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Hello there, my name is Becca and my husband's name is Warren. We have been together for almost 13 years and have been married for 6 months. After we got married we decided we wanted to try for a baby. After 5 months of trying, we finally discovered I was pregnant. We were over the moon and couldn't wait to become parents for the first time!

With technology these days and with how advanced pregnancy tests are now, you can find out you are pregnant a lot earlier than what you used to. So at the time of taking the test, going from the dates of my last period I was just over 4 weeks pregnant.

I hadn't really had a lot of symptoms. I felt sick for two days but wasn't actually sick. I spotted for a couple of days and had a few strange pains in my tummy but that was it.

We hadn't told anyone of our news at this point and doing my research had found out that the midwife doesn't see you until you are between 8 and 11 weeks pregnant. So all I had to go by, to find out what was normal was Google. You know what it's like, you Google symptoms and self diagnose yourself with all sorts of problems!! Warren told me to stay off the internet and to just go with the flow until it was our time to see the midwife.

Over the next few weeks I had started spotting again and the pains I was getting weren't severe but were becoming more regular. So back I went onto Google. I hated that there was no clear differentiation between symptoms. Google told me that what I was feeling could either be a sign of miscarriage, it could be ectopic or it could just be a completely healthy sign of early pregnancy. We agreed that it was just my body's way of telling me that it was getting ready to start growing this mini human inside of me.

Saturday 30th March came. I had been having severe abdominal pains down on the left hand side for a few hours on the Friday night. I fell asleep on the settee with a hot water bottle and when I woke up the pain had gone. I went to the bathroom to start getting ready for bed, went to the toilet and I was bleeding. I was so frightened, I didn't know what was happening. Although it was a little bit more than spotting, it still wasn't enough to be concerned about. But the more we talked about it the more I started to worry so off we went in the  car to A&E. We got there at 1am and didn't leave until 7.30am.

After several blood tests and lots of waiting around, they finally sent me to gynocology where I spoke with the Doctor. He told me he wasn't concerned as I didn't appear to be in anymore pain and I had stopped bleeding. My urine and blood tests came back that I was still pregnant, so he sent me home and asked me to come back on the Monday for a scan.

Mother's Day came on the Sunday and we broke the news to our families who were over the moon and so happy that we were finally going to become parents for the first time.

We went for the scan on the Monday to the Early Pregnancy Unit at the hospital. The nurse did an internal scan and it seemed to go on forever. I knew by the look on her face that it wasn't good news. She took one look at me and said, "there is absolutely no sign of a pregnancy in there whatsoever." Those words will haunt me forever. I burst into tears and she said, "I'll give you both a minute to get yourselves together," then she left the room. Why was she saying these things? How could she just leave without an explanation? What did this even mean??? A different nurse came back into the room and told me to go downstairs to have my blood taken, to go home and to wait for the results.

I have learnt so much about the body from this whole experience. In pregnancy you have a hormone called Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hcg). In a 'normal pregnancy,' your hcg levels should double every 48-72 hours.

I got a phonecall to say my results had come back and although my hcg levels had gone up since Saturday, they had only gone up by 50% in 2 days. I was still hopeful though. I thought maybe I had got my dates wrong and that I wasn't as far along as I thought. I was told I needed to go back every 2 days for blood tests to monitor my levels of hcg.

Warren paid for us to go to Birmingham the next day for a private scan just to make sure. She did an ultrasound and an internal. Again we were told there was no pregnancy there, not even a sac. She said they should atleast be able to see a sac but there was no sign at all. But she did leave us a bit more hopeful saying that it was possible I had just got a bit mixed up with my dates and that it may just be a bit too early to pick anything up.

By the Friday I got to the hospital and was told by the senior consultant there was no point in taking anymore blood as it was pointless, it wasn't showing them anything as it wasn't rising how it should be. We got taken into a side room to be told, "this isn't a viable pregnancy." "This is a pregnancy what we call 'a pregnancy of unknown location.'" I had completely baffled everybody. Even the Doctors didn't know what was going on inside me. No one could give us any straight answers.

Monday, I had to have another scan and more blood tests (after being told that the blood tests were pointless). The sonographer started to do an ultra sound. That lasted about 20 seconds and she stopped. She told me to go and empty my bladder so she could do an internal. I knew then what was going through her head. She couldn't find our baby :-( by this time I was 7 and a half weeks pregnant. Our baby should be visible on the screen. We should have been able to see a heartbeat. I had all the apps on my phone telling me how big it should be and what we should be seeing but no, all that was on the screen was a big empty space. She did the internal and again couldn't find anything at all.

