It’s only been in the last year that I have held back with blogging or posting about my personal life.
I had two scares - December last year I was in the hospital due to unexplained right lower pelvic pain.
I had my hubby call an ambulance because I was in too much pain to consider driving myself and hubby had sold his car, and has not practiced driving manual transmission enough to be able to drive mine.
Anyway, we got to the hospital and they gave me some pain medication and ran an IV line. They pulled blood and scheduled an ultrasound to hunt for causes of pain. Hubby was trying to explain to the paramedics and first responders about the previous time I was at the hospital. In August 2021 after a terrible miscarriage, I kept bleeding and then had a vasovagal response when the retained placenta was sticking in my cervix.
This time, I had a positive beta HCG, again. So thoughts of an ectopic pregnancy swarmed our minds. Hubby was horrified, now saying that every time I end up in the hospital it’s because I am pregnant. This isn’t really the case. Nor was it the cause of the pain this time. But it is a relevant fear when your loved one is hurting and you cannot do anything about it!
The list of differentials at the time were appendicitis, ectopic pregnancy, or some ruptured ovarian cyst. The ultrasound showed something that could have been a cyst on my right ovary. So, since I wasn’t dying, I got discharged on oral hydromorphone. I obviously had to call in sick that day, and the next.
I made a follow up appointment with my family doctor as they recommended further blood work to track my HCG and another ultrasound.
When I spoke with my family doctor, she asked if the ER doctor had said anything about my ureter. Turned out my ureter was distended! So then kidney stones went on the list as well. So I had follow up blood work, urinalysis and ultrasound. All was normal, except that my HCG was trending down. Yet another miscarriage, or chemical pregnancy.
I still to this day, four months later, have no idea what the pain was. It hasn’t returned and it went away fairly quickly, within 48 hours.
But hubby was scared. To the point where he was talking about any other way that we could build a family. Surrogacy? Adoption?
It’s a huge decision to come to, when you know you want to be a mother, but your body hasn’t been working the way you had hoped! Not to mention that Hubby has a son from a previous relationship. So he’s been through having his own genetics being passed on to the next generation.
For women, you have to give up on that idea of your genetic child, and look to maybe epigenetic influences if you can carry a child. Many women will question: When do I decide to go with donor egg? Donor Embryo? Adoption? Surrogacy? These are all very personal decisions.
For me, surrogacy is not an option. I either carry the child or we look to adoption. Now Hubby has come to terms with saying it’s ok if the child is not genetically related to him, because he just wants to be able to raise a child. He has so much love and teaching to give that it’s hard to not be able to provide that for him.
Again, hindsight is 20/20. I knew prior to going to veterinary school, when I was 31, I knew that graduating at the age of 35 would make it challenging for me to have my own child. Prior to being shipped off to Saskatoon, I told my mom... just so you know, it’s likely that I won’t be able to have my own child when I’m done. Was egg freezing a thing that was done in 2012? Sure. Was it readily available and talked about. Absolutely not! If women were not shamed into hiding their problems with fertility, it would have been brought up. But no! Women are shamed to hide when they are having a miscarriage - a loss of a child that needs grieving time. Shamed into continuing to work while having excessive bleeding and essentially giving birth to placental remnants while working. I know it comes from hiding these “problems” from the judgemental men when women were entering the workforce early on through women’s liberation.
But I still stand by it. You can have your cake and eat it too. You can build a family while pursuing a career.