My March Madness - Pregnancy #3

The last part of February came some unexpected but exciting news.  I found out I was pregnant with baby #3.  I was pretty shocked as we were not planning this, but a bit excited because I had been having the "itch" for a couple months now.  Although I was absolutely excited to have another sweet spirit join our family, many things came to mind.  Tyson was going to need to move out of the nursery, which means we need to buy new furniture.  Our new insurance has a $7,000 maternity deductible, and we are not signed up for maternity insurance like we've done in past pregnancies.  I doubted we could fit 3 carseats in a row in our SUV, which meant we might need to purchase a larger vehicle.  At a time in our lives when we are trying pinch every penny possible, all of these thoughts were stressful to me.  But I felt that as long as we exercised faith, somehow everything would work out.  We would figure it out.

Just one week after I found out I was pregnant I started noticing some spotting.  I tried not to be too concerned because Google didn't seem to be.  But when it continued for a 2nd day, Jared convinced me to call the doctor.  I really did not want to because if I was miscarrying I knew there was nothing the doctor could do for me, they were just going to send me home to pass it.  But the only thing that gave me pause was that I have RH factor pregnancies.  Should this spotting be from the baby, I would need to get the rhogam shot right away.  I called the doctors office, and as I suspected they thought it was pointless for me to come in too.  Until they noticed in my file the RH factor and told me to come in.

Being only 6 weeks along, they didn't expect to be able to see anything on the ultrasound.  They tried anyway, and couldn't see anything so decided to do bloodwork to check my HCG hormone levels.  They would repeat the bloodwork in 3 days and as long as the levels doubled than everything was fine and if they didn't than they would let me know I was miscarrying.  I did the blood test and was told to not call until 3 days later, after I had taken the 2nd test.  I went home, decided not to stress about it yet because there was nothing I could do until 3 days from then.  Later that afternoon I was surprised when the doctors office called to tell me they got my HCG hormone results back.  (The results mean nothing when they don't have a 2nd test to compare it too!)  But she said the levels were over 6,000 which is really high, a lot higher than they expected it to be at 6 weeks, and that with the levels being so high, they should have been able to see something on the ultrasound.  The doctor wanted me to go into the hospital to do an official ultrasound.

I went into the hospital later that evening around dinner time.  I told the ultrasound technician everything I knew so far.  I was telling him how I was really confused about why my hormone level would be so high, that the doctor thought maybe I had miscalculated how far along I was, but that I was certain when my last period was, and knew I wasn't wrong.  He immediately said he thought he knew why it was so high.  He then went on to explain that sometimes your levels are extremely high when you are very early on in your pregnancy, and the reason that your levels are so high is because you are carrying multiples, and that is why they still couldn't see anything on their simple ultrasound machine.  With that, he proceeded to do the ultrasound.

The ultrasound lasted 40 minutes, and I sat their in shock.  Twins.  I couldn't believe it.  They do run in my family, my cousin just had twins a couple of years ago.  What was I going to do, I am not cut out for that.  I really would lose my mind, I know it!  He took probably a hundred snapshots and was silent the entire time.  I thought he was just trying to get the right angle where he could get both babies in the picture.  Finally he left and said he was going to consult with the radiologist.

I waited in the room for him to return with the news.  He came back and said, "Alright, come with me."  I stood up and grabbed my purse and walked out of the room.  As we walked down the hall he said, "I talked with the radiologist and what you have is an ectopic pregnancy.  We called your doctor and he happens to be on the 2nd floor finishing up a delivery right now.  He is going to meet us in the ER and you will go into surgery tonight."  We are now in the admittance office in the ER, he hands them my information and they proceed to ask my name, birthdate and information.  I am quickly trying to text Jared to let him know that there is no baby anymore and that I am about to go into surgery.  The admittance people are obviously annoyed at my texting during this process.

It is true it was an odd way to break the news to me,  but in all honesty it really gave me no time to take it in or get sad.  I just was filling out paperwork and going on to the next step.  It wasn't until a nursed failed 3 times putting in my iv that I finally burst into tears.  I was all prepped for surgery when the doctor came in and told me that he didn't think I needed surgery afterall.  He thought I was a great candidate for methotrexate, a chemo-therapy treatment that is supposed to dissolve the pregnancy.  So after treatment was given I was sent home.  I was told that there is still a risk that the tube could burst, and if it did this was life threatening.  I would know if I was internally bleeding if I was lightheaded, and had a tremendous amount of abdominal pain.

The recovery really was not bad at all.  I had a couple days after the chemo injections that left me feeling just icky but other than that, life went on just as before.  So many people were concerned but I was doing just fine, other than feeling the emotions of losing the baby.

Eight days later I was sitting on the couch with Porter when my stomach began cramping up quickly.  It almost felt like gas pain but it just became more intense as the minutes went on.  I called Jared and told him to come home that I thought it had ruptured.  In the minutes it took him to come home, I started to feel lightheaded and dizzy.  My finger tips and toes were numb and I gripped a chair trying to fight passing out.  When he got home, I couldn't speak.  He had to carry me to the car, and said that my face and lips were completely white and my body was sweating and shaking.  We rushed to the ER both praying that I wouldn't die.  Then 20 minutes after we arrived at the hospital the pain began to slowly subside until finally it was completely gone.  They did a few tests and had no idea what happened but said it didn't burst.  I went home and continued on with life just as fine as ever.  It was strange but mostly annoying because now I had not one but two $2400 ER bills.  Awesome.

Fast forward 2 more weeks.  I was having a completely normal day when all of a sudden the same thing started happening.  It was right around lunch time and Jared had just come home from lunch.  We were so hesitant to go to the hospital again in fear that it would just go away again.  But I was in a lot of pain.  So I took a Lortab and 10 minutes later the pain was gone.  The Lortab lasts 6 hours, so if it came back I would know it wasn't going away.  That night it was date night.  Alissa, next door, was watching the kids.  I took them over and dropped them off, and came back.  Just a minute after I came back in the door the pain came back, quickly and forcefully.  I told him I thought we should go to the Urgent Care for our date night.  By the time we reached the urgent care office I was white again and lightheaded and in way more pain that I had ever been in before.  We thought it had either ruptured, or it was my appendix, and we were both leaning to the latter.  The urgent care told us right away to go to the ER.  The pain was incredible.  The check in seemed like it took way longer than usual and it took forever for the doctor to come.  The best moment was when the morphine came.  Still, it didn't take everything away but I could breathe and function normally.  Long story short, we did 2 ultrasounds and a CT scan and it was obvious that it had ruptured.  I was going into surgery.  The funny thing was that my OB doctor did NOT believe the ER doctors.  He was forced to do the surgery and told us he was going to go in with a scope to diagnose but it was obvious he didn't think a full surgery would be required.  It was.

I have had c-sections and have recovered wonderfully.  This surgery was a bit different.  I had problems holding food down, and other complications, but finally I felt like I was actually "recovering".  For 5 days straight I was in my bed and slept a lot.  I was overwhelmed with the support that was given to us during this time, and felt so loved.  I think the hardest thing of this all this is knowing that once you have had an ectopic pregnancy you are more likely to have another.  Now that I have lost 1 tube, I fear that the same thing could happen again and I would lose the other.  I hope that this isn't the case and that there are more children in our family, but I am grateful to know that Heavenly Father is aware of me, that he is in control, and that He has a plan for me.  Whatever happens is what is supposed to be.

Wow, long post.  Didn't even want to write about it, but my blog is where I turn to when I want to remember when something in our lives happened.