The Best Bad News I've Ever Had

So today, finally, we got to see the "specialist" (OB/GYN).  We were waiting to see the same doctor who treated me last time.  We had many questions from our Memorial Day weekend ER experiences, the biggest one being:  was it an another ectopic or not?  We knew that my body had resolved the pregnancy, but we wanted to know if the blob near my right ovary, which we saw on ultrasound, was embryonic or not.

Ahhhh, the difference between seeing a general practitioner in the ER and someone who specializes in your innards.  He asked us what had happened, how I am today, etc.  He asked if we had any questions, and we started in...I referenced the ultrasound and he looked a bit surprised.  Not surprised that I was asking, but surprised because to him it was a non-issue.  He said, basically, "Oh.  That just looked like what you would expect to see so early in a pregnancy - a corpus luteum."  This is what pumps pregnancy-sustaining hormones into the body until the placenta is mature enough to assume that function.  He manner exuded "Nothing to worry about there" which was so wonderful!  "So," I proceed, "is there reason to believe this was a proper intra-uterine pregnancy"?  I try not to bite my lip as I wait the nanosecond it takes him to reply.

"No, no reason.  It looks like it was intra-uterine and something just went awry very early."  He went on to talk about how common this is, that when the cells multiply and copy their DNA to the next cell, if a teeny bit of it is wrong the body is likely to pick up on that and stop the pregnancy.  In essence, while the loss is a blow, the fact that my body did its job properly is heartening.  Another thing he pointed out, which I believe that those of us trying to conceive would do well to really hear, is that early pregnancy testing can put us in a difficult position.  In the blink of an eye we go from "I tested positive!" to "I'm having a baby!" when, frankly, that might not be the likeliest outcome.  His was an objective perspective of a very subjective moment, but I think that for me, at least, tempering my enthusiasm until the cells really are a baby will be a good practice in the future.  I am an optimist, but also a realist, and while I hope for the best for future pregnancies, I know that there's a lot that needs to happen just right in order to go from two blue lines to ten sweet fingers.

Still, his statement was like the heavens opened up and angels sang to me.  As far as we were concerned this was the best news we could get, under the circumstances.  Nothing can change the fact that the pregnancy was lost...but knowing that it was at least in the right place this time, that we can conceive (even when I ovulate on the "suspect" side), and he topped it off with reassuring us that just because I had one ectopic does not mean I ever will again.  Statistically, I am more susceptible, you could say, but he said that lots of women have an ectopic early in their reproductive years and never have another one again.
So, basically, today we got the best bad news I've ever had, and we were relieved to hear it.

Comments

[duchess]

That is, well, good bad news, if there ever was such a thing. I hope you are feeling better. I really enjoyed our visit the other day and I hope we can do it again soon.