Annette's Story

All I ever really wanted to be was a mother. When I got married at age 23, it felt like forever till I was pregnant. It was 5 months. The second baby came 13 months after the first. I was terrified of getting pregnant again soon, but I definitely wanted more children, even though we had one girl and one boy. When #2 was 18 months old, I was ready to try for #3.

After having 2 so close together, I assumed I was "Fertile Myrtle." It took a year before another pregnancy began--an interminable year of 13 cycles of hoping and being a day or more late and being sure, then starting and being devastated. I was sure we had missed my fertile days on the 14th cycle when I developed morning sickness. Wonderful! (Although I hate being pregnant--but I love newborns!!!) After #3, a surprise 2nd girl, I was again ready after about 17 months to try again. I thought I'd figured out all the right things to do to avoid any long spaces. Nothing happened. More devastating cycles, longer and longer, worse and worse.

I had blessings, I went to the temple, I prayed, I studied, I journaled. Sometimes I got answers--small answers, but they helped so much.

"You haven't done anything wrong, it just isn't time yet."

Finally, after almost 3 full years of trying, I got pregnant a fourth time. Hurrah! I kept telling myself (and my kids) that this didn't mean there'd be a baby in 9 months. It only meant my body was growing a body for a possible baby. But I dreamed a lifetime of dreams for that baby, and grew to love it with all my heart before a week had gone by.

The one sad thing was a few months before that, my mother had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and given 2 years to live. She and my dad were so caught up in her condition, they barely took any notice of my wonderful pregnancy. Then 6 days after my positive pregnancy test, I began spotting. I called a friend with 9 kids who had agreed years before to provide labor support for my next birth. She drew my attention to the fact that I was also cramping and told me to go on bedrest with my feet elevated and call my OB.

I went to bed, but I had no OB. I spent two days calling and interviewing OBs and midwives all over 3 counties before I found a combined practice I thought I could live with on a Friday afternoon. I didn't say I had complications, but just made an appointment with the midwife for Wednesday. I stayed in bed all weekend. It was agonizing to lie with my feet up. The bleeding didn't get any worse until Monday. Then we dashed in and saw one of the OBs in the practice. He did a transvaginal sonogram and could only see something vague in my uterus. He said it might be a miscarriage, probably not yet complete but only threatening. He took beta HCG and progesterone level tests and said I'd need to repeat that in two days.

At least he told me "bedrest" need only mean that I not exert myself in any way, just sit around and relax. I saw the midwife for my scheduled visit Wednesday and repeated the tests. The first ones had been very low, so I started taking progesterone. On Friday I went to a farther-away office to meet the other OB, and he said my second test had merely indicated that I was pregnant and would have to be repeated.

All that week I'd been a complete mess. I have an anxiety disorder and it was feared that if I didn't have another adult around, I might pass out from hyperventilating. My husband had just started a new job and couldn't take any time off except to go with me to the doctor. Women from my ward came to sit with me all the time my husband was at work. I nearly did pass out on Wednesday, when the midwife saw nothing in the uterus and said it probably was a miscarriage.

All the second weekend I was miserable trying to prepare for the worst, still taking the best possible care of myself, as if at the same time I had a very fragile embryo that could be saved with optimum care. On Monday I waited to call for results until my Visiting Teacher arrived so I'd have some moral support. No results; they'd call back. How could I stand it?

I was eating lunch and feeling the need for company. I called a friend in the ward, but she couldn't come--she was having a crisis of her own with a teenage son. Earlier, the Relief Society president had misunderstood my situation and decided the organization couldn't help me. So I'd been calling my own friends all week to come over. That was very hard and I was very upset about this, angry with her and the Bishop. I'd prayed about it and been told to trust the ward organization. I was confused and unhappy, considering quitting church.

I prayed for help that Monday afternoon, and soon a friend dropped in who knew nothing of my situation. She had 8 kids and hadn't noticed I'd missed church 2 weeks in a row. She hadn't heard I was pregnant, let alone having complications. She had been shopping near my house and suddenly seen my face in her mind's eye. So she dropped by.

Just then the OB called and said the numbers were rising, so my baby would most likely be fine; I should just take it easy for another 2 weeks or so. Then my Visiting Teaching partner dropped by and said she'd lined up meals and people to sit with me for the whole week. No one had asked her to--she'd just done it! While they were both there, the husband of the friend with the teenage crisis dropped in. His wife had sent him over during his work day because she knew I needed someone. And he came! What good people they all are! He went back to work when he saw the two women were already there.

Suddenly I started to have terrible pain on one side of my abdomen. For half an hour I thought it was gas, but when going to the bathroom brought no relief, my friends urged me to call the doctor. He told me to go "straight" to the ER--an hour's drive away! My VT companion stayed with my kids while my other friend drove me to the hospital.

They did another set of blood tests and an official sonogram. There was nothing visible in my uterus, but the numbers were still rising. The OB said the next step was to do a laparoscopy. If the pregnancy was indeed in the Fallopian tube, he'd have to remove the embryo, thus ending its viability, and try to save my tube. I called my husband and explained to him that I'd been in excruciating pain for hours, and that I felt everything had been done that could be done, and that this is the correct treatment for ectopic pregnancy. He agreed.

