Today I was planning on sharing with the world (ahem: facebook) that we were going be expecting a new addition to our family come May. I had a cute little Halloween shirt that Alice (the newest member of our team who arrived Thursday) was going to bring in. It was black and then had the white bones of the Mom and then you could see the baby's bones too and it was waving.
However, God's plans for me were different. I had a different feeling about this pregnancy than the others. The whole time I had felt more on edge. When I was around 7 weeks, we got an ultrasound at one of our friend's house (Dr. Asher). Her machine wasn't super high powered, but even so, we saw the flicker of the heartbeat and a small little baby in there. That quelled my doubts for a few weeks until a friend of mine went through a miscarriage around 12.5 weeks. I had purchased a doppler to use here because I thought it might be nice to monitor things at home since medical care is a little less accessible here. After the news of my friend, I got out the doppler and gave it a go. At the time I was about 10 weeks and I couldn't find the heartbeat. However, its very difficult to find the heartbeat with a doppler so early so I chalked it up to my inexperience. However it prompted me to see if John would take me to the hospital for an ultrasound this past Tuesday when I would have been a little over 11 weeks.
Monday night I was getting my boys ready for bed and noticed some wetness on my shorts. I decided to go check it out. I remember at the time thinking "I wonder if I'm miscarrying?" And I was. I kept thinking to myself "no, no, this is not supposed to happen!" I immediately called Emily and Robin who both comforted and advised me. I layed down the rest of the evening and drank some water. Emily told me "many people have some bleeding in the first trimester". I didn't sleep well and was cramping.
The next morning was quite traumatic. I'll be vague on the details but it's been many years since I have cried that hard over a loss. At that point, I was quite certain what was happening. The night before I felt like my heart had made peace with what was happening, but the actual act of miscarrying was WAY MORE emotionally painful than the fact that we wouldn't get to add another Campbell to our clan mid May. John took the day off to be with me. The boys stayed near and we let them watch movies.
I am part of a "mom group" on facebook and they encouraged me to go get a scan to confirm. Many of them had similar symptoms with a SCH (subchorionic hematoma- basically a huge bruise that can bleed and release clots) and were hoping that was all mine was. This gave me a little bit of hope! Maybe I wasn't miscarrying after all! I did try and keep my heart guarded but I would be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for a different outcome.
We drove about 1.5 hours to Lunsar. They have a hospital called Saint John of God there. We signed in and walked straight to maternity. When we got to maternity... they sent us back to the very front gate. I guess they thought we were visitors because we were white, but they have a different protocol for patients. I went throught the Ebola screening and was led to pay for our services and get a chart made up for us.
Once we were all signed in, we waited in a hall with several other people. We started a conversation with our neighbors who asked us what we were doing in the country. We told him we worked under Willamette International and do a lot of water projects. Turns out the guy, Eugene, knew Emily and would be seeing her the next day for a CHASLE (Christian Health Association of Sierra Leone) hosted by that hospital.
Not too long after, we were ushered in to meet the doctor. There was a nurse and a gynecologist both from Italy serving stints at the hospital. They had the cutest accents but their English was not great. They had me get up on the exam table. I assumed they were going to do an abdominal ultrasound so when she asked me to pull down my skirt, I pulled it down about 2 inches. Then she said, "No. All the way." Well, I assumed something was lost in translation so I just pulled it down 2 more inches. Well this game kept on going for a while until I figured out there was no mistranslation and all my propriety was forced out the window. Anyways, we all got friendly real quick. They seemed real confused at what they were looking at on the ultrasound. They seemed incredulous that I had an ultrasound that showed a baby and a heartbeat.
After the ultrasound was over, the doctor in his Italian accent said, "no baby, no pregnancy." He explained he thought my pregnancy was a molar pregnancy in which the fetus was not really a fetus and never had a heartbeat but more like a benign growth. Molar pregnancies need at least a D&C to remove it, but sometimes require drugs if the growth has invaded the organ and can sometimes even become cancerous although he assured me that was very rare. He did insist on needing the tissue examined by a pathologist to see if it had invaded the uterus and to make sure its benign. But unfortunately they didn't have a pathologist at the hospital so we would have to get the D&C done elsewhere at a place that was able to examine the histology. Oh, and nobody there knew of a place in the country that was able to do that.
