I Had An Ectopic Pregnancy: Here’s How I Got Through It

TL:DR I’ve had an ectopic pregnancy, it was hell and also I was incredibly blessed with support, I am mostly in the clear now.

I am aware that I am sharing potentially graphic content online and yet I am not ashamed or think it is, “not appropriate”.

This is a human experience, something millions of women and vulva havers go through, and have been through, and most in silence because it is apparently not appropriate to share these things that govern the “nether regions”.

I refuse to conform to a culture of silence and secrecy around women’s health, reproductive health, menstrual health, and literally anything that governs the health of vaginas and uteruses.

It’s also my work, so go figure.

I see no reason why I should sanitise the ugly, messy, tender, raw, and absolutely beautiful process of pregnancy, birth, illness, and the shadow side, pregnancy loss, because it helps nobody.

That said, if this topic feels raw or triggering for you, please skip past this post.

It started with a small, niggling cramp in my lower back.

Well, no, it started with my period being late a few weeks ago, peeing on a stick, and seeing a blue line.

And then frantically texting some friends and my mum while I tried to make it sink in.

Yep, just over a month ago I found out I was pregnant!

This baby was absolutely wanted and planned, and we were stunned it happened relatively quickly after trying.

We moved to Vienna back in October 2022, and we started trying after Christmas.

But oooh boy, the tiredness.

The First Trimester tiredness and brainfog hit me straight away, right from when my period was supposed to be.

Navigating the tiredness and feeling like my energy was pulling inwards was really hard, along with the emotional rollercoaster of trying to process that I was going to be a mother, in a country I still don’t know well yet.

In the middle of launching a group program, when I was trying to be visible online, yet all my energy wanted the opposite.

When do I see the gynecologist? When do I look for a doula? Do I start looking for mum and baby groups yet? Who do I even book in with here? How will I navigate my body changing? How many months do I have left before I can’t travel anymore?? When do I tell people? How will I manage the lack of sleep? How will I manage the acid reflux?

I had so many questions and uncertainties, and even though this baby was wanted, I still felt terrified.

Until about 10 days later when what started as a niggle in my lower back, turned into aching and cramping that lasted all afternoon.

I figured I was about 6 weeks along, and I knew something was very wrong. I called my husband, Bastian, and he came home from work early. He called our health insurance number and they told us to go to hospital.

I will add here that Bastian is German, so a native German speaker. While many people in Vienna speak good English, it isn’t a given, and my German is not good enough yet to navigate the medical system. So I have had to heavily rely on my husband to act as translator during this process too.

We went to the A&E at the local hospital, the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, known as the AKH. You pronounce it the German way, “Ah-Kah-Hah”.

After just 15 minutes, we saw a gynecologist (Yes, that’s Austrian healthcare for you and we just have bog standard health insurance).

Hoping that it was just a storm in a teacup, I was nervous yet slightly hopeful as I sat in the chair to be examined.

It was probably just early pregnancy cramping that happens, hopefully we were just being overly cautious.

“Suspected Miscarriage”

The gynecologist was a man in his 30s I would say, very friendly, and he let me insert the speculum myself, along with the vaginal ultrasound.

I sat back in the chair, breathed deeply, and tried as much as I could to relax while I had a probe inside me.

After a few minutes of clicking on the mouse, taking images, and moving the probe around, he frowned. He said he couldn’t detect the pregnancy inside my uterus and pointed to roughly where it should be.

At 6 weeks, he said, he should be able to see the gestational sac, and he couldn’t see anything.

It was either just much earlier along than we thought, or more likely, a suspected miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy.

The papers he gave us had the dreaded words, “Suspected miscarriage”, in German.

My heart plummeted, but we would find out for sure in 2 days time.

In the space of about 10 days, I had gone from shock at being pregnant to shock that I was going to lose it. I didn’t know how I felt as I was still in shock. Everything felt frozen and numb.

This was the beginning of a physical and emotional rollercoaster I was NOT prepared for, and I had no idea how long would last.

The fatigue, dizziness, and high emotional sensitivity was intense.

I had to shut out most news and unfollow or mute a lot of people online because I just couldn’t cope with all the external noise.

My world shrunk to just my immediate circle, my husband, and my clients, that was it. I had no energy or capacity to think about anything else apart from the next blood test.

A few days later it was confirmed it was almost certainly ectopic– likely my right fallopian tube– but luckily, so luckily, it was so early that it was tiny and hard to detect.

I took this as a good sign, it meant that rupture was less likely at this stage.

While we were heartbroken that this pregnancy was not to be, I was more scared of what this ectopic pregnancy would do to my body and how to get it out of me before it became an emergency and caused any damage. And I was scared at what the possible treatment would do to my body.

While the medical care I received here was excellent, every doctor I saw was still being very vague and non-committal about what was happening and what to expect.

This drove me nuts, because I felt nobody was being straight with me and telling me what was happening in my own body.

