Life and Love: Miscarriage and Ectopic Pregnancy Losses Part 3

This is the third and final installment in Life and Love: Miscarriage and Ectopic Pregnancy Loss. Here is where you will find part 1 and part 2 if you missed them.

So we end up at the ER, check in and then wait.  While we are waiting I see a woman from our church who also happens to work in the ER.  She pokes her head in and says hi which is a comfort to me.  Then we also end up seeing my sister-in-law’s future sister-in-law who is doing an internship in the ER.
We waited for at least an hour maybe longer before I am wheeled up for an ultrasound.  When we get in the room who do we see but Emily, my favorite ultrasound tech.  She does the ultrasound and then we’re sent back to the ER where we wait again.  I am starving by this point because all I’ve had to eat is a few jolly ranchers.  I am pretty sure everything is fine and we’ll be going home.  The doctor comes in, he’s a very kind looking man, I immediately like him.  He sits down and proceeds to tell me that my fallopian tube has partially ruptured and I have some internal bleeding going on and that I need emergency surgery.  Wait a minute, what?  I thought I was going home, I’m starving, I’m tired and I am about to freak out!

My knees start shaking and I start crying.  I don’t want surgery, I hate IV’s, I don’t like elevators, I just want to go home.  I tell my husband, well God had a great message for me in church today and now I get to put it into practice.  Ha, I hate when that happens.  The sermon earlier in the morning was on worrying and placing trust in God.  The doctor gives me a verse right there in the room of the ER before he heads upstairs to OB to do a quick C-section while they prep me for surgery.  I somehow talk the nurse into only giving me one IV and letting them do the second one while I’m under because I hate them so much.  I also ask for some drugs to help with my anxiety before surgery.  I don’t remember too much after that, I remember being wheeled into the operating room and the nurses and anesethia guy talking to me and that’s it.
The next thing I remember sort of, is talking to my husband, my sister-in-law, the doctor and some intern that is with him.  Who knows what I was telling them, I don’t think I want to know.  I was supposed to spend the night in the hospital but because I hate elevators, the doctor let me go home to recover.
The surgery was done lapriscopically so I had three very small incisions and that was it.  The recovery was fairly easy, I wasn’t supposed to do any lifting or a lot of walking at first.  One of the hardest parts of the recovery was our little girl who was 3, she kept talking about the baby in my tube.  She didn’t understand and I know that but it was hard to keep hearing that over and over again.
God was faithful through all of this, he brought friends and familiar faces to me in the ER, friends helped care for our children, we had meals made for us, friends helped with shopping, visits and just lots of love.
While I was in surgery at 9pm on Father’s Day, one of our Pastors was at the hospital visiting someone else and heard we were in the ER.  He stayed with my hubby while I was in surgery which was a blessing because my hubby was a little freaked out that I was in surgery.   Finally, the doctor that ended up doing my surgery was just a HUGE blessing to me.  Having someone listen and hear your fears, that’s hard to find.  Finding someone who hears your fears and has compassion is even harder to find!
At my four week check-up after my surgery, I asked if our chances of conceiving would be reduced without two fallopian tubes and we were told they would be reduced by 50%. and the chances of a second ectopic pregnancy increased by 30%.  Awesome.  Not.  So I told my husband we were not getting pregnant again, I didn’t want to go through that again.
Well, I changed my mind not long afterwards.  So the plan was to start trying to conceive again in September.  On September  11th I took a pregnancy test and it was positive.  I was really excited and really scared at the same time.  I couldn’t believe that we were pregnant so quickly and before we even tried.  I was able to have my HCG levels tested a few times and also at 5 weeks along we had
an ultrasound to confirm the placement of the pregnancy.  Everything was great and we were able to hear the heartbeat at the end of October.  We debated finding out the sex at the 20 week ultrasound but finally decided to go ahead.  I was pretty sure it was another girl and so was the hubby.
We were able to get our ultrasound in before Christmas but we didn’t tell our parents.  At the ultrasound we were quite shocked when we found out we were having a boy!  It was fun to surprise our parents’ with a Christmas tree ornament that had the ultrasound picture of a little baby boy part framed between his legs.  We have sick humor, in case you didn’t know this already.  We ended up needing another ultrasound in April and joy of joys, it was Emily our favorite tech!  It was so aweosme  to have her doing the ultrasound, our girls were also in the room and she made it a wonderful memory for all of us!  I love how God used her in our life through both losses and then both subsequent pregnancies.
So to make a long story short, our healthy baby boy was born the end of May 2009 and the doctor who performed the surgery and became my OB doctor was able to deliver our son!  It was a wonderful moment for all of us and  I am so thankful for another baby and for God’s blessings after the pain.

I copied this excerpt from our family blog during May of 2009, Today at my appointment he starts off by telling us how special this baby is and how he is so excited to meet him, how this baby is bringing full circle last summer’s surgery and how we wants to be there to deliver the baby.  We were so blessed to have this doctor in our life for a year and to be able to celebrate with us the birth of our son.  The hubs and I joked about having the baby’s middle name be our OB doctor’s first name.  We had picked out the name Jacob but when our little bubs was born he didn’t look like a Jacob to me.  I thought of a different name and my mom actually thought of the same name.  I convinced hubby to name him the name I thought of and in the baby book, his name means “God is willing” which was so perfect!  He was willing!
God was very faithful during the dark hours and I look back now and just see His hand everywhere during those times.  I know that not everyone can conceive again after a pregnancy loss but I want to put this experience out there for someone who needs to be encouraged after suffering an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage.  Thank you for reading this and if you ever need to talk with someone about a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, I’d be happy to chat with you.