Mumnets people how about an 'Ectopic pregnancy' board?

that last post to gsmum, obv.

i think you think you know more about how other people might feel about their eps than you do, tbh.

if you were never troubled at all by the signing of that termination form, i'm pleased for you. but here's the thing... the lady that you're worried about, the one who might read this thread and be distressed by reading that her ep surgery was a termination... she might in fact already be feeling like shit about it and may in fact be relieved beyond belief to hear that other women have experienced the same (not completely rational) feelings as her.

we can't tell, and we have no business telling, fragile people how they should feel. all we can do is say how we felt and offer support.

I think this is a really good idea. I have had 2 ectopic pg 1st lost tube 2nd self resolving. Never thought it would happen to me after having a healthy pg with dd. Lots of issuse surrounding it and ttc afterwards.

Aitch i dont want to fight honestly. But id rather trust the opinion of the EPT site than a few googles, many of them which are untrue.
As you say yourself it is one in a zillion chance that a tubal pregnancy is going to survive, so why then say that the baby has to die to save the mothers life or to call surgery a termination??? I have to say im astounded that you would not consider this as seriously distressing, but call me insensitive for pointing out that a tubal pregnancy is rarely rarely viable?? For me if id just had an EP, id rather hear the facts, that my baby would not have survived, that i could have died without the surgery, than be told id just had a termination or that my baby had to die to save me. Now that is insensitive in the extreme. it is also extremely dangerous- pointing out that tubal pregnancies have survived ( which i dont believe) might only give out the message that you should wait and see, not have treatment in case your baby makes it- Again extremely dangerous.
Im not being insensitive- im being responsible and trying to save unecessary distress.

Ive never witnessed members of the EPT site calling themselves world authorities on anything. The medical advice is given out by Izie or medical hosts based on sound empirical reseach. The ladies there just support each other.

I really dont want a fight, but i do want to point out to any lady who reads this and has just had EP surgery, Your baby did not have to die to save you, and no you did not have a termination. You had surgery to save your life.

Gsmom - aside from the very rare, but nonetheless true, RL cases around, it is not fully accurate to just say that a tubal pregnancy is never viable.

My own ectopic pregnancy was doing jsut fine, apart from the large flaw of implanting in the wrong place. As far as could be told at the point at which my pregnancy was removed (which unfortunately is referred to as a medical termination - not nice, but true) there was nothing wrong with my baby. But it had to be removed as other wise it would have killed me. When I was operated on, I was 8 weeks+ pregnant, and my baby had a heartbeat. The only reason it was not viable was because of the place of implantation, so it is techically true that my baby had to die to save my life.

Not a nice htought, but one that I have dealt with (with much help from the EPT).

I do not think it is helpful for you to dismiss other people's thoughts and feelings on their ectopics as "untue emotive statements"

FWIW, I agree that having a separate board for eps would not really work, but to have the miscarriage/bereavement board wording changed ot encompass all forms of loss might help, along with,as someone suggested below a permanent thread running for support maybe.

i see we have x-posted. have a look, there is not just one case in the world, i'm reluctant to post them on here as i don't want to upset people.

i had to sign a form specifically agreeing to terminate my pregnancy, and so did many other women on here. THAT is why we refer to it as a termination, and given that you are terminating a pregnancy that you are being told is unviable and is a threat to your life, it carries no judgement whatsoever. but it still can feel like shit signing it, and it is that to which previous posters were referring.

i too would not have survived without the EPT and Izzie during my two ectopic pregnancies. in fact, had it not been for Iz i would likely have gone on to terminate what turned out to be my dd as that's what the medics were recommending as it was 'definitely another ep'.

she's an expert whose opinion i trust, whose views and knowledge are hard-won both personally and professionally. she, for example, has more sense than to operate on the basis that there is only one answer to a given problem. would that we all had such flexibility of mind.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/443373.stm
please note, it was a tubal pg that ruptured and then moved to abdominal wall.

look, i'm not wanting to chief you out but a few googles can find a number of eps that have made it to healthy term.

it's a one in a zillion shot, absolutely, but really for you to ignore the feelings of women who have found it hard not to think of the long odds is just downright rude and insensitive.

if anything, one of the problems of the EPT website is that the non-medical people don't move on from there, they get too involved in one area and mistakenly think that they've become world authorities on a very complicated (emotionally, physically, medically) subject.

yes, i send someone with an ep to have a look around there, but if you've been posting on MN then imo asking for a little support from your friends and a more inclusive pregnancy loss board is a good thing. no-one on here is advertising their credentials falsely, as i understand it.

BTW Aitch, i said a tubal pregnancy is never viable and this is true. Yes sometimes abdominal babies can survive but this is rare.

Well Aitch,
you are entitled to your opinion, but i dont believe that using emotive untrue statements like you amd memoo and lisielou is going to help anyone,
That your baby had to die to save your life? How would that not be distressing- one case worldwide is not significant.
and EP surgery IS NOT a termination, again that is very very distressing and offensive to any woman who has lost a baby.

Any you suggest that im ignoring the emotional reality of an EP, my God!

