My cousin and her husband found out a few weeks ago that they were expecting their second child. She went to the doctor early last week. She said she thought she was about 6 weeks (they have been TTC so she was keeping track). Her doctor said there was no way, that she was way too big for 6 weeks, and she was either farther along than she thought or carrying twins. So she had an ultrasound this morning to check things out, and it's routine for doctors to do an ultrasound early on anyway.
She said that as soon as the ultrasound tech put the wand to her abdomen, she said "I have to go get the doctor" and ran out of the room. The doctor came in and took a look. He said they couldn't be totally sure from the ultrasound, but the pregnancy looked to be ectopic.
For those who don't know, an ectopic pregnancy is when the egg gets fertilized and begins to grow inside the fallopian tubes that connect the ovaries to the uterus. It is fatal to both mother and baby, and there is no way to save the pregnancy. They pretty much immediately abort at that point.
The doctor wasn't sure that the pregnancy was ectopic though. He said it looked very strange, and it could be that there was some tissue hanging down from the wall of her uterus that the fertilized egg had attached to. In that case, the smaller portion of uterine tissue attached to the baby would not supply enough blood as the pregnancy progressed. The baby would essential be choked of blood and be a stillbirth.
To make sure he knew what he was dealing with, the doctor scheduled an emergency surgery this afternoon to do a laparoscopy. Basically, he made a small cut in her abdomen and stuck a camera in to see what was going on. He told us that if he got inside and saw an ectopic pregnancy, he would cut it out. If not, we would go from there.
He got inside and saw that the pregnancy was neither ectopic nor attached to a piece of hanging uterine tissue. It is however implanted far too high up in the uterus. The fallopian tubes come into the uterus at the top. In a normal pregnancy, and egg drops down towards the bottom of the uterus, attaches to the wall, and waits to be fertilized. In this case, the egg didn't drop far enough, and attached too high. Unfortunately, this could lead to the same scenario as the hanging tissue, and the baby might not get enough blood as time passes.
For now, she is still pregnant, and we are praising God that it was not ectopic (because that would have led to loss of functioning in one ovary - not to mention the immediate loss of the pregnancy). She has been classified as a high risk pregnancy until 13 weeks - if the pregnancy lasts that long.
In short, please pray for my cousin, her husband, and all of our family as we try to find a way to deal with this crisis.