I found out I was pregnant in January 2019, my partner and I had separated a week previously, but we got back together again when I found out.
All was going well until I was at work on February 13th and had some bleeding, not enough for a pad, but I confided in a female colleague about it and she told me that minor bleeding like that happens sometimes. I took no heed after that as I had no cramping or no pain.
That evening I was at my parents, sitting watching tv, and all of a sudden, I experienced the most severe pain I’ve ever had in my life in my right hip area. It crippled me and to this day it’s the worst pain I can describe to anyone (bearing in mind I’ve had two sections and three other miscarriages, one with surgery). I went down to my room and rang my local out of hours service and they told me go straight over to the hospital.
When I arrived, I was the second person in the waiting room. I was in agony; I was also feeling very faint at this stage and asked my partner to accompany me to the toilet so that I could vomit because I was afraid that I might pass out. When we left the toilet, in tears and doubled over, I asked the receptionist if I could please be seen because I was about to pass out. I was called within two minutes.
The moment they put me on the bed I roared with pain. They got me a tramadol injection to help ease the pains I had and brought a machine in to do a scan. They told me that I wasn’t pregnant because they couldn’t see anything in my womb but took bloods and sure enough they came back indicating that I was pregnant.
After another scan with a different tech, an ovarian ectopic was seen.
They brought me to a ward for monitoring; I don’t recall much from this period as I was in intense pain and very lucid. At 9am the following morning my vitals were checked and my blood pressure was sky high, the nurse had asked was I in pain and I said no the painkiller was still effective, but that I did have a niggling pain on my shoulder blade. I was in surgery within 10 minutes of telling her that.
I woke up that evening from surgery with the oxygen tube still on me, machines all around bleeping and my mother in the chair beside me. I still hadn’t fully processed what has happened. The nurse came in and told me I had internal bleeding due the pregnancy trying to ‘escape’ from my ovary out into my abdomen and that is what was causing all the pain and the internal bleeding. I broke down and I was in pain for weeks while recovering.
To this day, I still cry about it. And I hate to think of the pain that I experienced, I felt extremely lucky that I was taken to surgery when I was.
This was my first loss and it was hard to understand; why me? I’ll never fully heal from this but I will always remember what could have been.
The poem, Little Snowdrop, was given to me by a nurse and I still read it every now and again.
Thank you to Emma for sharing her experience with us. If you would like to share your experience of ectopic pregnancy, please visit our guide for more information.
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