Unbearable: After An Ectopic Pregnancy, We’re Choosing To Try Again

Having a child is usually a happy time in a woman’s life. Unfortunately, as we wait longer to have children, infertility and trouble conceiving can become a part of the family making process. Unbearable addresses these difficulties.

On the last day of 2011, I went in to surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy and the Fallopian tube it had destroyed. Obviously, it was just not  my year to have a baby.

In the beginning of 2011, I was exasperated from trying to get pregnant for seven months without success. I was beginning to worry that something was wrong. The monthly disappointment was getting harder and harder to handle. Throughout this year, my husband and I would see fertility doctors and run multiple tests. I would start the all-consuming process that is dubbed “trying to conceive.” And in May I would start writing about my experience for the whole world to see.

In December, I believed that my year-long struggle had finally paid off. I was preparing to say goodbye to “Unbearable” and to share my joyous news with my family. Just weeks after writing about that emotional extra Christmas stocking, I was prepared to start using it. In fact, that centimeter-long little one in my abdomen received more than just a stocking at Christmas. My family, just as excited as I was, bought blankets, rattles and small toys for the first official Christmas of this amazing blessing.

And then just a few days later, I found out that the baby couldn’t survive and would have to be removed. It was truly one of the most horrible experiences of my life. I don’t think I have any other words to describe it, which is saying something for a woman who writes every day.

A week after my surgery, as my husband and I were trying to clean up the left-over Christmas clutter from our house, we came across the bag of presents we had received for the baby. My husband tried to put them away quickly, wanting to spare me from pain. He tried to comfort me by saying that we would need them some day in the future. We would keep trying, and soon we would have a little one who needed that Taggie blanket.

“No,” I told him, “these belonged to someone.” These presents belonged to the baby we lost. We may not know its sex and it may not have a name, but that was still my baby. I talked to it, from the minute that I knew it existed. I loved it with every fiber of my being. For me, this was a person. And I couldn’t just transfer presents from the baby I lost to a new, future baby that I still hoped to have.

That day, as my husband and I packed away those toys for a little one that we’ll never get to meet, we made a decision. As we said goodbye to the baby that brought us hope, we knew that we wouldn’t stop trying to get pregnant. It’s scary because we know that after one ectopic pregnancy, you’re more likely to have another. There’s a possibility that I’ll have to go through this horrible loss and grief all over again. I know that with one Fallopian tube gone, I’ll have to rely on just a single ovary to give us another chance. My pregnancy will be high-risk from the start, and probably a little more emotional. But none of that will stop us.

In the past month, we’ve struggled. We lost a child that we wanted very badly and loved very much. But we’ve also regained hope that pregnancy is possible for us. We’ve remembered why we’re working so hard to grow our family to begin with. For those shorts weeks, we experienced a joy that is unlike anything else in the world. And no matter how scary or emotional it is, we’re going to keep trying to have another child, not to replace the one we lost, but to add its own special joy into our lives and our family.

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