I'd had a blessing the week before and felt calm, although once I was in line for the OR I got incredibly anxious about my tube. I was terrified, after the long years of waiting for another pregnancy, of losing 50% of my fertility. I prayed and cried and begged and pleaded with Heavenly Father to let the doctor save my baby if possible, but if not, at least to save my tube.

I was so upset that I was given a sedative, analgesic and tranquilizer before I got anesthetic. When I woke up my husband was there, and after I was moved from the recovery room to an outpatient room for the night, he told me I had lost the baby but not my tube. I was so happy, relieved, grateful!

My parents were no more interested in my loss of their grandchild than they had been in my pregnancy. That hurt, but it was also hard on me not to be able to be there for them.

I also had dreadful nervous and emotional aftereffects from all that medication (including a huge crash from quitting the progesterone cold turkey), for many months, but I was ready to get pregnant again right away. I had to wait one cycle and have an HSG, but the tubes were clear. I was terribly disappointed to not get pregnant right away, or even in 3 months. I used Crinone for a cycle or two but we decided that was too stressful. We named the baby Terry Lynn. I got a lot of counsel from the bishop and stake president.

Then we found out we were finally going to get a foreign exchange student for the next school year, after 6 years of trying for this opportunity. I felt like she was the child I wanted. I got through Mothers Day and my baby's due date by carrying her picture with me and showing it to all my friends. About that time, my husband was laid off and we lost our medical insurance. We discussed waiting to try for a pregnancy until he could get coverage, but I couldn't bear hearing my biological clock tick away for even one cycle.

So of course that's when I got pregnant again. This time I felt so much more pregnant than I had with the tubal, I knew everything would be fine. Besides, ever since that one answer to prayer, I'd been counting on a trouble-free pregnancy after the prophesied negative one. But my husband was really worried. He felt like my body was broken. We went to the midwife, and she saw nothing on the trans-vaginal sonogram. She said it was probably too early to tell and told us to come back in 2 weeks. I was feeling incredibly constipated, but I had no spotting, cramping or pain so I was pretty relaxed and not worried.

Then one afternoon I got a breathtakingly sharp pain or cramp that doubled me over for an hour, then disappeared. I called the OB. He said it was probably nothing. I had a blessing, which said that what had happened was over and that I would have difficulties, but no problem, and our son would be fine. For the next 3 days I felt weaker and weaker. The second morning I woke up feeling like someone had punched me in the chest. My new Visiting Teacher drove me to my appointment with the midwife, and she sent us straight on to the ER for emergency surgery.

When we got there, the OB met me and said I didn't look as bad as the midwife had said. He did a laparoscopy and found that my tube had ruptured 4 days before and couldn't be saved. I'd been hemorrhaging all that time. When I woke up in the recovery room no one told me anything. After half an hour I asked when I would get to find out what happened while I was under. The nurse very insensitively blurted out that I was not pregnant any more and my tube was gone too. I asked for my husband, but he had left to go get the kids. My Visiting Teacher had also gone home.

I sobbed and wailed and disturbed the whole recovery room. I was so worried the kids wouldn't understand the baby really was fine in spite of being dead. A kind patient who'd had minor foot surgery tended to me since the nurse wouldn't. I went home and stayed in bed for 24 hours while a friend cleaned my house thoroughly. The very next night I taught my Institute class as usual.

I recovered completely at a very good steady rate. I went through the familiar days of sobbing loudly, and we named the baby Steven Joseph. I learned that getting rid of that bad tube was probably the best possible thing. I hadn't known that both ovaries can still be useful even with only one tube. (The tube is mobile and can cross over to reach either ovary.)

Our exchange student came to live with us and I thought things would be fine. Instead, it was the hardest experience of our lives and she left after 6 weeks. She and we had too many problems and too many differences. It felt like losing a third child, but we knew it was right.

Meanwhile our car died, and my mother's chances for cure or extension of her prognosis were running out. I got involved in some wonderful on-line support groups, but our computer quit just in time for the first anniversary of losing Terry Lynn.

We started trying to get pregnant again, but the first cycle came and went. I was really down in the dumps, but then I got pregnant again. I joyfully returned to the midwife, but she was suddenly unsupportive of the birth plan I wanted. I spent the whole pregnancy struggling to find a caregiver who was willing to attend my birth on my terms. Happily, we had a wonderful birth and a healthy baby.

However, about halfway through the pregnancy, my mom died. Then my dad and my only brother both moved far away and my dad started dating another woman very seriously. A week before my parents' anniversary, right at Christmas time, Dad got engaged. My husband's mother was also in a coma for a while, and we couldn't get together with any family at all for the first Christmas without my mom. She had known I was pregnant and yet lost the will to even try to live long enough to be here when the baby came.

The two ectopic pregnancies in a row were only the severest of all our losses and trials in the last 3 years. When I lost the first one, my faith got very shaky, and I couldn't imagine anything worse. Yet by the time our exchange student left, nearly a year later, I had begun to develop a serene acceptance of whatever happens. I even told my husband I'd rather lose another baby than face some new unknown trial. At least I know how to lose babies now.

My favorite quote about my experience is from the children's Christmas carol "Away in Manger":

"Bless all the dear children in thy tender care,
And fit us for heaven to live with Thee there."

Annette
California, Maryland