy Loss. Here is where you will find part 1 and part 2 if you missed them.

So we end up at the ER, check in and then wait.  While we are waiting I see a woman from our church who also happens to work in the ER.  She pokes her head in and says hi which is a comfort to me.  Then we also end up seeing my sister-in-law’s future sister-in-law who is doing an internship in the ER.
We waited for at least an hour maybe longer before I am wheeled up for an ultrasound.  When we get in the room who do we see but Emily, my favorite ultrasound tech.  She does the ultrasound and then we’re sent back to the ER where we wait again.  I am starving by this point because all I’ve had to eat is a few jolly ranchers.  I am pretty sure everything is fine and we’ll be going home.  The doctor comes in, he’s a very kind looking man, I immediately like him.  He sits down and proceeds to tell me that my fallopian tube has partially ruptured and I have some internal bleeding going on and that I need emergency surgery.  Wait a minute, what?  I thought I was going home, I’m starving, I’m tired and I am about to freak out!

My knees start shaking and I start crying.  I don’t want surgery, I hate IV’s, I don’t like elevators, I just want to go home.  I tell my husband, well God had a great message for me in church today and now I get to put it into practice.  Ha, I hate when that happens.  The sermon earlier in the morning was on worrying and placing trust in God.  The doctor gives me a verse right there in the room of the ER before he heads upstairs to OB to do a quick C-section while they prep me for surgery.  I somehow talk the nurse into only giving me one IV and letting them do the second one while I’m under because I hate them so much.  I also ask for some drugs to help with my anxiety before surgery.  I don’t remember too much after that, I remember being wheeled into the operating room and the nurses and anesethia guy talking to me and that’s it.
The next thing I remember sort of, is talking to my husband, my sister-in-law, the doctor and some intern that is with him.  Who knows what I was telling them, I don’t think I want to know.  I was supposed to spend the night in the hospital but because I hate elevators, the doctor let me go home to recover.
The surgery was done lapriscopically so I had three very small incisions and that was it.  The recovery was fairly easy, I wasn’t supposed to do any lifting or a lot of walking at first.  One of the hardest parts of the recovery was our little girl who was 3, she kept talking about the baby in my tube.  She didn’t understand and I know that but it was hard to keep hearing that over and over again.
God was faithful through all of this, he brought friends and familiar faces to me in the ER, friends helped care for our children, we had meals made for us, friends helped with shopping, visits and just lots of love.
While I was in surgery at 9pm on Father’s Day, one of our Pastors was at the hospital visiting someone else and heard we were in the ER.  He stayed with my hubby while I was in surgery which was a blessing because my hubby was a little freaked out that I was in surgery.   Finally, the doctor that ended up doing my surgery was just a HUGE blessing to me.  Having someone listen and hear your fears, that’s hard to find.  Finding someone who hears your fears and has compassion is even harder to find!
At my four week check-up after my surgery, I asked if our chances of conceiving would be reduced without two fallopian tubes and we were told they would be reduced by 50%. and the chances of a second ectopic pregnancy increased by 30%.  Awesome.  Not.  So I told my husband we were not getting pregnant again, I didn’t want to go through that again.
Well, I changed my mind not long afterwards.  So the plan was to start trying to conceive again in September.  On September  11th I took a pregnancy test and it was positive.  I was really excited and really scared at the same time.  I couldn’t believe that we were pregnant so quickly and before we even tried.  I was able to have my HCG levels tested a few times and also at 5 weeks along we had
an ultrasound to confirm the placement of the pregnancy.  Everything was great and we were able to hear the heartbeat at the end of October.  We debated finding out the sex at the 20 week ultrasound but finally decided to go ahead.  I was pretty sure it was another girl and so was the hubby.
We were able to get our ultrasound in before Christmas but we didn’t tell our parents.  At the ultrasound we were quite shocked when we found out we were having a boy!  It was fun to surprise our parents’ with a Christmas tree ornament that had the ultrasound picture of a little baby boy part framed between his legs.  We have sick humor, in case you didn’t know this already.  We ended up needing another ultrasound in April and joy of joys, it was Emily our favorite tech!  It was so aweosme  to have her doing the ultrasound, our girls were also in the room and she made it a wonderful memory for all of us!  I love how God used her in our life through both losses and then both subsequent pregnancies.
So to make a long story short, our healthy baby boy was born the end of May 2009 and the doctor who performed the surgery and became my OB doctor was able to deliver our son!  It was a wonderful moment for all of us and  I am so thankful for another baby and for God’s blessings after the pain.

I copied this excerpt from our family blog during May of 2009, Today at my appointment he starts off by telling us how special this baby is and how he is so excited to meet him, how this baby is bringing full circle last summer’s surgery and how we wants to be there to deliver the baby.  We were so blessed to have this doctor in our life for a year and to be able to celebrate with us the birth of our son.  The hubs and I joked about having the baby’s middle name be our OB doctor’s first name.  We had picked out the name Jacob but when our little bubs was born he didn’t look like a Jacob to me.  I thought of a different name and my mom actually thought of the same name.  I convinced hubby to name him the name I thought of and in the baby book, his name means “God is willing” which was so perfect!  He was willing!
God was very faithful during the dark hours and I look back now and just see His hand everywhere during those times.  I know that not everyone can conceive again after a pregnancy loss but I want to put this experience out there for someone who needs to be encouraged after suffering an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage.  Thank you for reading this and if you ever need to talk with someone about a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, I’d be happy to chat with you.

