Sarah's Story Continuedabys942@logosnet.cy.n

My name is Sarah, I'm 25, and suffered an ectopic pregnancy in March this year. I had an unplanned pregnancy when I was 20, the result of which is my beautiful five-year-old daughter. I split up with her father before she was born and he takes no part in her life. I spent a couple of years as a single mother, hard but my daughter is worth it! I got married to my wonderful husband in 1997 when my daughter was two. He is a fantastic father to her, and could not love her any more if she was his biological child.  Almost immediately after we married we decided to try for another child to complete our family. After a year and a half nothing had happened so we sought medical advice. This was a bit hit and miss, my husband is in the British forces and were based in Germany at the time. We saw a gynecologist and had tests that established that neither one of us had any underlying or previous infections that would cause any problems. The only problem being that I wasn't ovulating regularly.  The gynecologist prescribed clomid tablets, but this never really got going as during the next twelve months my husband was away for eight months, and this tends to make conceiving difficult.

He returned from his tour in December 1999, we were posted to Cyprus and arrived in February 2000. Mid-February, I went to see a doctor at the medical centre as I'd had some spotting and stomach cramps. He put it down to my recent house move. I had stomach cramps on and off over the next few weeks. On Thursday the ninth, the stomach cramps were a lot more severe.  During the afternoon my husband was playing golf, and I ended doubled up with pain on the sofa. I went to bed, but didn't stay.  By this point, I was bent double in agony, I couldn't walk up the stairs, only crawl on my hands and knees. At about three A.M., I woke my husband, to tell him to make me an appointment at the doctors in the morning (for a time when he could take me as I didn't think I'd be able to drive myself). When the morning came, the pain had eased off.  If my husband hadn't of insisted, I wouldn't have gone to the doctors.

At my appointment, I described my pain and said that it had eased. The doctor examined me, then asked if there was any chance I was pregnant. The thought hadn't even occurred to me.  My period was due that day, but we'd been trying with no success for so long, and I'm usually a bit irregular. The doctor sent me to the nurse for a pregnancy test. She did the test and set it on the side to develop. She went back to it, then asked me if we were trying for a baby.  I replied, "yes" and she said, " Congratulations-it's positive!" I was absolutely stunned-they were the words I'd longed to hear for two and a half years! My face was just one big beam as she registered me in the midwives book and worked out my due date, November 10, 2000. I went out to the waiting room where my husband was waiting.  Clutching my pregnancy information sheets, he knew without me saying a word. We had to wait five minutes to see the doctor again. He sent us to the hospital for a scan to check that everything was alright. The thought it might not be hadn't even crossed my mind, I was just ecstatically happy that I was pregnant. We drove the five minutes to the hospital, full of plans and expectations-we'd have to change the car, the kind of pram I'd like to get. I went in for the scan, it seemed to take forever.  The tech printed some pictures off, and left the room to see his superior. He came back five minutes later and took us down to see the consultant. Then came the moment when my life changed forever.

"It's ectopic, it'll have to come out. Do you want to stay in now, or go home to get some things and come back in an hour?" "I'll come back", I mumbled. I left his office completely shell-shocked. Within an hour, I'd gone from happier than I ever imagined I could be to total devastation. I returned home in a daze. I called my mum at work and got her secretary.  "She's in a meeting, is it important?  Can I get her to call you back later?" I got her to go and get my mum out of the meeting. When my mum got on the phone I dissolved into tears. My husband took over and explained what had happened. It was so difficult, my family was about a thousand miles away, we'd only been on the base a few weeks, and had yet to forge any close friendships with anyone. My daughter was due home from school in five minutes.  I needed my husband to stay at the hospital with me, but desperately didn't want her there to see us upset and upset and worry her. She ended up going to the wife of my husbands boss who thankfully she'd met briefly the week before. So we made our second trip of the day to the hospital. The first filled with joy and hopeful anticipation, the second with a feeling of complete despair.

I'd never had any kind of surgery before, the only time I'd been in hospital previously was to have my daughter. I tearfully was wheeled down to the operating theatre, leaving my husband looking distraught, but trying to be strong for me, in a way I think it'd been better for me in retrospect, if he hadn't been so strong. The overwhelming feeling that I recall from that time is knowing that at that moment I had our baby growing inside me, and that when I woke up I wouldn't. The next thing I remember was drifting in and out of consciousness in the recovery room. I was taken back onto the ward, and had immense difficulty getting from the trolley onto the bed in the ward. The operation had left me with a wound similar in size to caesarean one. I was kept in hospital for three more days before returning home. All I could think about on the way home was how I'd been pregnant the last time we made that trip. The glove compartment still held the pregnancy advice leaflets. The next few weeks at home were very bleak. I had tremendous difficulty sleeping at all, and only ate because my husband made such an effort preparing and cooking my meals. My little girl couldn't understand why mummy was upset all the time, how do you explain ectopic pregnancy to a four year old who desperately wants a little brother or sister? I had all these people come to visit me who I didn't really know very well, not really knowing what to say to me. I went through times of trying to stay positive, to times of complete and utter despair

Physically I pretty much back to normal, apart from my scar which is my permanent reminder, but emotionally I still feel that four months on, my head's still all over the place. For a couple of months I really shut my husband out. I felt that he didn't understand how I felt, I felt my world had stopped, and was upset an awful lot of the time, I hadn't seen him cry once. It was only after a huge argument that we cleared the air and I now feel closer to him than I did before. He explained that where I was upset, he was trying to be strong for me, how when he'd left me at the hospital and returned home he spent the night in tears. My recovery hasn't been helped by the appalling after care I've received from the hospital. The consultant who did my operation in the hospital, said he'd taken a section of my tube and connected the other bits back together. When I asked him when we could start trying again, he told us there was no medical reason why we couldn't try again and that it was up to me and when I felt ready. At my first outpatients appointment, I saw a different consultant and was told a different story. He said that they'd taken a section of the tube and just left it. Then he put me on the contraceptive pill for three months, without taking a medical history, blood pressure or any of the usual checks. At my second outpatients, I saw a different consultant again, and was told yet another different story, this time that they'd taken most of my tube, not to try again for six months, and he also added that whatever had effected my left tube had more than likely effected my right tube and that probably our only option for another child would be IVF. I left his office in tears.

At home later I felt angry.  He had been suggesting that I'd had some kind of infection, untrue as we'd been tested for them previously. The state of play at present is I've finally managed to persuade them to let me see the consultant who did the operation, and I've got an appointment in four weeks time.  I just hope all the discrepancies can finally be ironed out. Emotionally, I have good days and bad days. I don't know how I'm going to get through the baby's due date. I'm not looking forward to my next door neighbours baby arriving in a few weeks time. I don't begrudge them but I think it'll be difficult having a new baby so close. Some good news is I start a new job in September, working at the playgroup (three to four-year-olds) and that will keep me busier. I don't think that I'll ever get completely over this, I don't think I'll feel complete again until I hold a baby of my own in my arms. I want to thank you for your web site, it has been a great source of information and support to me.