tttiggerrr
10-03-2005, 02:33 PM
On Thursday, September 15, I ran out before DD’s playgroup and on the way there I started having a pain in my left side. When I came back home, I told DH that if it didn’t get better I didn’t know if we should go to the hospital. After playgroup was over, the pain got bad enough that I could barely stand up because it hurt so bad. We decided to go to the emergency room and the whole way there I was convinced that I was losing the baby or dying because I have never felt pain like that in my entire life. I wanted to puke, felt like I was going to pass out, and was shaking. We got to the hospital and they didn't make us wait at all. As I was walking back into a room, I felt a gush of blood and that scared me even more.
They finally did a sonogram and the tech told me that it wasn't an ectopic pregnancy because my tubes looked clear. They found an “irregular gestational sac” in my uterus and told me that I had a 50-50 chance of miscarrying. They told me to follow up with my OB in the morning for a “threatened miscarriage.”
On Friday, September 16, I saw my OB and she ordered another sonogram. The sonogram tech this time was the same one that did one of DD's sonograms. She told me that her gut feeling was that she was seeing an ectopic pregnancy because she saw something in my left tube that measured 2 cm, but she also saw a sac in my uterus. It looked like an empty sac, but it was so early that they weren't sure that they would be able to see anything in there if there was something in there. I asked her for a picture like I had with DD incase something bad did happen, but she wouldn't give us one.
My OB said that it could be a cyst or an ectopic pregnancy, but that it was too early to tell because my HCG level (3500) looked really good and they didn't see any signs of a baby - a heartbeat, a fetal pole, a yolk sac - in my tube. She sent me home and told me to have my blood drawn again for another HCG test in the morning.
On Saturday, September 17, I went to have my blood drawn and she called me around 1:30 with the results: my HCG had risen to 5700, which isn't quite 66%. She asked me to go back to the ER to have another sonogram, although she didn't expect to see anything changed since the day before and told me to be prepared to just wait it out over the weekend for another blood draw on Monday. We got to the hospital around 2:00 p.m. and they did the sonogram shortly after we arrived. The sonogram tech started looking through my tummy and said she thought she saw a heartbeat in the sac in my uterus. She said she wasn't sure because the quality is horrible since I'm only about 6 weeks, but she showed me the little speck that she thought was the heartbeat. She did a transvaginal ultrasound and couldn't find the speck again. She found the sac without any problem, but it looked completely empty and wasn't quite the right shape.
She checked my right tube ovary and said that it was clear, but when she went to the left, she saw an ectopic pregnancy immediately this time. All she could say was, “It’s ectopic.” I asked if she was absolutely sure and she showed me. I was still hopeful that she might be wrong until she showed me the heartbeat. It was a clear as a bell. She measured the baby and it was 4cm - twice the size that it had been 24 hours before. She did color scans to see the blood flow to my ovary and that was the saddest part because you could see the red flow of blood to my ovary and then you could see this tiny, flickering, red speck of blood through the baby's heart as it beat.
They took me back to the ER room where DH and DD. My OB called me a few minutes later and told me that I couldn't leave the hospital until I had surgery because they were afraid that my tube might rupture. I couldn't stop crying because we wanted this baby so bad and I didn't want to have surgery to kill it. My OB gave me the option of laparoscopic surgery or a laparatomy. I really wanted the laparatomy because they could do it with a spinal and I'd be awake through it - I didn't want to be put under, - but I didn't want to go through that long of a recovery. It took me about two and a half hours to make the decision and come to grips with the fact that the baby had to die to save me.
I made the decision to have laparoscopic surgery around 6:45 Saturday night and they brought me the consent forms immediately. Signing those forms has to be the most difficult thing I've ever done since I knew that I was giving them permission to kill my baby. After I signed the forms, I went to the bathroom and by the time I'd come back out they had the gurney there to take me to surgery. From what I found out later, they'd already called in the surgical team and had gotten things ready for both surgeries so that they would be ready to go the minute I made the decision. That made me even more scared since they considered it that much of an emergency.
While I was in recovery, my OB went to talk to DH and told him how happy she was that they hadn't waited because I'd been leaking blood into my abdominal cavity and that’s what the pain must have been from. She later told me that she couldn’t believe that I wasn’t in more pain based on what she saw.
The worst part for me was when I woke up. Before I was even coherent enough to remember where I was, I remember thinking that I didn’t feel pregnant anymore; I just felt empty. Then I remembered where I was and what had happened. The recovery hasn’t been bad, but now I wish I’d been awake because I realized that no one was there for my baby when s/he died. I just pray that since they say that the anesthesia in childbirth gets to the baby (and my OB said they don’t like to do surgery at all during the first trimester because it gets to the baby then too) that the baby was sufficiently anesthetized that what they did didn’t hurt.
