After the heartbreaking death of Chrissy Teigen’s & John Legend’s unborn baby Jack, I’ve had loss on my mind. The intimate pictures were so startling and truthful.
Over ten years ago, I suffered two pregnancy losses. I began a new year with a resolution to have a baby before I hit “advanced maternal age” at 36. I stopped taking my birth control in January and by early February, I woke up in the middle of the night saying “you better go buy some pregnancy tests because I can feel it in my boobs! I’m knocked up” to my then-husband.
I was right! But oddly so early along that only the faintest trace could be detected on the tests. I went to my doctor for a urine test that did confirm I was about 4 weeks pregnant. And I knew exactly when it happened— on our five year wedding anniversary weekend to Yosemite.
I was unexpectedly excited. I made an ob/gyn appointment and settled into the idea of maybe actually doing this thing! But before even a week could pass, and over a holiday weekend of course, I began bleeding. My nurse training kept me calm. Probably just spotting, maybe even implantation bleeding. I was so so early along. The bleeding became cramping too, though. And without an obstetrician, I was unsure what to do.
Calls to a nurse advice line yielded only the unhelpful “if it’s a miscarriage, there’s nothing we can do—so you should just stay at home.” And I tried. But the Monday of the holiday, as I lay on the floor, having my husband call that same advice line while I experienced the worst pain I’d ever felt, I knew things weren’t good.
Pain is blinding, though. I couldn’t feel any emotions. Just pain. And once I got to the “obstetrical” emergency room, I just laid there waiting to find out my fate. Actually, I think I spent most of my time sitting up, hunched forward, breathing through the pain. Much like Tiegen in that first picture.
I don’t remember anything until the on-call sonographer arrived from home. She wheeled me to an ultrasound room, complaining that she’d just fallen asleep and then had to come back for my case. I experienced my first transvaginal ultrasound, in which a big wand is covered with a condom and lube before being pushed inside you and tilted this way and that, holding pressure against various structures to see the developing baby.
This is a deeply dehumanizing and degrading process. Especially when being done by someone who resents you because you woke them up and made them drive back to work for your emergency.
Towards the end, the sonographer quietly apologized. “I’m sorry,” she said. “ I think it’s ectopic.”
And like that, I was alone to wipe the lubricant from between my legs with the flimsy white paper drape I’d been covered with.
Back in my room, a doctor explained that the reason I was feeling so much pain was that the ectopic pregnancy had ruptured and I was accumulating fluid & blood in my pelvis now. She recommended emergency surgery that night.
And then it was over as abruptly as it started—in the middle of that same night. I begged that the procedure be laparoscopic and that the surgeon do everything in her power to prevent having to cut me open all the way. Anything that would make it so I could go home in the morning.
Ironically enough, for someone who willingly worked at a hospital about five days a week, my only concern was to leave it ASAP.
This was February. Presidents’ Day weekend, ten years ago. I waited 3 months, per my ob/gyn’s instructions before trying again. Then I got pregnant on the first try again and scheduled a five-week ultrasound per instructions in early July.
No heartbeat.
But maybe too early? Here began the frequent ultrasounds and blood draws. First, a weekly ultrasound. Blood every 3 days to see if my pregnancy hormones were rising appropriately. Then the ultrasounds became every three days as well. I couldn’t even joke about them using condoms on the transvaginal ultrasound probe anymore— I’d lost my sense of humor somewhere between forced entries.
I was nauseous, more than just mornings. My breasts were excruciatingly tender and already much bigger. I could smell EVERYTHING. This is not a great superpower for a nurse to have. Second pregnancy bonus: a heart murmur, normal I was told since I was doubling my blood volume.
I don’t remember what week we called it. Sometime between 8 and 9. Maybe 10?There was still no heartbeat in my gestational sac in my uterus. Plus, they thought they saw what looked like another ectopic in my other Fallopian tube. Not rupture this time, so no bleeding or pain. Also no life.
This time I didn’t need emergency surgery. I would get intramuscular injections of methotrexate, a good old fashioned chemotherapy drug that targets fast growing cells (like tumors or … ).
That day of my injections when I left the office, I was in a daze. I had gotten a shot in both shoulders (deltoid muscles) and both butt cheeks ( gluteals). I was told that I wouldn’t feel any side effects or in fact any effects at all from the medication. I was told that I wouldn’t bleed, that it wouldn’t seem like I was having a miscarriage, that there would be no cramping.
Not only would this all turn out to be lies, but the shots wouldn’t work. A “pregnancy” blood test had to be done every three days to make sure my hormone levels went down appropriately. Aka, that anything growing in me died.
I carried myself like a pall bearer to the lab trying not to cry when some unknowing tech asked happily, “oh, are you expecting?” as they drew my blood.
I was still experiencing morning sickness. Still has all the other weird things, heightened sense of smell, tender and enlarged breasts, the heart murmur. Within two weeks, my betaHCG hadn’t dropped enough and I had to get a second round of methotrexate injections.
The every-three-day lab tests continued. Until my hormone level was zero. I can’t remember anything from that time because I dissociated so completely. I was numb. Go to the lab. Go to bed. Like a black hole forming. I was a coffin in waiting. A coffin to be. A coffin.
And do you know what is the ONLY thing I remember my doctor telling me? “Well, you’ve had an ectopic in both Fallopian tubes so you’re done. You can’t have a baby. You can try IVF but you will need to have your tubes tied first.”
There were no conversations about grief, about loss. No ideas about what to do next in order to keep on living. Common knowledge warns that infertility and pregnancy loss contribute quite a bit to divorce. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t true for me.
I never healed, in many ways, from the physical traumas to my body not to mention the emotional trauma. And I certainly didn’t talk about it. Who did? My doctor, who I continued to see, certainly didn’t ask.
I did tell my husband at the time that there was no way I would do IVF, which would involve the every few day blood draws and aggressively invasive ultrasounds. But I’m sure he didn’t really understand the true depth of the emotional and physical trauma those things caused me. I never told him.
But my unwillingness to forge other paths to motherhood certainly played a role in our divorce. That however is a story for another time.
People have tried to bash Chrissy Tiegen for sharing such personal photos—or even for taking them at all. But I find them to be gorgeous. Painful, yes. Triggering? For me personally, yes. Honestly, it’s taken me a long time to finish this post. The weekend those photos came out was pretty dark for me as I relived a very sad time in my own life. But without people like her who are brave enough to share the depth of their sorrow and vulnerability as well as their joy, we could not move this conversation forward. We could not continue to heal as women and demand respect for the very hard work we do in addition to our jobs.
Also, I want to give you a little medical perspective on those pictures now that we’ve gone through my story and (in some ways) I feel the right to reveal this. In one picture, we can see Tiegen leaning forward, her back covered with what could be plastic wrap. There is a doctor behind her, a nurse holding her hand in front. Those of you familiar with the scene will recognize that she is getting an epidural. Which means that she had probably had to give birth to little Jack. And if that doesn’t break your heart into a million little pieces and make you want to scream “nobody should ever have to do this alone” then I just don’t know. I’m grateful she has started more conversations. I hope more women will connect and heal.