Omg ladies I just got the news I've been waiting 6 months for and I need to share!
I've told bits of my story but basically I got pregnant in August 2019 and had an early scan at 8 weeks which showed the baby was measuring 2 weeks behind. Everyone told me I had my dates wrong and everything was fine as there was a heartbeat bit I just KNEW something was wrong. I went for my 12 week scan on 21.10.19 and my fears were realised. No heartbeat and baby was measuring 7 weeks. I opted for a D&C and had that on 24.10.19 and thought that would be the end of the nightmare...how wrong I was.
I got a letter around 3-4 weeks later saying they'd carried out pathology on what was removed as my placenta looked abnormal and the results indicated a molar pregnancy. It came with a leaflet which talked about cancer and chemo and hysterectomy and it put the fear of God in me.
I waited 2 more weeks for an appointment at my local hospital which was supposed to be with a gynae consultant but instead was with a junior doctor. Now molar pregnancies are super rare...and this junior doctor clearly didn't have a clue. She told me I'd need chemo (which I knew from research wasn't necessarily the case) and just kept giving me conflicting information so I demanded to see a consultant. The consultant arrived and apologised and said actually it's so rare that all molar pregnancies have to be dealt with by a specialist hospital and I was basically ushered out and told a specialist centre in Sheffield would contact me about treatment and monitoring.
Basically a molar pregnancy is caused by one of two things. You can have a complete mole which is when one sperm fertilises an egg which is 'empty' in that it has no chromosomes from the mother. The other type is a partial mole where two sperm enter a healthy egg so the baby is 'triploidy' meaning it has 3 sets of chromosomes (one from mum and two from dad) which means the baby can't survive. A complete mole has around a 20% change of becoming cancerous and a partial somewhere under 5%. Thankfully the specialists in Sheffield re-did the pathology and confirmed I had a partial mole. You then start monitoring of HCG which is the pregnancy hormone. As long as this continues to fall to normal pre-pregnancy levels then you don't need treatment. If this plateus or rises this indicates that placental tissue is growing out of control and this leads to cancer. I was lucky in that I never needed chemo and never developed cancer but it's taken 6 whole months for me to hit a normal level of HCG in my system. I was told last month that my levels still were not normal but as it was coming down and was now almost normal they were comfortable for me to try again hence being on this thread. You can't try again until they tell you as obviously a new pregnancy will trigger a rise in HCG which is the only way they can be sure nothing sinister is going on.
Well today my day finally came. The hospital just called and confirmed that after 6 months of constant blood tests and worry over my future health and fertility I'm finally at a completely normal base level HCG and I'm being discharged.
I wouldn't wish what happened to me on my worst enemy. But for those of you worried about previous miscarriages or how long it's taking to conceive I'd say just try and relax and enjoy it. Because yes bad things happen sometimes, but you can come out of the other side with some hope xxx