About Post Author

ange

https://www.thebloominghydrangea.com

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This blog post has been on my mind a lot lately maybe because God knows someone out there needs to read it. Maybe it’s for my own benefit. This is going to be a three part series because it’s long but I hope that this will benefit someone out there, in letting them know they are not alone, to encourage someone that there is hope after a pregnancy loss.
I have been pregnant six times and I have four children. The first time we found out we were pregnant was December 23rd 1999. Funny how the day and even what I was doing sticks in my mind. I was so extremely crabby, I was vacuuming our living room and when my hubs came home from work I sent him to the store for a pregnancy test. We were not trying to conceive, we were using birth control and we had only been married for about 17 months. He came back, our friends came over and sat with us while we waited. Sure enough, there were two lines, I was pregnant! I freaked out, I cried, I was not ready to be pregnant, I was scared, I was not in control. After a while I calmed down and was a little more rational.
Later that night we decided to call our parents and tell them they were going to be grandparents,  early Christmas present for them and sharing the news with other people helped us to be more excited.   We also found out that some friends of ours were also pregnant and we would be due within days of each other.  I was starting to feel better, was starting to get a little excited yet I was still unsure.
I had never been pregnant before but from the very beginning I always felt like there was something wrong. The clinic here does not see a pregnant woman until she is 10 to 12 weeks along and I was only 5 so it would be a few weeks before I would see a doctor.  I tried calling another clinic 30 minutes away and they would see me about a week earlier so I decided I would just have to wait it out and I was probably worrying for nothing.
Life continued on for a few more weeks and then on January 6th, I had some spotting but it was mostly brown. Sorry if it’s tmi but it’s just part of my story. I called the nurseline and they told me that it’s not uncommon to have some spotting or brown discharge early on in pregnancy, it could be implantation bleeding, just watch it and take it easy for the rest of the night. I tried not to freak out and just hung out on the couch but eventually the bleeding increased and my neighbor who was a nurse decided we should go in to the ER. We went in, they took some blood, they examined me and told me that yes, I was probably having a miscarriage, call the OB tomorrow and tell them what is happening. That was it. I don’t really remember the rest of the night.   The next day was my husband’s 23rd birthday and also the day of our very first ultrasound.  The ultrasound tech was just wonderful, her name was Emily and she was so kind and compassionate, unlike the doctor in the ER the night before. We were told that the sac was empty, I was having a miscarriage and to just wait it out.
They sent us home and the waiting game was on. We waited until the following week, went back in, still bleeding, still pregnant. After doing this for almost 4 weeks the doctor finally told me that I had to have a D&C because my body wasn’t doing what it needed to and they had let me wait long enough.  I did not want a D&C, did not want to be put out, did not want to deal with all of this.  In a way, I was still pregnant, I hadn’t lost the baby.  They also handed me a pamphlet that talked about how the baby would be buried in the cemetary across the street under a tree.  The baby was too small to require a funeral but with a D&C they take the remains and bury them together once a month.  I remember sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office and trying so hard not to cry, surrounded by pregnant women, scared and alone in my grief.
On February 4th I went in tot he clinic and had a D&C procedure.  Physically I was fine, I felt normal but inside I was hurting.  I was depressed, I didn’t do anything but stay home all day and watch tv or sit on the computer.  I didn’t really know anyone who had been through a miscarriage and we had only been living in this town for about a year so we didn’t have a lot of friends or support where we lived.  I eventually found some women in an online community on Babycenter and that was really helpful, to be able to talk with someone who was going through what I was going through.
During this time we were attending a church in town but it didn’t have a lot of young people our age and I didn’t grow up in a church so I didn’t know that maybe our church should have come alongside us in this time of grief.  When I think of women who have lost babies and how our current church has reached out to them, I am so thankful!  To have people to walk along side of you during this time of loss is so so important.  That is why I want to share this story and also give you a few more links from women who have also lost babies, you are not alone!!
In April we found out we were expecting again, this time we actually tried to conceive!  I was so excited and also so worried, I was constantly checking to make sure I wasn’t bleeding and I was so relieved when we were able to get in early and have the blood draws to make sure my numbers were increasing like they needed to and then to have an ultrasound at 6 weeks to see the little jelly bean all safe and snug in the sac!
Our due date was December 28th but I ended up being overdue which led to being induced and so we went in on January 7th, the night of my husband’s 24th birthday.  I was so thankful that God redeemed that day for him, making one year later a happy day, the day we go in to have our first baby!  Well she wasn’t born until January 9th but that was ok, we were just happy to have a healthy baby girl!

After that we had 2 more healthy beautiful babies. We were not sure if three kids was the stopping point for us or not.  We had scheduled a vasectomy a few times and then I’d call my hubby and ask him to cancel because I wasn’t sure I was ready to be done. So our life as a family of five just continued on for a few years…….

To be continued, part 2 and part 3.

Here are a few other blog posts on pregnancy loss, I am sure there are more out there.

http://madeinhisimagemomma.blogspot.com/2010/10/he-knows-your-namehe-sees-each-tear.html

http://belleofthebustle.blogspot.com/2011/05/no-easy-answers.html

http://angiesmithonline.com/2008/01/the-beginning-of-the-story/

Thank you for reading this post and I pray that if you have lost a baby, you will find hope and healing through these blog posts!

About Post Author

ange

https://www.thebloominghydrangea.com

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