We're a married couple (M33, F35) who started trying for a child ~2 years ago. After so many months of planned and coordinated efforts to get pregnant (eg. checking ovulation strips, at home artificial insemination, multilple bouts of tests and exams to figure out what was wrong since all numbers came back perfect), we finally got pregnant in September this year. We were over the moon and starting slowly doing reveals to our family members.
2 weeks later, my wife started bleeding profusely. the doctors told us it was a miscarriage and that we'd lost the pregnancy. We were just beginning to process this loss, when a week later my wife woke up with unbearable abdominal pain that she fainted. We went to the emergency ward, where they told us it was an ectopic pregnancy — where the embryo forms in the fallopian tube and in our case, it had just burst the tube. They had to operate on my wife immediately and removed her burst fallopian tube. I was so scared of losing here. Ectopic pregnacies have a non-zero fatality rate and it was such a whirlwind. we were in the hospital for a week till we came home and reality crashed down upon us. It was the most difficult time in our marriage till date. We took September and October to focus on ourselves; it was a crucial moment for us to focus on our relationship and on mourning and processing our loss. My wife had physical and mental scars to recover from clearly. We decided to take a break from trying to get pregnant as well.
Life works in such a funny way; we stopped trying to get pregnant and the two times we had sex after her surgery recovery, we were pregnant again in November! This hit us like a freight train. We were more paranoid about a second ectopic pregnancy in the remaining tube, more than excited for a pregnancy. We were constantly monitoring with check ups and blood tests — for the first 4 weeks, it seemed to be evolving as expected and considerably better than the last time. In week 5, our gyno tells us that they see the embryo as well in our echo! we were cautiously optimistic on the outside but bursting with emotion inside. We still decided to give it time before revealing anything to anyone else. 1 week later, my wife felt something is wrong; she had a keen intuition and we went to get checked up. Doctors told us they do not see the embryo in the uterus, but outside again. I needed to gasp for breath; this couldn't be happening again. Not when everything seemed to be aligning so perfectly this time. This baby was a miracle; it couldn't be a another danger to my wife could it? It was a cornual ecotopic pregancy (1 in 50,000 chance) where the embryo develops at the union of the fallopian tube and uterus. Doctors had to operate again and remove my wife's only other fallopian tube.
They operated on my Wife on December 5th, and we've been home for 3 or so weeks now. I hate to say we got used to it, but it felt like we were more prepared this time. If anything, I'm proud about how we handled the stress of the situation just given that we'd lived through the same thing less than 2 months ago. We've definitely come out stronger and more united as a couple. What this means to me personally for parenthood, I don't know. I know that this year has been the toughest for me in a personal aspect, I feel that fatherhood isn't something that's exciting me right now (our only option for natural birth is IVF), and I don't know what next year will bring. We're taking it one day at at time. I do believe things will get better; it's the process to get there, that's the most difficult.
I learned the second time round that speaking and sharing my experience is cathartic for me, and if it helps couples in a similar situation to get through or avoid this completely, im happy to give more details.
thanks for listening