On November 18, 2020, within a couple hours of laying our sweet Annie Kate down to sleep on the night of her 1st birthday, I felt an intense rush of pain that could not be ignored. 

It was as if acid was being poured into my abdomen, and in my heart I knew what had happened. My ectopic pregnancy must have ruptured.

Luke wondered if I should try taking some pain medicine and seeing if that helped at all. But I knew this was not normal or like any pain I had ever experienced before. 

Very quickly we were moving out to the car and waiting for his mom to come and stay with our sleeping children. I was filled with fear as I wondered if I was bleeding internally and if I was going to be OK. Every bump in the road intensified the pain, and it felt like our 12 minute drive was 5 times longer. 

I was immediately given a bed in the ER and they got the good pain medicine going right away. Can I just say thank God for pain medicine? My blood pressure was in the 180s and the pain was excruciating. 

I was informed that I would need an ultrasound to determine what was really going on, though I couldn’t imagine what else it could possibly be. I don’t have an appendix — not sure what else could explode inside of me. During the ultrasound it was clear that there was “free fluid” in my abdomen, meaning the fallopian tube had ruptured and I was bleeding internally. 

The rest of the evening is somewhat blurry. I am not clear on the timeline. I know that the operating doctor came in to explain what was going to happen and that she would try to save the fallopian tube if she could. She also explained that my previous 3 cm mass had grown to 9 cm, even through two injections of methotrexate. 

Shortly after, I was wheeled to surgery, giving Luke a goodbye kiss, and taken to the OR. Cold and sterile – operating rooms are definitely not comforting. However, I had wonderful care by all of my doctors and nurses that evening. They definitely helped to comfort and reassure me. Anesthesia is so interesting to me. It’s insane that I can literally be awake and coherent one minute and then completely passed out the next. But again – can I get an amen for modern medicine?

I think we got to my room between 2:00-3:00 a.m. Again, the timelines are fuzzy (and irrelevant). I just know it was the middle of the night. We squeezed in a few hours of sleep before the morning rounds. The doctor came in to tell me that she had to remove my entire fallopian tube as it could not be salvaged. We have some photos, too, if anyone is interested in seeing those (sarcasm). 

Within a few hours after that, I was home. Ending up in emergency surgery was certainly not in the plan. Doing the methotrexate injections was supposed to keep me from surgery, but… #2020. 

I have had a solid month to think about this whole situation, and a couple take-aways jump out at me. 

First and foremost – you know your body best. Yes, you.

You will know if there is a pain that is different than before. If you are in excruciating pain to where you can’t stand up and can barely walk…then something is wrong and you need to get help. This sounds so silly, I know, but I have noticed a pattern with me and a lot of other women I know. We don’t want to be burdens. We don’t want to be wrong. We don’t want people to think we are annoying. We don’t want to call doctors in the middle of the night because what if they are sleeping. We don’t want to make people come over and watch our kids. We don’t want to look like wimps. But dammit, women die (yes, die) because they don’t tend to their own needs. They put off going to the doctor. They suck it up and rub dirt on it and keep moving because most of the time, they have to. There many times seems to be no other choice than to just keep playing through the pain.

But after I was home and in recovery, I looked up what happens when an ectopic pregnancy ruptures, and women can die from this because the abdominal cavity can hold almost the entire body’s worth of blood in it. If you ignore the pain and don’t seek help quickly, you can literally bleed to death internally. 

I am not trying to be dramatic. But I am trying to make a point. Take care of yourself. Listen to your body. You know when something is wrong. This goes for anything – a broken bone, stomach pain, terrible headaches, whatever it is. Don’t be afraid to speak up for yourself and get checked out. It could be nothing, and that’s fine. Or it could be something that needs attention. I cringe when I think about if I would have just tried to go to sleep that night for fear of inconveniencing the doctors or my family.

Grief is a bitch. 

I’m sorry to be so frank, but it is. Over the past month since my surgery and about 7 weeks since I learned I was not having a normal pregnancy, I have had days where I have managed to smile, laugh, be happy, and otherwise go on with my life. 

I will be doing alright, and then something will knock me down so hard and fast, and I am in despair for days at a time. It’s like one, huge punch to the gut that leaves you brutally winded.

