Cervical ectopic pregnancy, my story 20 years on.

When I found out I was pregnant in 2005 my husband and I were so excited as we had been trying for a few months.  We already have a little boy, Declan (then aged 3), who was also excited about the prospect of a younger brother or sister.

At the end of November 2005, I woke up to find I had been bleeding so I immediately attended the casualty department who booked me in for a scan the next day.  At the scan I could see the baby as clear as anything, moving around, with a strong heartbeat.  I was so happy and relieved, but the doctor looked serious.  She explained that the baby was at the bottom of my womb and not in the right place.  I couldn’t really understand what the problem was and I asked “will it move up” but she replied she didn’t know.  She didn’t think the pregnancy would continue for long.  We were devastated but still couldn’t understand it properly and remained hopeful.

When I found out I was pregnant in 2005 my husband and I were so excited as we had been trying for a few months.  We already have a little boy, Declan (then aged 3), who was also excited about the prospect of a younger brother or sister.

At the end of November 2005, I woke up to find I had been bleeding so I immediately attended the casualty department who booked me in for a scan the next day.  At the scan I could see the baby as clear as anything, moving around, with a strong heartbeat.  I was so happy and relieved, but the doctor looked serious.  She explained that the baby was at the bottom of my womb and not in the right place.  I couldn’t really understand what the problem was and I asked “will it move up” but she replied she didn’t know.  She didn’t think the pregnancy would continue for long.  We were devastated but still couldn’t understand it properly and remained hopeful.

When I found out I was pregnant in 2005 my husband and I were so excited as we had been trying for a few months.  We already have a little boy, Declan (then aged 3), who was also excited about the prospect of a younger brother or sister.

At the end of November 2005, I woke up to find I had been bleeding so I immediately attended the casualty department who booked me in for a scan the next day.  At the scan I could see the baby as clear as anything, moving around, with a strong heartbeat.  I was so happy and relieved, but the doctor looked serious.  She explained that the baby was at the bottom of my womb and not in the right place.  I couldn’t really understand what the problem was and I asked “will it move up” but she replied she didn’t know.  She didn’t think the pregnancy would continue for long.  We were devastated but still couldn’t understand it properly and remained hopeful.

I had to attend another scan a fortnight later.  Again, the baby was there, moving around.  It had also grown normally, but again the doctor wasn’t optimistic.  She said that the baby was actually growing in my cervix, and I needed to be admitted into hospital as I would lose the baby at any time.  She also said that if the baby continued to grow my cervix may rupture.  I stayed in hospital for a couple of days, staring at my scan picture.  I was still lightly bleeding and it was getting quite painful but I went home a week before Christmas.  I attended another scan the Wednesday before Christmas and again the baby was fine but the doctors that saw me just didn’t know what was going to happen.  Some doctors thought that it may move up into the womb and others just didn’t know.  I went back home with strict instructions to rest.

When Christmas morning arrived, I was having quite bad stabbing pains very low down in my stomach, but I carried on as Declan was so excited opening his presents.  After we opened all the presents, we went down the road to see my parents before we were due to go to my husband’s parents for dinner.  I was sat in my mums when I stood up ready to go and I felt wet between my legs.  I ran to the toilet and there was gushing of blood and I was passing very large blood clots.  My mum quickly rang the hospital ward and they told me to come straight in.  My husband and I dropped Declan off at his grandparents and I told her to keep my dinner on one side as I would be back soon!  I really had no idea what was going to happen next.

As I sat on the ward having my bloods e.t.c taken I was really miserable and just wanted to go home.  The nurse examined me and told me that I couldn’t go home for at least a few hours as they would need to keep an eye on me but I was quite upset about that as I wanted to get home for Declan and I thought that there was no need to stay there.  They moved us to a side ward and we sat watching the Queen’s speech.  The next thing, I needed to use the toilet and as I sat there watching the blood go down the toilet, I just kept thinking, “it will stop in a minute, it will stop in a minute”.  I must have been in there a while as the nurse started banging on the door for me to unlock it and come out.  They grabbed a wheelchair and pushed me back to the side ward as there was blood everywhere.  They put me on the bed and doctor came and examined me and told me that I was going to have to deliver the baby.  After a few pushes and lots of gushing blood, the baby was delivered at 16 weeks.

The doctor was trying her best to stop the bleeding but there was a huge panic as blood flooded the bed and the floor.  I was aware that the crash team had been called but I was feeling so faint and could hardly hear or see anything.  The doctor fought to stop the bleeding while they got the trolley and wheeled me to theatre and they tried to keep me awake while I slipped in and out of consciousness.

