Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope

Jillian

Mom to Sterling

September 10th, 2010

San Diego, California

At 23 years old you're still at the stage of life of it will never happen to me.  I'm not going to lie up until last month I still lived with that frame of mind in regards to anything bad ever happening.  My husband and I already have two beautiful little girls, close in age, who both have started asking us recently for a baby brother or another sister.  This summer we decided we were finally ready to start trying for another.  With my first two pregnancies I got pregnant fairly quickly, so expected this time would be no different.   Of course as soon as we decided to try my cycles started getting wacky so when mid August rolled around and I started having light spotting I thought nothing of it; just chalked it up to another wacky cycle.  

I went through all of August with slight cramping on my left side and off and on bleeding.  I kept thinking nothing of it until I started passing large clots in the beginning of September, as soon as I saw that I knew something was wrong but at that point still had no idea what.  At my appointment with my OBGYN after describing my symptoms and telling him about the slight pain my doctor informed me he felt I was pregnant but in the middle of a miscarriage.  That day I got my first set of blood pregnancy tests and went home to cry and wait for the next day to call and find out the results so we could continue with the next step.

   

By the time I called back the next day the pain in my left hip area had started increasing to the point I was going to ask to go in and see my doctor, thinking that it was just another sign of the miscarriage.  After dealing with an extremely rude nurse who just snapped at me that I was pregnant and when I informed her that the tests were to check levels for a miscarriage and since I'd never experienced this I didn't know what the next step was and set up my next blood work for Monday.  This was Thursday and by that night the pain had gotten so I couldn't move.  My oldest daughter was sitting up with me since my husband works on an extremely early schedule and had to go to work the next day.  I finally stood up to ask him to get the tylenol down for me when the world started spinning.  My daughter exclaimed Mommy your tummy is soooo big!  I looked down and discovered   my stomach looked to be about 5 months pregnant. 

  

My first thought was well this isn't right I'm supposed to be losing the baby. I yelled for my husband and started freaking out.  Looking back at it now I had gone in to total shock, I was shaking and I couldn't breathe.  I can't even remember how I managed to get through a phone call with my doctor with out going hysterical on him.  My husband rushed about getting our youngest dauhter awake as I somehow got a bag together for them because I knew my husband wouldn't think of it.  I managed to be able to walk myself into the emergency room while my husband parked the car.  Luckily the ER was fairly empty so I was seen right away.  

   

After numerous tests, ultrasounds, and blood work, It was confirmed that I had an ectopic pregnancy.  They had found a 4 cm mass in my left tube that had ruptured and my pelvis was swollen because it was filled with what they believed was blood and fluid. They admitted me to wait and see how the pain killers helped so my doctor could come in later that day and decide if I needed surgery.  I waited for all of Friday to be told what was going on I knew I had lost the baby and my thoughts at that point were I just wanted to get home to my girls.  Early Friday afternoon I finally heard from my doctor who explained to me he wasn't going to go through with the surgery because I had waited so long to even come in my body had started removing the pregnancy on it's own and since the mass was only 4 cm he was going to monitor me over the next couple of weeks and let it continue to take care of itself so I could avoid surgery.  If it had been 1 cm bigger I would have been rushed in for emergency surgery to remove the mass and had to suffer a couple of weeks of discomfort.  He also let me know that even though the embryo had ruptured I got lucky and my tube hadn't ruptured so there was no internal bleeding (which apparently they had been monitoring.)  

    

I finally got to go home and after getting my girls my husband arranged for a week of leave to take care of me because I was under orders not to pick them up.  It's then that I started researching ectopic pregnancy and realized how lucky I was to come out of it with only a little physical damage and quite a bit of emotional up heaving.  It's only through my loss that I learned of October 15th and that I'm not alone in my loss.

We're lucky that we have the support of our family behind us as we try and move through losing our baby. What makes me even sadder is that only through this loss have women of both our families come to me and told me of their miscarriages.  I refuse to be silent about my loss, other women need to know it's ok, and my daughters need to grow up with the knowledge that yes it can happen but you don't have to be alone.  We'll never be sure of what gender our baby was so we decided to give him/her a gender neutral name so our daughters could grow up with the knowledge so if it ever happens to them they won't be afraid.  So our baby is Sterling; little star and our daughters already talk about how they have a baby living in the stars watching out to make sure we're all ok.

You can contact Jillian at mrsjdailey@gmail.com