In the past, my grief in other situations has looked like a lot of crying. But this grief has been different. I have been angry. I have been jealous. I have been somewhat manic. I have been numb. I will go on compulsive cleaning binges to get my mind on something else. Or I will stay awake until 4:00 a.m. with racing thoughts. 

Grief can be a very isolating process because it is so individual for everyone. For example, Luke’s grief really looks nothing like mine. We are not feeling the same things in the same ways, and because of that, we are on two different paths to healing. I think we will both get there eventually, but we aren’t following the same road map. 

Christmas was difficult for me. For one, it is really exhausting to pretend like nothing is wrong when something is wrong. I think we all understand that. And if there’s ever a time for a mom to slap on her happy face and keep going, it’s Christmas. 

But also, Christmas was the time we were planning to announce the pregnancy. We would have been around that 12-13 week mark, and so we were going to share the news with our family and friends. It’s wild how your mind just runs with ideas so quickly. Within days of learning about the baby, I was already planning how we would spill the beans. So when this Christmas came and went, I naturally felt empty. No baby in my belly. No pregnancy to announce. A heart full of ache and a soul full of painfully unique grief. 

I wrote this post to tie together what happened since my last post on November 16. I hope that this time next year, I can reread it and be in a more peaceful place. But it might still hurt like Hell, and I might still be grieving. Life is messy, nothing is perfect, and absolutely nothing is guaranteed.  

Oh, 2020. 

I didn’t know any other way to start this than with that. It just seemed so fitting.

The year began with such promise, didn’t it? I remember the excitement behind a new year and a new decade. There was a palpable buzz on January 1st. Everyone was ready for that “2020 vision.”

But, and I say this with absolute seriousness, Kobe Bryant and his daughter were killed in the helicopter crash at the end of January, and the world hasn’t been the same since. 

Short of some cancellations and disappointments, my family has been pretty fortunate throughout the past 8 months since Covid became a household name. We have stayed healthy and mostly happy. We salvaged our summer with daily trips to the pool and lots of ice cream. The kids have been able to go to school in-person (although I have a feeling we are on borrowed time). My husband has avoided too many Covid exposures at work, and we really have just been trucking along, headed toward 2021. 

We could almost see the finish line, and then it happened. 2020 came for us, and now we have our own battle wounds. 

I found out I was pregnant with our 6th baby in mid-October. It was a surprise, not that I need to provide that justification, but there it is. In full disclosure, I was terrified to tell Luke. He’s the logistics guy. He thinks about finances, college savings accounts, and practical things like how many bedrooms we have and how many empty seats there are in the van. I am not that person. 

But, he reacted well to the news and we both were just so overwhelmed with the feeling of, “Wow. This was a total act of God.” Of course, all children are God’s creation, but the timing, the surprise of it all – this was God’s way of saying, “Yes, this is right. Trust me.”

We kept the news mostly to ourselves. No big family announcements and certainly no public ones. It was early, we were busy, and we weren’t yet ready to share the news. 

At about the 6 week mark, I had some concerns, so my doctor ordered blood work and an ultrasound. Thanks to Covid, I went to the ultrasound alone, and it was the most excruciating 5 minutes of my life. I could tell by the way the technician didn’t turn the screen to me and didn’t say a single word that things were not good. I understand that they can’t really say much about what they see (or don’t see), but there’s got to be a better way than stone-cold silence. 

I walked out of the radiology department and had tears in my mask by the time I reached the hospital exit. I knew. If there was a heartbeat, I would have heard it. If there was a gestational sac, I would have seen it. There was nothing. 

There I was, nearly hyperventilating in the parking lot, mourning the loss of a baby that I was uncertain I was ready for to begin with. Did I subconsciously wish this on myself? Was God playing a cruel game? Those questions would torture me for days.

All the feelings of my very first miscarriage came flooding back. The feeling of betrayal by my own body. The feeling of complete abandonment and even shame. And an emptiness I can’t attempt to describe. 

I received word shortly after from my doctor that my HCG levels were simply not high enough, and that this pregnancy was not viable. I wasn’t just confused on dates or “too early.” It wasn’t going to make it.

