Her Story

In June of 1998, I lost my darling daughter to an ectopic pregnancy. It has been over a year since it happened, and I still think of her every day and cry silent tears for her every night. I didn't know that I was pregnant, although my husband and I had shortly before decided to start trying for a second child. Our son was then two and one-half years old. We thought the time was right. How wrong we were.

I had been feeling "off" for a while, but honestly did not think that I could already be pregnant-it was just after our first month of trying. I put it down to an oncoming flu and high hopes. Monday started like any other except that I got my period again for the third time that month. I phoned my doctor who told me not to worry as it was probably my hormones adjusting after going off the pill. I have always had problems with my cycle. That afternoon, I started getting what I thought were the worst period pains ever and ran myself a hot bath after sending my son to spend the night with my mother. I lay in the bath for ages hoping that the pain would go away as they usually did. After almost an hour, they were still very bad so I got up and took some aspirin.

That evening, when my husband got home from work, I was doubled over with the pain. Although they still felt like period pains, they were now more on my left side and getting stronger by the minute. I went to bed while my husband phoned the doctor, who asked him if I was sure that I wasn't pregnant. I said, "Don't be silly, I would know if I was!" After all, I just had my period and was starting it again. He told me to have another aspirin and to phone back in an hour if there was no improvement. It was at that stage that I started feeling shaky and suspected that all was not well. The pain got so bad I almost passed out. My husband phoned the doctor again, who told him to bring me to his surgery at once for an ultrasound. It was just before 10:00 P.M.

The ultrasound showed a bloody mass in my uterus and the doctor said he suspected that I had a miscarriage-but couldn't say for sure. He referred me to a gynecologist at our hospital for further tests. When we arrived at the hospital at about 10:30 P.M., I was doubled over in pain and scared out of my mind. I had never been in hospital before apart from having my son, and had never had an operation under general anesthetic either. The doctor tried to examine me, but I was in so much pain that I couldn't stretch my legs out. There was no sonar available at that time, so I was asked to give a urine sample to test my HCG levels. The doctor explained that he wanted to rule out pregnancy before doing anything else. I gave the sample and we waited. My husband held me and reassured me.

The doctor came back with the little blue strip in his hand and told us that I was indeed pregnant. Not knowing much about biology, my husband hugged me and asked the doctor if we could go home seeing that all was well and I was pregnant. This is the moment that a part of me was lost forever. The doctor said "No". This means that they would have to operate immediately to remove the pregnancy before it killed me. Then doctor left the room, and we cried. Holding each other on that hospital bed I felt as if my whole world had collapsed around me and there was no way out. I wanted to go home and hold my son. I wanted to go home seven months later holding my new little baby in my arms. I didn't want to go into an operating theatre to have my child removed from me like it was some kind of bad poison. The next minutes passed in a flurry; I was bleeding very badly this time. The doctor yelled "NO PREP", and I was wheeled into surgery-leaving my petrified husband somewhere in the corridors. They gave me an injection and as everything around me went black, my heart died.

I woke up in recovery and the doctor told me that the baby was a girl and that I had been about twelve weeks along. He said I would have died if they had not operated when they did, and that thankfully they had been able to save my tube-that I was very lucky. I did not understand his interpretation of being lucky. I told him not to tell my husband that it was a girl as when we were deciding whether or not to have another baby he said that if I could guarantee him a daughter, we could have another ten children. I still haven't been able to tell him, simply because I don't wish him the pain of mourning our daughter as I have. He has told me that it makes it easier for him not knowing what it was, that way it stays an "it" and doesn't become a part of him.

So, I won't tell him. I will keep it to myself for now and cry every night for my little girl. I will keep her in my heart each day for the rest of my life. Unlike what everybody keeps on telling me-I will not get over her. I will rather learn how to live each day with her memory and pray that someday that pain that goes with her memory will lessen. I have not lost a child that I have known. I have lost all the hopes and dreams that go along with having a baby. I will never feel her kick inside me, and I will always cry because I will never know what that would have felt like. I will never give birth to her, and each year another small part of me will die on June 22nd. The dreams, the hopes, and the expectations I had for the birth of my angel. May God keep her, may He bless her, and I pray may she one day be complete and alive in the spirit of my future children.