Daughter has ectopic pregnancy

[daddysgirlnot]

My beautiful daughter has been diagnosed with ectopic pregnancy. She lives on the mainland, I’m en route from Ireland. I’m heartbroken for her. To those of you who have experienced this, I’m so sorry you had to endure it. If you don’t mind, I’d really appreciate your thoughts on what really helped, and what should I absolutely avoid so that I don’t hurt her feelings or make things worse. She’s still my baby (even though she’s 30); and I want to really help her navigate her way around this. She’s having a laparotomy first thing. Thank you so much in advance.

I'm so sorry to hear this. I had an ectopic pregnancy back in 2016, rushed into surgery after going to the early pregnancy unit with pain. Like you, my mum was some distance away but travelled straight away.
It's going to be a tough time. She will have the physical recovery from surgery to deal with plus the loss of the pregnancy. My advice would be to acknowledge the loss and don't focus solely on the physical recovery. You sound like a lovely mummy, I'm sure she'll really appreciate you being there for her.
There's not a great deal of public awareness but check out The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust for your benefit and when it's an appropriate time signpost her to it. They have a Facebook group which I found a great support.
And finally, she is likely to be anxious about her fertility going forward. I spent a lot of time post surgery talking to the surgeon about that. I've since had two babies with one tube, and had great extra care on the NHS including lots of early scans and blood tests to ensure if it happened again it would be detected early xx

You sound like such a wonderful mum for even considering the best things to do and say.
I’m sorry your daughter is going through this. I had an ectopic pregnancy in 2020 and it really knocked me for six in terms of mental health.

For me, the worst part was how long it took to physically get over it. I didn’t have to have surgery but had conservative management and it was weeks and weeks. I found this really hard because I couldn’t move on. Not helped by the fact my best friend was pregnant at the same stage at the same time. And I was impatient to try again because it’s what I really wanted.

I’ve now got two children from subsequent healthy pregnancies. I hope that’s a helpful comment, it was always useful for me to know that it was possible after I had experienced a pregnancy loss.

As a previous poster has says, not only is it a loss but it also means she may fear for her fertility and whether she can carry a baby. I found talking to medical professionals who took the time to tell me about success stories calmed me down.

Just be there for her, don’t tell her what she must be feeling, focus on physical and mental recovery. Take things easy with her and be led by her.

Hope she is and you are ok 💐

Sorry to hear your daughter’s going through this.

I had an ectopic pregnancy and it was a horrible experience. Help wise, I’d do whatever you can to keep things ticking over whilst she rests, recovers and comes to terms with it. Physically the surgery took it out of me for a few weeks. Make sure she’s comfortable and well looked after and got what she needs to get through it.

Mentally it was a really tough time. I was sad, scared and very angry. It was an isolating time and I felt nobody could truly understand what I was going through. There wasn’t really anything anyone could’ve said to make it better so it was great whenever anyone just listened without judgement whenever I needed to rant or vent or cry about it.

I did have a friend who when I met up with her a few months later had clearly done some research. It meant a lot that she’d taken the time to do that. It might not be the case for everyone but the fact she was able to ask me actual questions about it rather than the well meaning but actually quite irritating “how are you feeling” type questions was genuinely helpful and cathartic for me.

It’s very difficult to navigate. I’m convinced I lost my best friend because of the awkwardness of this period. I’m sure as her mum you’ll know what to do!

It really won’t help your daughter to know right now but I went on to have a successful pregnancy the year after. The trauma of the ectopic is still lurking deep down in there somewhere but it was definitely healing.

Thank you all so much for your kindness. x