When I got to the theatre, they gave me a blood transfusion and I started to feel a little better but I was so cold and couldn’t stop shaking.  I had piles of heated blankets on me but was still shivering so much.  They told me they had to operate to stop the bleeding and I had to sign a consent form for them to do a hysterectomy.  Then I was under.

I don’t know what happened while they were operating but apparently I needed 9 units of blood and they nearly lost me.  I needed resuscitating a couple of times.   When the nurses rang my mum to come in she thought I was going for a D&C (dilation and curettage) so said “tell her I’ll see her in the morning”.  The nurse couldn’t tell her what was happening over the phone so mum assumed I was fine.  So my husband had to go back to her house and pick her up and explain to her what was going on.

My mum and my husband sat with me in intensive care until they were told I’d be okay and that they would ring as soon as I was off the ventilator.

I woke up choking until they came and took the tube from down my throat. I didn’t know where I was.  I looked at the clock and thought it was 8 o’clock Christmas night, I didn’t realise it was boxing day and all that had happened.  They didn’t tell me straight away what was going on and I couldn’t ask them as every time I tried to speak nothing would happen.  They also told me that I still had my womb “for now” and that they had packed it up to stop the bleeding.  They had to take the packing out in 2 days time to avoid infection and hope that the bleeding had stopped by then.  If it didn’t, I would need a hysterectomy.

I stayed on high dependency for two days, unable to move because of the packing and all the wires and tubes I had everywhere, including the line into my neck; then they took me back to theatre to remove the packing.  I awoke to the good news that it was a success and two days later returned to a side ward.  While I was there, they brought the baby in for me to see a couple of times that week in a little moses basket.  It was so perfect.  There was nothing wrong with the baby at all.  The hospital chaplain came and blessed the baby and they organised a funeral for when I got home.  I went home on New Years Eve, still in quite a bit of pain.  Going home was awfully upsetting as everything was as I’d left it on Christmas morning.  Poor Declan didn’t want to play with his toys until I had come home.  Just after New Year we had a funeral for the baby.  It was a bitter cold day and I was so weak and had lost so much weight I could barely stand.

I spent the next couple of months getting better but still losing blood.  A lot of the time it felt as though my womb was falling out of me, especially when I went to the toilet.  Otherwise though I was feeling a bit better in myself and was due to attend a meeting with the occupational health department in work to discuss starting back.  This appointment was the first time that my mum had let me go anywhere on my own after what had happened.  As I got to the desk, I felt the urge to go to the toilet so I asked them if I could use theirs.  Unfortunately I then haemorrhaged everywhere.  It felt like history repeating itself.  I got myself together and swaying back to the desk I shouted for her to ring an ambulance for me.  Luckily for me they didn’t have far to come because I actually work at the hospital!  They took me into casualty and there they did some blood tests then took me back up to the ward where I had been before.  One of the doctors came to examine me and a huge blood clot fell out onto the bed.  They arranged for me to have a scan the next day.

The scan showed that there was something growing in my cervix, a mass of cells which were alive and growing, like a “molar” pregnancy which is a mass of baby parts.  It was the cells left over from the baby’s placenta and was growing inside me.  I was still giving positive pregnancy tests so the pregnancy hormone was still present and my body still thought I was pregnant.  I saw a lot of doctors over the next couple of days and they decided that they couldn’t give me a D&C (dilation and curettage) because of the risk of bleeding again so they eventually came up with the idea that they could give me chemotherapy drugs which would kill the cells and stop them from growing.  They hoped that the body would then get rid of the dead cells naturally.  I had the injection on valentine’s day and felt really sick and poorly the next day, feeling really nauseous and weak.

A week later I had another internal scan which showed that the drugs had worked, and blood tests to see whether the pregnancy hormone was still there was negative.  I was allowed to go home a couple of days later but I had to have regular scans for the months that followed.  After a month it still hadn’t shrunk which was a worrying time as they just didn’t know what they were going to do if it didn’t, but luckily after another month it did start to shrink and after a number of months it started to disappear.

So that was my ordeal at Christmas which lasted six months.  The hardest thing since has been the number of people asking when I’m going to have another baby, a brother or sister for Declan.  Someone even told me that having an only child makes me a selfish person!  I would give anything to be able to have had a large family.  Apparently there is only a 0.01% chance of having a cervical ectopic pregnancy and what happened to me following is even rarer!  I have had health complications since and can’t even give any of the 9 units of blood back due to complications with blood transfusions up until 2005.   To say this ectopic pregnancy affected my life and those around me is an understatement.

 

 

Thank you to our contributor Laura Jordan for sharing her experience. If you would like to share your experience of ectopic pregnancy, please visit our guide for more information.

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