Luke and I met in a parking lot and cried. And then he had to go back to work, and I had a meeting about the school PTO budget to get to. I dried my tears, drove with my head out the window, and pretended I wasn’t dying inside. 

The days passed slowly and painfully. We had so many more questions than answers. Our faith was not only challenged, it was shaken… almost shattered. How could something that felt so right, so Heaven-sent, now feel like such a huge slap in the face?

Thankfully, I had a distraction. I was secretly planning to take Noelle to Universal Studios to see all the Harry Potter attractions, and the trip was approaching. I threw myself into the packing, planning, and prepping, which meant that I didn’t have to think about what was really going on. 

My doctor was asking me to get repeat blood work done, but I didn’t have time before my trip. I also was avoiding it because I knew it would just prove that the miscarriage had happened. However, when I returned home, I decided I would get the labs drawn. 

Within a few hours of having the lab work done, I was back at the hospital getting another ultrasound because there was a concern with my HCG levels. They had only dropped by about 100 points. Given that it had been two weeks since the initial miscarriage diagnosis, my levels should have been much lower. 

This ultrasound was slightly less silent. The technician was a little more conversational. When she asked me if I had a history of ectopic pregnancy, I knew what she was seeing on the screen. Within a couple hours, it was confirmed by my doctor — I did have an ectopic pregnancy. The first ultrasound was not able to detect it. 

The only thing I’ve ever heard about ectopic pregnancies is that you would need to have surgery to remove it because of the chance of it rupturing and internal bleeding. I know that they can be fatal if they aren’t managed well. 

I was relieved to know that due to the size of my ectopic pregnancy, I could start with a non-surgical option – a methotrexate injection. Methotrexate is actually a chemo medication and is also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Methotrexate stops cell division, which is what needed to happen so that the ectopic pregnancy could stop growing. It also makes you feel like you have been hit by a truck and has given me a lot of stomach sickness. I had my first injection on Tuesday, and on Friday, I had lab work done. My HCG levels were not where they needed to be — they actually slightly increased, so I went for another injection today. I will have another round of labs drawn on Thursday of this week, and hopefully it will show that my HCG is steadily decreasing. If it isn’t, we will probably have to talk about surgery. 

I got an email today with the subject line: You are 9 weeks, 4 days pregnant! I activated an old baby website account when I first learned of the pregnancy. I excitedly plugged in the due date (June 17) and began relearning all the things I had forgotten about the early baby development. You’d think after 5 children, I would either know everything already or I wouldn’t be that amazed by all those early mysteries, but that’s not true on both accounts. For me, pregnancy will never not be a miracle, and it will never not be a mystery, and it will never not be exciting. 

I’m 36 years old and have had 5 children, 2 miscarriages, and 1 ectopic pregnancy. My most recent 3 pregnancies were high risk, and Annie was born 5 weeks early, almost a year ago to the day. I have been asked, “Are you done yet?” I have been asked, “Haven’t your doctors told you to stop?” My doctors have never said anything to me about “stopping,” and (insert unpopular opinion) I am remaining open to life and to the life God has planned for me. If this is our last pregnancy, then I will eventually accept this reality. If there is another child for us, I will embrace that reality, too.

This heartbreak caused me to question everything, including my faith in God. I was angry with Him, but I had to remind myself that the same God who I was thanking and praising for this unexpected gift of life, the same God who was so good to us a few weeks ago, is still the same God now. And He is still good, even when I’m hurting. 

Especially when I’m hurting. 

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18

God uses our suffering to pull us closer and deepen our faith, as backwards as that sounds. It is only God who can give us the grace to push through the pain, to find reasons to smile, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other. It is not our own strength or volition.

I also believe that when you share your suffering with others, you are opening your heart to seeing God in them as well. God is in their words of support, in their kind gestures, in their meals they prepare, and in their nearness to you (even if it is virtual for now). 

I believe the soul is created at the moment of conception, regardless of if there was ever a heartbeat or a physical body. And I will feel the loss of this sweet soul until I die. This is my cross to bear, and while it is heavy, I know I am not carrying it alone. 

2020, you have bent us, but you will not break us. I love you, Friends.