We named the baby Taylor. DH and I both felt that the least that we could do was honor our baby's memory by giving him or her a name. Physically, I'm well on the road to recovery. Emotionally, I can't get over the fact that I killed my baby to save myself - even though my head knows that Taylor didn't have a chance, my heart is having a hard time coming to grips with it.
They finally did a sonogram and the tech told me that it wasn't an ectopic pregnancy because my tubes looked clear. They found an “irregular gestational sac” in my uterus and told me that I had a 50-50 chance of miscarrying. They told me to follow up with my OB in the morning for a “threatened miscarriage.”
On Friday, September 16, I saw my OB and she ordered another sonogram. The sonogram tech this time was the same one that did one of DD's sonograms. She told me that her gut feeling was that she was seeing an ectopic pregnancy because she saw something in my left tube that measured 2 cm, but she also saw a sac in my uterus. It looked like an empty sac, but it was so early that they weren't sure that they would be able to see anything in there if there was something in there. I asked her for a picture like I had with DD incase something bad did happen, but she wouldn't give us one.
My OB said that it could be a cyst or an ectopic pregnancy, but that it was too early to tell because my HCG level (3500) looked really good and they didn't see any signs of a baby - a heartbeat, a fetal pole, a yolk sac - in my tube. She sent me home and told me to have my blood drawn again for another HCG test in the morning.
On Saturday, September 17, I went to have my blood drawn and she called me around 1:30 with the results: my HCG had risen to 5700, which isn't quite 66%. She asked me to go back to the ER to have another sonogram, although she didn't expect to see anything changed since the day before and told me to be prepared to just wait it out over the weekend for another blood draw on Monday. We got to the hospital around 2:00 p.m. and they did the sonogram shortly after we arrived. The sonogram tech started looking through my tummy and said she thought she saw a heartbeat in the sac in my uterus. She said she wasn't sure because the quality is horrible since I'm only about 6 weeks, but she showed me the little speck that she thought was the heartbeat. She did a transvaginal ultrasound and couldn't find the speck again. She found the sac without any problem, but it looked completely empty and wasn't quite the right shape.
She checked my right tube ovary and said that it was clear, but when she went to the left, she saw an ectopic pregnancy immediately this time. All she could say was, “It’s ectopic.” I asked if she was absolutely sure and she showed me. I was still hopeful that she might be wrong until she showed me the heartbeat. It was a clear as a bell. She measured the baby and it was 4cm - twice the size that it had been 24 hours before. She did color scans to see the blood flow to my ovary and that was the saddest part because you could see the red flow of blood to my ovary and then you could see this tiny, flickering, red speck of blood through the baby's heart as it beat.
They took me back to the ER room where DH and DD. My OB called me a few minutes later and told me that I couldn't leave the hospital until I had surgery because they were afraid that my tube might rupture. I couldn't stop crying because we wanted this baby so bad and I didn't want to have surgery to kill it. My OB gave me the option of laparoscopic surgery or a laparatomy. I really wanted the laparatomy because they could do it with a spinal and I'd be awake through it - I didn't want to be put under, - but I didn't want to go through that long of a recovery. It took me about two and a half hours to make the decision and come to grips with the fact that the baby had to die to save me.
I made the decision to have laparoscopic surgery around 6:45 Saturday night and they brought me the consent forms immediately. Signing those forms has to be the most difficult thing I've ever done since I knew that I was giving them permission to kill my baby. After I signed the forms, I went to the bathroom and by the time I'd come back out they had the gurney there to take me to surgery. From what I found out later, they'd already called in the surgical team and had gotten things ready for both surgeries so that they would be ready to go the minute I made the decision. That made me even more scared since they considered it that much of an emergency.
While I was in recovery, my OB went to talk to DH and told him how happy she was that they hadn't waited because I'd been leaking blood into my abdominal cavity and that’s what the pain must have been from. She later told me that she couldn’t believe that I wasn’t in more pain based on what she saw.
The worst part for me was when I woke up. Before I was even coherent enough to remember where I was, I remember thinking that I didn’t feel pregnant anymore; I just felt empty. Then I remembered where I was and what had happened. The recovery hasn’t been bad, but now I wish I’d been awake because I realized that no one was there for my baby when s/he died. I just pray that since they say that the anesthesia in childbirth gets to the baby (and my OB said they don’t like to do surgery at all during the first trimester because it gets to the baby then too) that the baby was sufficiently anesthetized that what they did didn’t hurt.
We named the baby Taylor. DH and I both felt that the least that we could do was honor our baby's memory by giving him or her a name. Physically, I'm well on the road to recovery. Emotionally, I can't get over the fact that I killed my baby to save myself - even though my head knows that Taylor didn't have a chance, my heart is having a hard time coming to grips with it.