Nicole Kidman suffered an ectopic in 1990, as did singer Vanessa Carlton back in 2013 and British Olympic Cyclist Dame Laura Kenny in January 2022. An Ectopic pregnancy is actually a common, life threatening condition that is the leading cause of death in early pregnancy, one in eighty pregnancies in the UK (at least 12 thousand women) and one in fifty in the USA are ectopic. Those who do survive this brutality- which often includes the removal of the ruptured fallopian tube or ovary as well as the foetus, do not receive proper aftercare or support from medical professionals. Ectopic Pregnancy survivors are often placed in birthing wards, having to endure witnessing new mothers blissfully cooing over their babies or left in recovery wards filled with patients who have a variety of ailments and staff who therefore neglect to understand the need to be extra empathetic towards a more sensitive and emotionally traumatic situation.

Women’s healthcare, from cervical screening to birthing, to baby loss and more is severely lacking in medical institutes. The first trimester is the most delicate time in pregnancy and yet proper support is redundant. Many women who have healthy pregnancies report they are often left alone, other than a few short home visits from a midwife.

Women are not informed of ‘the golden hour’ the moment a baby is born or the option to wait until the placenta stops pulsating before the cord is cut.

Regardless of whether a woman has a natural birth or caesarean, there’s great expectation and societal pressure to recover like quicksilver and be back at work and managing the home. Society manipulates us to believe the illusion that you’re a strong woman for going back to normality so fast, that you’re Wonder Woman for juggling everything straight after giving birth or in many cases, straight after baby loss.  

Women who’ve lost babies or survived the brutality of an ectopic are silenced, their grief repressed. Told to move on, have another, to have IVF as though it’s as easy as ordering a burger. The reality of IVF is a horrific procedure which adds to the trauma an individual is already going through. The knowledge of having only one fallopian tube and the fear of losing it to another ectopic is a very real, very rational fear. Ectopic survivors fear getting pregnant again and worry whether they can get pregnant again all at the same time, on top of processing the trauma and grief they’ve just endured. The lack of compassion and aftercare in society and from medical professionals infuriates me- it is part of the big issue in regards to women’s rights, women’s equality and body integrity.

There is also a deficit in proper reproductive education in schools, specifically in regards to the menstrual cycle, hormones, the cervix, cervical mucus, the breasts and fertility. Young adults are not taught what a miscarriage or ectopic is, or even what a colposcopy is if cervical screening finds abnormal cells or what endometriosis, vaginismus or ovarian cysts are. Young girls should be taught these basics to better know their bodies, to help them be informed and even support each other.

We know that 1 in 50 women in the USA survive ectopics and they are fatal without medical intervention. Yet abortion bans have now escalated in several States across the USA (with the latest news on Roe v Wade) with some states even attempting to make it illegal to travel to seek procedures and medications across State boundaries. Not only is this ban putting women’s lives in danger but it is governmental abuse of human rights and women’s bodily autonomy.

I would not be alive today had I not had access to an emergency laparoscopic surgical procedure. If discovered earlier, I would have been given methotrexate to abort the pregnancy and my fallopian tube wouldn’t have ruptured and ultimately been removed.

 

This is my story to highlight the severity of an ectopic pregnancy and the lack of care I endured throughout.

I didn’t know I was pregnant.

I was still having regular periods. This is quite common with ectopics. I believe it took a while for my body to realise it was pregnant because the cell didn’t implant in the womb, it implanted in my left fallopian tube. By the time my body noticed the signals and began to create pregnancy hormones, it was too late. I had no pregnancy symptoms and I had no warning something was wrong.

My partner and I weren’t planning in the literal sense, but we were going with the flow. Meaning we had fallen in love and were seeing how it goes. We’re both adults in our mid-to-late 30’s, so this wasn’t a spontaneous decision, it was grounded in a deep conversation of something we both felt right about.

It sounds corny but upon meeting my partner, I saw my children in his eyes and I had this incredible primal desire to be pregnant by him and he felt the same way. Neither of us had ever felt this way before. So we weren’t planning, we were just loving.  

