Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope

Lisa

Molar Pregnancy

December 10, 2008

Acworth, GA

I always wanted my children close in age. 2 years apart at the most. I was so excited when I got pregnant and found out they were going to be 21 months apart. PERFECT!! Everything was going well, I had early blood work (around 5 weeks) because I was spotting. I had low progesterone with my son so I was started on progesterone just as a precaution. My hCG was doubling like it should so I was reassured that the spotting was normal.

I had my first official OBGYN appointment at 8 weeks, 6 days. I was excited for the ultrasound. To see that little heartbeat. When we got to the office they took us back to the ultrasound room.  It was the probe ultrasound, which is vaginally. As soon as the tech put the probe in, I knew something was wrong. I could see nothing. No sack, no baby, nothing. Just white. Like a snowstorm. That's when the tech started asking questions. Were my periods regular? Had I had any bleeding. She then told me what I knew already, that there was no baby.

I was sent back to the waiting room to wait for my doctor to come talk to me. My doctor was in a large practice of maybe 20 doctors that saw everything from pregnancies, to elderly patients, to general sickness.  The waiting room I was put into was the one for the ultrasounds. I could not stop crying, and I think they realized that I was sitting in the waiting room with pregnant women, so they took me back to an actual room to wait on my doctor.

What seems like hours passed, even though I am sure it was only a few minutes? My midwife walked into the room and said that my doctor was still at the hospital so she was going to talk to me. She explained to me that I had a molar pregnancy. If you don't know what that is, welcome, I had no clue until this day. Apparently a complete (you can have a partial one too, I had a complete) molar pregnancy is when an "empty" egg is fertilized. The cells/tissue that forms the placenta then grows out of control, taking over everything inside your uterus.  A baby never forms in a complete mole. She said that she had to look it up in her books before coming to talk to me because it was so rare.

After she explained to me what was going on, she told me that they would do a chest x-ray because the cells are pre-cancerous, and can travel in your body, growing elsewhere. She explained that I would have to go thru many months of blood work after the surgery to make sure that the molar is not growing back. She told me that I should not get pregnant for 6 months to a year after the molar pregnancy. She then asked me if I wanted to schedule my D&C for the following Friday (this all happened on a Wednesday) because my doctor would be working then. I told her it did not matter to me who preformed the surgery that I wanted it done ASAP since this could cause cancer if left inside much longer. I was sent straight from my doctor’s office to the hospital for surgery.

The waiting for the surgery was the worst part. I remember sitting in the waiting room for hours with my toddler. I remember thinking it was all a dream that I would wake up at any second. I remember just wanting to run out of the hospital. I remember talking to the anesthesiologist and the nurses asking questions. I remember wondering why my husband was gone for so long when he went down to meet a friend to take our toddler. I remember thinking I was going to be alone when they took me back. I remember kissing my husband good bye just before they took me back. I remember being wheeled back on the hospital bed for surgery. The long hallways, the double doors to the operating room, the bright lights of the room. That is the last thing I remember, the operating room. I was put under for the actual procedure so I do not remember any part of it. I remember waking up and shaking so hard. I remember crying.

I was released from the hospital shortly after the surgery and went home to snuggle with my son and husband. I went through 3 months of weekly blood work to ensure that the molar pregnancy was not returning and then I was given the approval from my doctor to try to conceive again. My body healed quickly, but my spirit took much longer to heal.

Women are emotional creatures. As soon as the stick turned pink I had dreams for this child. When I was first told it was never a baby I was appalled. I was pregnant, and to me that meant a baby. Looking back almost 2 years later I am comforted in the fact that it was never truly a baby. It makes the loss a little bit easier to deal with.

Lisa blogs at http://lifeofasahm-lisa.blogspot.com/

You can contact her at mrsstrickland@gmail.com