And describing the the ghastly chumminess and ill-educated posturings of a lot of the posters rather nauseating after a while- well i assume there is more to that then meets the eye. Personally i found them great for support and i wouldnt have recovered without them.

actually, there is one case at least of an abdominal ectopic pregnancy who is now a lively 7-year-old lad, so i'm afraid it's you who is misinformed.

and really, signing a termination form is never easy and for me at least did feel that i was taking something away from my baby (as opposed to my unviable pregnancy) and i would very much have appreciated the emotional support of memoo and lissie, who i feel would have shown more sympathy than you have. you're factually correct, in more instances than not, but to ignore the emotional reality of the end of an ectopic pregnancy is, well... that's really the doctors' job, not yours.

and tbh as invaluable as i found the medical side of the ept (izzie, a star and now a friend), i did find the ghastly chumminess and ill-educated posturings of a lot of the posters rather nauseating after a while.

memoo and lissielou,
seriously dont try and educate people about ep until you know the basics. Your baby did not have to die to save you, neither did mine and neither did any of the ep babies out there. a tubal pregnancy is never viable, and to suggest that somehow they are and that they died to save the mother's life is deeply distressing not only to me but also to others as well im sure. So i wouldnt want a separate board if misinformation like this is whats being writeen. Much better to direct ladies to the EPT site where accuarate info can be given by mediacally trained people and therefore women having received that accurate info can go on to give accurate and appropriate support.

I agree that is is doubtful that many women would come onto an ectopic pregancy topic to learn about it unless they had specific reason to do so. I certainly never gave it a second thought until mine happened, although of course I was aware that such things do occur. So from an educational point of view I am not sure a special topic would help.

What it would help, though, is to have somewhere to talk about the experience. It did not feel entirely appropriate to do this on the miscarriage board. I would look at those threads and lots of the posters were getting pregnant and miscarrying repeatedly, whereas I tried for ages (presumably because of my tubes) and only got pregnant with my ep. It just didn?t seem like the same experience to me.

It would also be good to have somewhere to ask those questions where the answer you want is based on other peoples' experiences. I remember asking, for example, whether anyone else had not bled after methotrexate. Of course I called the hospital the next day, but some reassurance in the interim can't hurt. Another thing that has been bothering me is whether it is normal to have very light periods after an ep - I have asked medical people who seem to think that anything is normal, but it is one of those questions where a "yes, that happened to me" would be very helpful. The obvious port of call is the EPT site, as they have just so much info, and I am sure any of us would point someone going through an ep in that direction, but MN is different, if only because of the volume of traffic. Now that I am feeling better about my ep, I tend not to visit the EPT site much, but I am on MN nearly every day and do check on threads about ep (if I spot them) on a regular basis.

I might be a good idea to rename the miscarriage topic 'pregnancy loss' as suggested by Aitch. We could always keep a thread running for people wanting to talk about eps within that section - or within the pregnancy section, if that would be more accessible..

yes, but i don't see how an identified Ep board will help to spread the word, as it were.

i don't imagine people who haven't recently had a miscarriage spend time on the miscarriage boards either, so in terms of education and saving lives, i think we're stuck with keeping an eye out on active convos for people who are posting in Pregnancy (as opposed to Loss, iykwim, because they haven't lost anything yet, they just have a funny symptom and sometimes a Bad Feeling).

those are the poor bastards who want to hear that those pains are stretching, that the bleeding is normal etc etc... and 90% of MN respondents will confirm that for them, becasue eps aren't really that common. and then we come along and say... 'don't rule out an ep' with as much kindness as we can, while knowing just how painful it will be if we're right.

actually... i wouldn't like it to be a separate board, because i think that a lot of people's first ep symptom is bleeding and that would make them think miscarriage and google it/look for it in topics. so the ep part might be missed. however, adding something to the name might be useful. what is it now, miscarriage/bereavement? i've probably got that wrong.

what about pg loss, with a covering note from MN at the top saying 'for discussion of pg loss, which might include misc, ep, molar, stillbirth etc? or just pg loss and let people make their own minds up?

ep is very different, no question about it, but i do think that an ep support thread running may be enough. cos i'd really be uncomfortable about taking people away from the ept site, as they do at least have trained medical mods there.

exactly. and i think i found coming to terms with the fact that my baby was removed so i could live very hard. when i mc'd i could believe that it is one of those things. something wrong. etc, etc. but with my ep the bean was growing and healthy.

thats a good point. i now test after every period "just in case" and i am terrified of getting a post period bfp! having an ep has definately changed ttc beyond "just" the fear of losing another baby. im now scared that ttc will one day cost me my ife too.

Lissie you're right that an ectopic is such a surprise. I was sort of prepared for early miscarriage, given the statistics, but was so shocked by my ep. I couldn't believe it when they told me it was 1 in 80 pregnancies now.

I was thinking about why it would be so good to have a separate topic and I think the main reason for me is that if you are ttc after an ep, you have (or I have) this fear that there is something wrong with my tubes and it will happen again, especially as I kept my tube. The NHS will not do any tests on me because "HSGs and Laparoscopies are to check for infertility and you are clearly fertile". So I bumble on wondering whether one (or both) of my tubes has got damaged without me knowing.

Sorry, I'm not expressing myself very well, but there is a real lack of aftercare following an ep and it would be good to have somewhere to talk specifically to other people who have experienced the same. And good as the EPT site is, MN is sort of my internet home.

i agree totally, i have had 7 mcs and 1 ep and the effects have been totally different. any extra info on ep would be great, because lets face it, you never think that it will happen to you!

It would be excellent if we were to be more informed about ectopic pregnancies. I for one would not have a clue what to look for with regards to symptoms.

Sorry to any of you that have had an ectopic pregnancy.