It was mid December 2020 when my body felt peculiar. My partner and I went for a walk in the woods and my period was unusually heavy, but I thought nothing of it. However upon walking up the hill to get to the top of the woods I felt faint, breathless and fatigued. We had to stop a few times for me to rest and catch my breath. I had this overwhelming feeling of weakness in my body and what I thought was a period at the time, was so uncomfortably heavy, that I asked to go home.

The heavy bleeding persisted after my period should have stopped. My cycle usually lasts five days and I was now on day eight. It was worse in the mornings when it would gush like water spurting out of a tap. With every trip to the bathroom there would be a deep pool of blood in the toilet as well as clumps of blood saturating the toilet paper. It was then I began to feel frightened.

Torture struck. A sharp pain in the left of my abdomen throbbed and ached and felt like knives stabbing me repeatedly. Knocking the wind out of me and sending my whole body into shock, I fell to the floor screaming, pleading, wailing with tears streaming down my face “Please help me!” “what’s happening?!”

The sensation was primal, I felt like a helpless animal. Confused and scared and in excruciating pain. Clutching my stomach as blood seeped through my underwear and clothing. My partner carried me to the car and rushed me to A&E.

The doctor did routine tests on me and found no apparent issues. She said “Based on your age, I did a routine pregnancy test and it is positive, congratulations you are pregnant and don’t worry about the bleeding, it is probably implantation bleeding”. I later discovered she had noted ‘possible miscarriage’ on my medical records. With the knowledge I have now, she should have been concerned, she should have made me aware, she should have sent me for a scan.

A few days later, the blood was still gushing and the pain was searing through my abdomen as I tried to rest. I had never been pregnant before, so I believed the A&E doctor, that it was just implantation pain, ‘this is normal’ I told myself. Once again the pain surged and I fell to the floor with a thud, screaming. My partner rushed in and found me shivering,  the pain was so fierce I couldn't get up. Petrified, he called 999 and was referred to a paramedic who believed the pregnancy is ectopic and that I needed immediate medical assistance. Because of the pandemic, the paramedic was unable to get to us but transferred my notes to A&E. We were told I’d receive immediate help upon arrival.

No one was waiting for us.

The rude receptionist mixed up my notes and argued with me that I had Covid symptoms and not an ectopic pregnancy. I was already frightened and feeling vulnerable. There was no compassion from her when I explained that was pregnant, in a lot of pain and bleeding heavily from my vagina. Instead I was made to wait 5 hours in the waiting room.

Finally, I saw a doctor who was as blasé as a house cat. “Says here on your records it’s a possible miscarriage? Relax, it’s probably implantation bleeding, you got pads? Go home, relax for the weekend and I’ll book you in for a scan on Monday morning.”

Another two days of waiting.

Another two days of heavy bleeding.

Another two days of severe pain.

Monday morning came and the news hit me like a speed train as the specialist at the early pregnancy unit pulled the bloodied hysteroscope from my vagina. At first there was dead silence as she stared at the screen. I held my breath. My partner was gazing at me, panic stricken. “I’m sorry, your pregnancy is ectopic, your fallopian tube has ruptured and you are bleeding so heavily into your abdomen that I can hardly see anything on the screen. You will need an operation, but I will book you in for the afternoon so you’ll have the morning to prepare.” I’m then ushered into another room to sign forms.

Twenty minutes later and a swarm of medical staff buzzed around me, frantic like bees. “We need to get you into surgery now, you’ve lost a lot of blood! Sign here. Can you have a blood transfusion? We do burials for babies that didn’t make it, would you like that? Put this robe on, are you allergic to anything?”

So many questions being fired at me as a nurse attempted to put a cannula in my arm but failed, four times. My veins were weak and each attempt hurt so much that I screamed “please, no more!” I went into shock and began shivering and mumbling as they prepped me.

