Ectopic Pregnancy

Losing a child a any gestational age is not easy... On February 2nd we lost our 2nd baby.

I want to share and educate women about ectopic pregnancies through sharing my very recent and painful story. If it hadn't been for another woman sharing her story with me very recently, I never would've guessed that that's what could be happening to me.

An ectopic pregnancy is when the baby implants into the Fallopian tube (or sometimes elsewhere) rather than the uterus. It occurs only once in every 50 pregnancies. And in my case there was no reason as to why this happened, I didn't have scar tissue in the tube that the baby attached to (which can be a reason for ectopic pregnancy) or any of the other "risk factors." It was just a flukey unfortunate thing...

The pain started as a dull ache in my lower left quadrant. It was a tolerable pain and I thought maybe this is just implantation cramping. That night I was violently sick, vomiting more than 15 times. Again I thought maybe this is just extreme morning sickness. The next day the dull ache intensified and went straight through to the same spot in my lower back. When I couldn't take the pain any longer we rushed to the RGH emergency.

From there the ER doctor didn't suspect ectopic pregnancy. In fact he never brought it up, I did. He suspected that it was in fact normal pregnancy symptoms as I "wasn't in enough pain" for it to be an ectopic. We were almost sent home.

Thankfully the pain intensified even more while I was still in the hospital and we were finally sent for an ultrasound and a consult with a gyne. It was determined that the best route was to go in for surgery and check things out. It was discovered that I did in fact have an ectopic pregnancy in my left Fallopian tube and it had ruptured through the back wall of the tube. The baby was 4cm and I had internal bleeding.

The good news out of this, and yes there is good news, is that this does not affect fertility. It does NOT cut fertility in half like you may think. In fact the right tube will over compensate and can even pull eggs from the left ovary. The other good news is that I'm still here, alive and well for my first born and the love of my life.

Every baby on this earth is a blessing and I'm sure squeezing my baby Smith a little bit tighter, since I can't hold the one I lost...