We got sent to speak to a senior consultant who told us even though they couldn't see anything on the screen or any sign of an ectopic pregnancy, they unfortunately had to treat it as one. We were having none if it. How dare they tell us our baby is ectopic? They had no proof, they couldn't see anything on the scans to say it was growing in the wrong place. How can they just make assumptions like that?! She told me either I could have laparoscopy surgery (keyhole) to find out what was going on, or to take a drug called Methotrexate in the form of an injection, which is a strong drug that they use to help patients who are undergoing treatment for Cancer. She didn't provide us with any information, just told me they were my options and she wanted me to make a decision there and then. All I could think of was, 'how can she make me make a life changing decision like that on the spot?' 'She is telling me to get rid of our baby without any proof that it is in danger.' I just wanted to go home. They let us go home to talk about it and I told her I would ring up with my decision.

A few hours later, after having a chat with my Mom, we had decided that the safest option was to have the injection, but on one condition, that somebody meets with us at the hospital the next day to discuss it properly with us and to tell us exactly what was involved. So off we went the next day, me, Warren and my Mom, to be greeted by yet another different consultant. I was supposed to be having the injection today but she had other ideas. She said she was not happy giving me the injection when my results were so all over the place. There was nothing to say our baby was definitely ectopic, they were only assuming. She said if I had the injection I would always be thinking, 'what if it was a viable pregnancy, we wouldn't be giving our baby the best possible chance.' She completely turned everything on its head and made me consider having the surgery instead. She went off to go and speak to her senior for a second opinion then came back and said that he had told her that I had to have the injection and it definitely was ectopic! She then said to me, and this is one of the things that infuriated me the most, she said, "you shouldn't feel guilty for choosing to have the injection or surgery to get rid of the pregnancy. What you've got to think is, it's not formed properly so it isn't a baby you are getting rid of." How dare she?! We are not just a number, we are not a statistic, that is our baby!! Yes I was only 8 weeks pregnant  but as soon as I got that 'pregnant' reading on that pregnancy test, me and Warren were having a baby!!!

My pregnancy was a very strange case, we completely baffled everyone involved. Nobody knew what was going on in there but they knew for certain it wasn't a 'normal viable' pregnancy as my hcg levels were nowhere near as high as they should be. Again I got upset and wanted to just get away and find somewhere to calm down and to talk things over with Warren and my Mom. We went for something to eat in the cafe and had a good chat and decided to definitely go ahead with the injection.

By this time, two of the people we needed to speak to were on their lunch break. By the time they came back, the pharmacy said it was too late in the day for them to mix up the drug (they have to go by your height and weight for the correct dosage), so wouldn't mix up the drug until the next day!! I was fuming. That was 2 days now where we felt like we had been fobbed off, pushed from pillar to post, given mixed messages, no clear answers and absolutely no information whatsoever on what was involved with an ectopic pregnancy.

So I had an appointment on Wednesday 10th April at 2pm to go into hospital to have the Methotrexate injection. So I decided to try and go to work in the morning for a few hours to try and get back to a bit of normality. I only lasted half an hour when I started to get a pain low down on my left side again, in the same place when I had ended up in A&E. Only this time I knew it was different. This pain wasn't getting any better, only worse. And then the pain came in my shoulder. I knew this wasn't a good sign as I had read on the internet about shoulder tip pain in ectopic pregnancy. I went home and rang the hospital straight away. They told me to get there ASAP. By the time we got into hospital, the pain I was in was horrific and was spreading into my leg. They ended up getting me a bed to lie on and got me some strong painkillers.

They took me for a scan. Another internal. By this time I was bleeding quite heavily. She then drops another bombshell. "You have a cyst on your ovary." What?! I've had 6 scans in a week. Why was this only just being picked up?! I asked if it could be removed but they said no because if it started bleeding when they remove it, they would have to take my ovary as well.

They prepared me for surgery. I've got to hand it to them, the way they looked after me this time, I couldn't fault it.

There were a few others waiting for surgery but they took me in first. I think I was in surgery for around 2 hours, but then I was left another 2 hours before someone came and told me what had happened during surgery. "We found the pregnancy in your left tube. We were able to remove it without having to take your fallopian tube." Although it didn't feel like it at the time, I was one of the lucky ones. I would say with how much pain I was in, I was probably only hours away from my fallopian tube rupturing. They managed to keep it in tact, some people aren't so lucky.

All I felt the whole time I was in hospital was relief. I wasn't in that horrific pain anymore. Then I felt guilty. Guilty for feeling relieved. Guilty and blaming myself. What had I done wrong? What could I have done to stop this from happening? Then came the upset. We were walking out of the hospital after being discharged and I just broke down. I was hysterical. But I know now that none of this was my fault. It's not anyones fault. It is completely random and it can happen to absolutely anyone.

It wasn't until I came out of hospital that I started to find out more about ectopic pregnancy. Some of the stories I have read about other people's experiences are horrific. Ectopic pregnancy is serious. There isn't enough information out there about it. It can be life threatening if it isn't found soon enough. I just thank my lucky stars I am still here to tell this story.

We have nothing to remember our baby by, no scan photo as it didn't show on any of the scans I had. All I have left is 3 scars across my tummy.

So our aim is to try and help to raise awareness of ectopic pregnancy to hopefully help other women out there who are going through the same thing as what we have.

Thank you for taking the time to read our story.

Becca and Warren

Xx

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