Thankfully, I got a lot of information from the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust, because I would rather know the worst case scenario and be prepared for it than not know. Do check them out and support them, I am so grateful to them.

I found it ironic that I got more information about ectopic pregnancy from Googling in the hospital waiting rooms than from the doctors themselves.

Expectant Management Phase

I thought I knew about ectopic pregnancies, but it turns out, it doesn’t happen often that you suddenly collapse and have to be rushed to hospital for emergency surgery.

It’s much more likely a lot of… waiting.

That is waiting and a LOT of blood tests.

We were in the, Expectant Management phase, which is basically watch and wait, while you continually have your blood monitored to see if your pregnancy hormone (HCG) level is dropping or not.

Did you know that about 50% of ectopic pregnancies (where they are being properly monitored to see that the pregnancy hormone is dropping — don’t forget this part!) resolve on their own? I sure didn’t.

Most medical providers aim to take the least invasive route possible, which I fully understand, so depending on your condition, your HCG levels, and stage of the pregnancy, they usually start with Expectant Management first.

If my HCG didn’t drop or didn’t drop fast enough, then I would move onto, Medical Management, where I would have an injection of Methotrexate to dissolve the embryo.

It would save my fallopian tube, but it’s basically a chemotherapy drug (even though for ectopic pregnancies they give you a much smaller dose), but my body is super sensitive, so god knows how long the recovery time would be.

This filled me with dread. How long would I be knocked out for? How long would I be off work??

If that didn’t work, then it’s Surgical Management, and one less fallopian tube.

Either way, no baby, just a bunch of cells growing in the wrong place that needs to be gotten out of me before it ruptures and threatens my life.

Enter the most uncertain few weeks of our lives we’ve had for a long time.

Pee, blood, speculum, ultrasound

Every other day we had to go back to the hospital for the magical trio: Pee in a cup (to test for HCG), a blood test (to more accurately measure HCG), and an internal examination with a speculum, and then a vaginal ultrasound.

Here they do vaginal ultrasounds, so it was almost 2 weeks of the most invasiveness, with various different people prodding and poking inside of me.

You can bet your bottom dollar that I insisted on inserting the speculum myself each time, most doctors were happy with that, apart from one very grumpy one.

And So. Many. Needles.

My elbows are still blue from all the needles, especially as my veins like to play, “hide and seek”, and sometimes don’t like to come out at all.

It was a ride of thinking we were in the clear a few times because they couldn’t detect anything on the ultrasound, and then getting a call a few hours later saying my HCG levels hadn’t fallen enough.

Oh, and when one day they lost my blood test on the way to the lab so we had to rush back before the unit closed to do the blood test again.

Aaaaaand then finding out they had lost my whole blood results from the previous week!

Everything I did to support my body

The next few weeks meant that I went all out with asking for support from friends, family, and practitioners, and doing all the somatic and holistic tools in my toolkit.

I told lots of people because I wanted lots of support, I didn’t want to keep something like this secret when I was suffering.

During the whole time, I absolutely practised what I preach in my work when it came to tools and relating to my body.

I can honestly say I would not have coped and would not be in the place I am without all these tools.

What it looked like:

• Orienting, a lot
• Body shaking
• Somatically tuning into my womb and pelvis
• Napping
• Welcoming the fight/flight response and not trying to make it go away
• Pelvic rocking and circling
• Writing a letter with my husband to the little soul that was not to be inviting it to leave and come back at the right time, then burning it for release.
• Baths with magnesium salts
• Warm food and hot drinks
• Hot water bottles
• Dialogue with my body and what she needed in the moment

Often what she needed was lots of nothingness, walking, nature, warmth, water, and intuitive movement.

I found myself needing to stretch my calves and sides a lot, so I followed that.

My local friends in Vienna were amazing too. I went for lots of coffee shop dates and gentle walks to keep me distracted so I wasn’t at home on my own ruminating.

I firmly believe all of this played a significant part in helping my body to do it’s thing, although I will never know for sure.

I started bleeding properly the night of Full Moon, a day after I wrote the letter and burned it, and the day before International Women’s Day.

I felt deep inside that my body was releasing the pregnancy.

A night in Hotel AKH

It culminated on a Saturday night after doing a workshop with lots of intuitive movement that evening. I woke up around 3am with a throbbing pain in my lower back and feeling a big, “gush” in my pants.

I stumbled to the toilet where the pain intensified, where let’s say, everything came out (because when your womb contracts, your bowels do too. TMI? I think we’re past that point now, and as I said at the beginning, I don’t believe in sanitising this experience.)

I felt like I was going to pass out and something felt very wrong.

I knew I needed medical attention, so while I was moving between sitting on the toilet, then getting too dizzy and having to crouch on all fours on the bathroom floor, then needing the toilet again, and back, I calmly asked my husband to call an ambulance.