Pulling a doctor to the side, my partner asked what was going on? Why were they rushing around me? The doctor replied “We took another look at her scans. We need to operate now, she’s lost a lot of blood. If we don’t, you’ll lose her within the next hour.” My partner held onto that knowledge and tried to keep me calm, tried to tell me everything was going to be ok, tried not to show panic so as not to scare me even more. I didn’t know I was close to death, until he told me when I woke up on the recovery ward.

My partner and I only had a minute together to say ‘I love you’ before they wheeled me into surgery. What was meant to be a straight forward one hour laparoscopy, took two and a half hours, the surgeon exclaimed “It was a bloody mess!”. She removed my fallopian tube, the foetus and drained the blood. But, she saved my life.

The lead surgeon informed me that the embryo was between 8-10 weeks. It was at the early foetal development stages, meaning it was no longer considered an embryo and it is about the size of a kidney bean (2cm), whereas fallopian tubes are only about 1cm in diameter (the size of a straw) so you can imagine how excruciatingly painful this is as the embryo grows too large for such a narrow space. My little bean ruptured my left fallopian tube, which caused severe internal bleeding.

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Recovery has been slow.

I was bedridden for a month and able to walk short distances by the second month. Twelve months later, I appear physically fine but there are physical complications I will have to live with for the rest of my life. Emotional recovery is taking longer. I’ve needed to cocoon myself away from the world. People are well intentioned but say the wrong things, which add more salt to the wound, so I shut down and didn’t talk about my trauma. I struggle with flashbacks and nightmares. I still struggle to be happy for friends who are expecting healthy pregnancies. I cry at night for my loss but I’m grateful to be alive.

This is a life threatening situation that needs emergency medical assistance and surgery.

Many ectopic pregnancy survivors, including myself, have experienced medical neglect and malpractice from healthcare professionals here in the UK. There needs to be better awareness training for A&E staff to spot the signs and give appropriate care and advice. Staff need to find suitable bed spaces on recovery wards and nurses need to read their notes better and have more compassion- this is not a generic operation or a healthy birth, this is brutal baby loss. Aftercare is diabolical, many survivors report being neglected once discharged, there are no check-ups or follow up care plans, there is no fertility support or assistance with receiving bereavement and PTSD counselling.

I lost trust in my body.

I lost love for my body.

I refused to touch my abdomen for months, I couldn’t look at my scars without crying and feeling sick. I lost trust in the NHS. There is more to this situation with the mistreatment I endured on the recovery ward but that is another article for another time.

It was the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust that provided the counsel that I needed.

Based in the UK, they are a small charity (and the only one of its kind) that supports ectopic survivors worldwide by providing information, education and mental health support. The EPT helped me begin to heal.

Women are often silenced, especially in regards to topics about periods, our bodies, pregnancy, fertility and breastfeeding. The double standards of society allow for glamorous boobs in men's magazines but breastfeeding in public is criticised; porn is rife but the average woman is sensored for showing her nipples? Tampon commercials use blue liquid because menstrual blood is considered taboo, we can’t talk about vaginas but penis ego is omnipresent and women’s stories of sex, fertility and birthing (tragic and healthy) are dismissed.

We should be talking about these very real topics to encourage societal change which is why I’ve shared my story, to help shine light on the insidious and ingrained mistreatment of women’s bodily autonomy, especially in relation to the abortion bans in the USA which is literally taking away women’s rights to have access to decent medical care and their rights to live.

Having our stories told and taking a stand for equality for women has a ripple effect for better education in society, which equates to better conduct towards women and women’s bodies and better medical treatment for women’s reproductive health and wellbeing.

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Katie Ness is a writer and poet in London. She is also a Yoga teacher, Women’s wellness mentor and women’s health advocate. She has poetry and essays published in a variety of literary journals and her poetry chapbook ‘Aphrodite Fever Dream’ is out soon with Undressed Society Publishing House. Katie survived her ectopic pregnancy in December, a week before Christmas 2020. Sunflowers and muffins make her smile. You can connect with her here: IG @katie_wild_yogi