As I sat down to type this post, I realized that I needed to go and have a good cry before I could get through it.
You see, I’m about as positive as they come. I have an “it’ll all work out” attitude. My glass is half full, and I see silver linings. I’ve been through crazy things, like broken necks and other nutty surgical things, and come through them all in ways that surprised even my doctors – but not me. I knew everything would be ok.
But there was one event in my life that defied my streak of happy endings. And the day it happened, I lost a bit of my innocent naivete.
Let me rewind to December of 2002. My husband and I were still young newlyweds, just 7 months into our marriage. Pregnancy was not in our immediate plans, and we were actually doing our best to prevent it from happening – I was on the pill.
But when my period was late, and I felt a little off, I decided to take a pregnancy test. Lo and behold, it was positive! My husband was in disbelief. So much so, that he asked me to take a second test to make sure. This one was negative.
“Weird,” I thought. “I must have gotten a false positive!” I was a little disappointed – after all, the second a mama finds out she’s pregnant, she starts to bond. But I brushed it off, knowing that we had years ahead of us to get pregnant. And I was certain it would be easy when the time was right.
My period came a few weeks later, in mid-Jan. It was strangely light. And then it didn’t go away. After just over two weeks of this light bleeding, I called my doctor’s office. The nurse asked me to take a pregnancy test. “But I’ve got my period!” I told her. Silly nurse – what did she know?
Sure enough, it returned positive. Again. As did the 10 other tests I took over that weekend. Finally convinced, I made an appointment for Monday morning. “I think I’m about 5 weeks along,” I told the receptionist over the phone.
Sunday night, I experienced some of the worst pain of my life. My gut felt like it was going to explode. “Pregnancy is awful!” I told my husband. I had a huge tolerance for pain, and this was almost unbearable. I know – I was clueless.
The next morning, I felt a lot better. On the way to the doctor, I started suggesting potential names to my husband. “I feel like it’s a boy,” I told him. “How about Edison? It means son of Edward – how perfect!”
That happiness was short lived. After a brief examination, my doctor set me up in the ultrasound room. “Hmmm,” she said. And then I knew. I knew it wasn’t good. And then I learned just how bad it was. You see, I was 10 weeks along. With an ectopic pregnancy.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, let me explain. In a typical month, your ovary releases an egg, it slides down your fallopian tube, where it potentially meets up with its sperm buddy. A fertilized egg will then slide down into your uterus and burrow into the lining, where it begins to grow and develop. In an ectopic pregnancy, that egg never reaches the uterus. Instead, it burrows into your fallopian tube (or sometimes – rarely – your ovary), where it doesn’t belong.
A baby in a fallopian tube cannot continue to grow and develop. It has no chance at life. And because I was so far along, my baby was slowly killing me.
The majority of ectopic pregnancies are discovered within a couple weeks. On the late end, it could be as far as 8 weeks into your pregnancy. No one should make it to week 10.
And yet I did.
And to save my life, I had to have emergency surgery. My fallopian tube was already in shreds. It had been stretched to the point of no return, and it was ripped and torn. There was no repairing it – they had to take it. I was hemorrhaging internally. This baby was slowly dying too. It wasn’t being nourished. The tube it clung to was almost gone.
Logically, I know that I had no other choice. But I still struggle with guilt. This was my first shot at motherhood. My first chance to get things right. And when push came to shove, I didn’t choose my baby.
I chose me.
And while I know that truly there was no other option, that I was the only one with a chance to live, there is a piece of me that regrets that choice. I know we both would have died if I hadn’t made the decision I did, but it was still a choice. And as with any choice, there are always multiple options for answers.
Edison wasn’t my only loss. We would go on to lose another baby before I had one I held in my arms – my precious Avery, who wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t made the choice I had. But his loss was the hardest. I’m thankful for my faith, because I believe I will get to hold him someday. I believe he has forgiven me as he waits for that day. The difficulty lies in forgiving myself.
Would I make the same decision if I had to do it again today? I would. And that’s what I hold onto when I think back to that time. It was hard, and I shouldn’t have had to choose. But I would make the same one today because, really, what choice did I have?