He sprung into action while being stunned, but I couldn’t focus on anything else but my own body.

It was intense, and yet while I was rocking on my hands and knees riding the waves of pain, I also felt a deep sense of calm that my body knew what it was doing.

The pain wasn’t on my right side, so I knew I wasn’t rupturing. It was bearing down, pushing against my cervix, and coming in waves like contractions.

Good, I thought. My womb is clearing whatever this is out. Come on body, keep going, you can do this.

It was a quick ride in the ambulance back to the AKH, more pee in a cup, seeing another gynecologist in A&E, more blood tests, and then hooked up to a saline drip with painkillers before being transferred to a lovely quiet ward for the rest of the night.

My husband and I joked that I got a night in Hotel AKH, courtesy of my health insurance.

Good news!

Sunday morning I saw the consultant, which meant another ultrasound and more blood tests.

First, good news, there was no embryo left, just tissue that was still there and would take a few months to fully disappear.

No need for surgery!

And then a surprise:

He detected something that he suspected could be endometriosis, which if it is, could be why the pregancy became ectopic.

If I have it, it could also be behind my bowel issues and fatigue. I never would have thought this myself, as my periods are very regular and not particularly painful.

I won’t find out for another few months until this pregnancy has fully cleared and I have had a period or two.

Then a few hours later, the news we had been praying so hard for:

My HCG levels had completely plummetted by 50%! Hence why I had had such an almighty bleed. The plummeting HCG caused my womb to basically empty out all of the cushioning it had created for the baby that was growing in the wrong place.

No need for Methotrexate either!

The worst was hopefully, over, it would just need careful monitoring for my HCG levels to keep falling, and for me to take it very easy because there was still a very small chance of rupturing.

My body did it’s thing, it knew what it was doing, no horrible injection or surgery needed, just bruises from umpteen needles and feeling very wobbly.

I sent a big prayer of thanks to my body and to the universe.

I am so damn grateful

There is so much more that I will tell because it is a long story.

From all the amazing support I received from friends and family, both of us received, both virtually and in person, to all the woo and somatic exercises I did to support myself that I absolutely know made a huge difference.

To my husband, Bastian. He was a rock the whole way through. He came to every single appointment, acting as both bodyguard and translator, holding my hand through it all. I felt through all of this that we were a team.

And to the amazing Austrian healthcare system.

I feel a huge amount of gratitude mixed in with all the heavy feelings because once inside the hospital, each time, there was hardly any wait time at all.

Can you imagine going to an A&E in the UK right now and waiting just 15 minutes? And then going to a room just for gynecology and being seen by a gynecologist?!

Or calling an ambulance on a Saturday night and it arriving in 15 minutes, and being seen within another 15 minutes of arriving at the hospital?!

(I don’t blame the NHS for this, I blame the UK government, just so we are clear, by the way.)

I am even very grateful for having endometriosis potentially seen, because it was only picked up by a gynecologist who was a professor and the leader of the whole gynecology department. None of the other gynecologists I saw spotted this.

Yes, I am grateful for this! Because there is absolutely NO way this would have been detected in the UK, and I would have no idea I have it (if I have it, we don’t know yet), and so it go untreated.

Did you know that endometriosis is a big risk factor in developing ectopic pregnancy? I didn’t know that either.

If I have it, we know what we are dealing with, and there are treatment options.

To be honest, I have no idea how this would have played out were we still in Brighton. Whether they would have detected it so quickly or whether I would have had to wait for hours each time and be fobbed off.

I am also incredibly grateful I do not live in a Red state in the USA, where there would be fear and confusion as to whether I would get the care I needed.

EDIT: The only thing I paid was an extra €120 on top of the standard health insurance fee I pay every month.

The biggest lesson

I feel deep gratitude to my body and all the somatic and inner work I have done so far that helped support me through this.

Now here’s the biggie:

I know without any doubt I would NOT be in the place I’m at without all the somatic tools, knowing my body so well, and all the support from friends, family, and practitioners.

All of them were reassuring me that I knew what to do, my body knew what to do, and I could trust that.

By the way, this also mean meant trusting when I needed medical assistance too — so going to hospital and then asking my husband to call an ambulance — because something felt very wrong.

I fully acknowledge it absolutely could have gone very differently even if I had done the same things too. But all of these tools and support put me in a much better headspace so I could cope too.

I have built this in over the past 3 years (and more), it was an excellent training ground in forming a partnership with my body that I put into practice this past month.

In the woo world, they say an ectopic pregnancy can be an initiation of some kind, and I feel it to be true.

It meant I was forced to stop, ask for help, and really, really listen to my body and trust it.

Now I navigate the wobbly recovery time, still very much in a liminal space. It is a big lesson in trust and surrender.

I hope by sharing this, as cathartic as it was for me, that my story helps somebody else.

Ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage are very painful and traumatic events that are actually incredibly common.