However, God's plans for me were different. I had a different feeling about this pregnancy than the others. The whole time I had felt more on edge. When I was around 7 weeks, we got an ultrasound at one of our friend's house (Dr. Asher). Her machine wasn't super high powered, but even so, we saw the flicker of the heartbeat and a small little baby in there. That quelled my doubts for a few weeks until a friend of mine went through a miscarriage around 12.5 weeks. I had purchased a doppler to use here because I thought it might be nice to monitor things at home since medical care is a little less accessible here. After the news of my friend, I got out the doppler and gave it a go. At the time I was about 10 weeks and I couldn't find the heartbeat. However, its very difficult to find the heartbeat with a doppler so early so I chalked it up to my inexperience. However it prompted me to see if John would take me to the hospital for an ultrasound this past Tuesday when I would have been a little over 11 weeks.
Monday night I was getting my boys ready for bed and noticed some wetness on my shorts. I decided to go check it out. I remember at the time thinking "I wonder if I'm miscarrying?" And I was. I kept thinking to myself "no, no, this is not supposed to happen!" I immediately called Emily and Robin who both comforted and advised me. I layed down the rest of the evening and drank some water. Emily told me "many people have some bleeding in the first trimester". I didn't sleep well and was cramping.
The next morning was quite traumatic. I'll be vague on the details but it's been many years since I have cried that hard over a loss. At that point, I was quite certain what was happening. The night before I felt like my heart had made peace with what was happening, but the actual act of miscarrying was WAY MORE emotionally painful than the fact that we wouldn't get to add another Campbell to our clan mid May. John took the day off to be with me. The boys stayed near and we let them watch movies.
I am part of a "mom group" on facebook and they encouraged me to go get a scan to confirm. Many of them had similar symptoms with a SCH (subchorionic hematoma- basically a huge bruise that can bleed and release clots) and were hoping that was all mine was. This gave me a little bit of hope! Maybe I wasn't miscarrying after all! I did try and keep my heart guarded but I would be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for a different outcome.
We drove about 1.5 hours to Lunsar. They have a hospital called Saint John of God there. We signed in and walked straight to maternity. When we got to maternity... they sent us back to the very front gate. I guess they thought we were visitors because we were white, but they have a different protocol for patients. I went throught the Ebola screening and was led to pay for our services and get a chart made up for us.
Once we were all signed in, we waited in a hall with several other people. We started a conversation with our neighbors who asked us what we were doing in the country. We told him we worked under Willamette International and do a lot of water projects. Turns out the guy, Eugene, knew Emily and would be seeing her the next day for a CHASLE (Christian Health Association of Sierra Leone) hosted by that hospital.
Not too long after, we were ushered in to meet the doctor. There was a nurse and a gynecologist both from Italy serving stints at the hospital. They had the cutest accents but their English was not great. They had me get up on the exam table. I assumed they were going to do an abdominal ultrasound so when she asked me to pull down my skirt, I pulled it down about 2 inches. Then she said, "No. All the way." Well, I assumed something was lost in translation so I just pulled it down 2 more inches. Well this game kept on going for a while until I figured out there was no mistranslation and all my propriety was forced out the window. Anyways, we all got friendly real quick. They seemed real confused at what they were looking at on the ultrasound. They seemed incredulous that I had an ultrasound that showed a baby and a heartbeat.
After the ultrasound was over, the doctor in his Italian accent said, "no baby, no pregnancy." He explained he thought my pregnancy was a molar pregnancy in which the fetus was not really a fetus and never had a heartbeat but more like a benign growth. Molar pregnancies need at least a D&C to remove it, but sometimes require drugs if the growth has invaded the organ and can sometimes even become cancerous although he assured me that was very rare. He did insist on needing the tissue examined by a pathologist to see if it had invaded the uterus and to make sure its benign. But unfortunately they didn't have a pathologist at the hospital so we would have to get the D&C done elsewhere at a place that was able to examine the histology. Oh, and nobody there knew of a place in the country that was able to do that.
Well this post is already super long, so I'll leave it here at this cliffhanger and try to write more tomorrow...
Here it's what I was thankful for this day:
1. John was so wonderful. He was so comforting yet he also pointed to me to God in my pain.
2. John was able to stay home with me on Tuesday and take me to the hospital on Wednesday. He has been SO busy with work and definitely missed important meetings and things he's been planning for months that were coming to fruition just this week.
3. A very well trained and I'm assuming very experienced gynecologist was at the hospital to help us. He had only been there one week prior to me showing up and is only in the country for two months.
4. I had Emily and Robin for comfort and friendship and they have been there for me. They watched my kids and feed my family for entire days even amidst preparing for two short term and one long term missionaries that arrived on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.
