On my 30th birthday, I went for my 12-week ultrasound of my first pregnancy only to find there was no heartbeat. I was given a choice, wait for it to pass or have a D&C. I opted for the D&C the next day. 6 days later, while standing in-front of my classroom full of teenage boys, I could feel I was expelling clots. And I’m talking golf ball sized. I went straight to the doctor and needed another D&C that night. Pathology showed it was a partial molar pregnancy where 2 sperm fertilize 1 egg and cyst clusters form attached to the baby. Those grow and if left in the uterus it turns into Gestational Trophoblastic Disease which can only be treated successfully with Methotrexate which treats cancer. Oh, and it can also turn into cancer, choriocarcinoma. And then I had to go back on birth control, get weekly blood draws until my hCG levels got to 0, then monthly blood draws to make sure they stay at 0 because the only indicator if the molars cells are still growing is hCG levels so therefore we couldn’t try to conceive again for 6 months. They said the baby stopped growing at 8 weeks, so for 4 weeks these tumors grew and I had no signs or symptoms of the miscarriage. And guess what my medical records say…abortion. Who knows what might have happened if I was forced to “wait to let it pass”. I went on to have 2 healthy pregnancies.
