I was 30 when my husband and I decided to give up being a twosome. Much to my husband's chagrin it wasn't long after our decision to start trying that we found out I was pregnant. Despite how quickly it happened, we were both happy and at 6 weeks we shared the news with our parents. That is where the normalcy of my pregnancy basically ended.
At around 8 weeks, I awoke in the middle of the night thinking that I had had a miscarriage. It is an awful feeling. Even if you understand that having a miscarriage usually means that there was something wrong with the fetus, it still doesn't take away the sadness of losing it. So I was sad for a little while. Then I had to go for an ultrasound (and not the cool ones where they squirt jelly on your belly). Joe wasn't allowed to come in with me - a brutal rule given the circumstances. So I had to endure the discomfort and sadness of the situation on my own. It didn't help that the ultrasound technician had left her feelings at home that day either.
A couple days later and I was back at work teaching, trying to act like everything was normal. That 'normalcy' only lasted until the start of my last period class, when the school secretary showed up at my door and said I had an urgent call from my husband. I rushed to the office, having no idea what was wrong. Needless to say I was completely unprepared when Joe told me that the radiologist had looked at my ultrasound results and discovered that I had an ectopic pregnancy. (A what? Basically a pregnancy outside the womb - the important thing being that it can be very serious, even life-threatening) He told me that I needed to get in my car and drive to the hospital where doctors would be waiting to perform emergency surgery.
I told the secretary I had to leave and go to the hospital, then ran out of the building, got into my car and started my drive to the hospital. You can just imagine all of the thoughts running through my head. Up until that point I'd never had surgery, never really had any reason to be in the hospital for an extended period of time. How does one mentally prepare for surgery in such a short period of time?
I can't even tell you the answer to that. When I was about halfway to the hospital I got another call on my cell phone, this time from my midwife. Seems the radiologist was mistaken and they no longer thought I have an ectopic pregnancy, there was no longer an emergency, I no longer had to rush to the hospital for surgery. So, what did I do? Did I turn around and go back to work? The answer to that question is much easier: hell no! I kept driving right on home - after that experience I felt like I had earned the shortened work day!
Shortly after that I was scheduled for another ultrasound, this time with a different lab technician and at a different hospital, still the unpleasant kind though (if you are really curious to know what this is - google 'trans-vaginal ultrasound'). This time though, it was a completely different experience. At one point the technician had to leave the room and I was lying there alone, my song "In Your Eyes" came on the radio (still gives me goosebumps to think about it) and as I looked over at the ultrasound screen, a slow realization began to come over me...I think I'm still pregnant.
It was confirmed by the doctor a short time later. I hadn't had a miscarriage after all. It seems that what I had experienced was early implantation bleeding, a normal part of many women's pregnancies. The doctor also told me that I had a cyst, which was not uncommon for pregnant women and that sometimes these cysts just went away on their own but we would need to keep an eye on it.
So I was pregnant again...or rather still...what a strange sequence of events. So I could go back to enjoying being pregnant again...well sort of...while I never got violently sick during my pregnancy like some of my girlfriends, I did have this slight underlying feeling of nausea for most of it. As for food aversions, I couldn't stand the idea of eating plain chicken (especially if it was just barbecued) and I couldn't even go near a Harvey's restaurant, the smell of their burgers was enough to make me want to toss my cookies - and really, why chance it? And I craved orange juice. No, that's not quite true, it was more like I was obsessed with orange juice - I had to have orange juice in the house at all times. It was the one thing that I would send Joe out to get right away if we ever ran out.
But the normalcy of nausea, food aversions and cravings was completely overshadowed by the ab-normalcy of my pregnancy...
Because of the cyst, I had to go for relatively frequent ultrasounds. While I think it is amazing to have the opportunity to see your little one moving around, to hear their little hearts beating so quickly, to see their limbs and appendages start to take shape...I hated all of the water that you had to drink and then hold onto during it! (I had so many ultrasounds during my pregnancy that by the time I had my last one, I had it down to a science how much water I could get away with drinking).
After one of these ultrasounds, the doctor discovered that the cyst in my uterus was now the size of an orange and because it was positioned right near the baby's head, when the time would come to give birth, one of those things would end up bursting (and no, it wouldn't be the baby's head). So here was the decision that my husband and I had to make: I could have a planned C-section birth and the doctor could remove the cyst after he had removed the baby OR I could have surgery at 24 weeks pregnancy to have the cyst removed and then I could still go on to have a natural birth. The problem with waiting until the baby was born to remove the cyst was that there was no guarantee that in the meantime the cyst wouldn't burst on its own. While I've never had the experience of a cyst bursting before, I have it on good authority that it is extremely painful! So in the end, we opted for the surgery at 24-weeks (that would be about 6 months pregnant).
This is me about a week before the surgery (wearing my hubby's Arsenal shirt).
To be continued...
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