The Blood and Guts of Motherhood
Five years before we had our daughter, our first child, I had an ectopic pregnancy. My husband and I hadn’t even been married two years and were not trying to get pregnant. The only reason my gynecologist was able to diagnose the ectopic pregnancy was because I had sought care for a menstrual period that would not end.
After two weeks of nonstop bleeding, I scheduled an appointment at my OB-GYN’s office. The medical staff ran a few tests and gave me a pack of birth control pills to treat my prolonged period. I was instructed to begin taking the pills the next day, but only after they had a chance to review my test results. I was not on any hormonal birth control at the time and taking The Pill was the quickest way to regulate my menstrual cycle.
When I called the following day to get the go ahead and course correct my period, a nurse unfamiliar with my situation told me in a joyful voice, “We have good news — you’re pregnant!”
I was sitting at my work desk, taking the call on a landline (it was 1998, nearly a decade before the iPhone). I worked at a dot com company in the very early days of the Internet and my work group shared an office space, all of us within whispering distance of each other. I asked the nurse if I could call her back and found an empty office where I could speak to my healthcare provider without the rest of my work colleagues hearing the gruesome details of my latest period.
The nurse said the tests showed I was pregnant, but that my hCG hormones, the hormones our body produces when we’re pregnant, were not as high as they should be. They wanted me to come back to the office for more tests. For the next two — maybe three — weeks, I went to my OB-GYN’s office every morning so that they could track my hCG levels. According to my doctor, I was pregnant, but there was a chance the very new fetus was nonviable because my hormone levels were failing to increase at the expected rate.
Finally, after weeks of not knowing whether or not my husband and I were going to be parents, my doctor scheduled a transvaginal ultrasound — a procedure involving a wand (think Harry potter) that is inserted into the vagina to scope the uterus.
The ultrasound showed that I had developed an ectopic pregnancy, a condition where the fetus forms on the outside of the uterus. A quick search for “ectopic pregnancy” will lead you to the ClevelandClinic.org which states, “Ectopic pregnancies can become life-threatening, especially if your fallopian tube breaks (ruptures). This is a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, and it can cause severe bleeding, infection and sometimes, death. This is a medical emergency. Healthcare providers must treat ectopic pregnancies quickly.”
And that’s exactly what my doctor did — I was scheduled for a D&C to remove the nonviable fetus right away.
Because I had the healthcare I needed, five years later, when I got pregnant again, I had a successful pregnancy and birthed a beautiful little girl. The first nurse to hold her, still wiping off the amniotic fluid and blood from her squishy little newborn face, told us, “I’ve never seen a baby look so much like their dad right out of the gate.” A few years after we had our daughter, we tried to get pregnant again. I suffered two miscarriages before giving birth to my son.
The first miscarriage was early in the pregnancy. There was cramping, but nothing that required medical treatments. I was not as lucky with the second miscarriage. It was during the second trimester and I thought I had made it to the safe zone. We had told family and friends and I had let work know that I would be taking maternity leave sometime later in the year. The miscarriage started while on a work trip in Las Vegas. I had begun spotting in my hotel room and called my uncle, an OB-GYN, to ask his opinion.
“It’s probably nothing, but maybe get checked out tomorrow to be safe,” he said.
In less than 24 hours, the spotting increased and I changed my travel plans to fly home early. I was standing in line at the Las Vegas airport when I dropped my purse and a handful of my business cards spilled onto the floor face down. The back of the cards were bright red, the same color as my company’s logo. It looked like a pool of blood at my feet. I knew, the way a mother knows things, that I was losing my baby.
The next morning, a nurse practitioner at my OB-GYN’s office confirmed I was miscarrying. She told me that we could schedule a D&C or that I could let it pass naturally over the next few days. I opted for letting nature take its course, until three days later when I thought I was dying.
While at work, the gradual spotting turned into heavy bleeding and unbearable cramping. I sent an email to my boss letting him know I had to leave right away. I then called my husband and told him to meet me at home, that I needed to go to the emergency room and I wanted him to take me. I called my sister and asked her to pick up our daughter from daycare. I don’t know why I didn’t just drive myself straight to the emergency room. The cramping was so painful that I had to lift myself up using my steering wheel, as if I was trying to stand up while driving, blood pooling in the driver’s seat.
By the time we pulled into the hospital parking lot, my husband had to carry me into the emergency room. I was taken to an exam room and given a hospital gown. As I disrobed, blood continued to pour out of me, splattering on the exam room floor. It was thick, mixed with tissue. I was hemorrhaging. I thought I was going to bleed to death. Someone came in and put an IV in my arm and I was given morphine to ease the intense pain from the cramps. I vaguely remember being wheeled into the operating room for the D&C.
Less than a year later, I got pregnant again. Our son was born the following October. He’s sixteen now.
Since the Dobbs decision in 2022 overturning Roe v. Wade, Idaho has lost 22% of its OB-GYN physicians, according to a study conducted by the Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaboration and the Idaho Coalition for Safe Health Care. “What we’re seeing in this report and with this exodus of providers is that now Idaho is a state that criminalizes physicians, and the chilling effect is real,” said the Coalition board president who is also an obstetrician.
A qualitative study conducted by doctors from Boston College interviewed 54 OB-GYNs practicing in states with abortion bans. Study participants reported having to delay “medically necessary care” until patients were at risk of death or permanent impairment because of their state’s newly enacted abortion laws.
According to one OB-GYN interviewed for the study, “The way our legal teams interpreted it, until they became septic or started hemorrhaging, we couldn’t proceed…[it] puts women in a very challenging, risky position. Is a 5% risk of death enough? Does it take 20%? Does it take 50%? What is enough legally?”
It’s a great question. How close does a woman have to come to death before doctors are legally allowed to save her? If my ectopic pregnancy had happened after the Dobbs decision, how long would my doctor have had to wait before removing the nonviable fetus that was never ever going to survive a full pregnancy? I live in Indiana. When my husband took me to the emergency room during my second miscarriage, how long before my medical team would have been able to take me to the operating room for the D&C that stopped my hemorrhaging?
How close to death would I have had to come before physicians could save my life?
This weekend my daughter, almost 21 now, came home from college to vote early with me. It was the second election she’s gotten to vote, her first presidential election. I voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, the candidate who is pro-women’s healthcare. Across my ballot, I voted for candidates who have made it clear they do not want to criminalize surgical procedures that save women’s lives. My hope is that my vote will lead to a future where my daughter has access to necessary medical care should she decide she wants to be a mom.
I am not a single-issue voter. There are several reasons I voted for Harris. But a top priority for me is ensuring women’s healthcare moves forward at the same breathtaking speed as the vast number of technological and scientific advancements happening in the medical field. And not just because I am a woman, or because I have a daughter, but because that’s what’s best for all of us — men and women.
The craziest thing about writing all of this down is how scary it feels to put it out there. To say, out loud, that I’ve had medical procedures to save my life and that those procedures could be interpreted as a crime if they had happened today. But even scarier is the fact that politicians with little to no knowledge of things like ectopic pregnancies, transvaginal ultrasounds — and all the blood and guts of motherhood — are legislating how healthcare providers care for patients at the most critical and vulnerable moments in a patient’s life.
Once upon a time, we did not have the medical capabilities to save a woman suffering from a miscarriage that put her life at risk. If you go back far enough in U.S. history, you’ll find coverture laws that forbid women from even getting medical care without their husband’s permission. We were not allowed to own property or vote. It wasn’t until 1974 that women could apply for a credit card on our own. It wasn’t until 1993 that rape in marriage was criminalized in all 50 states. 1993.
I voted for Kamala Harris because I don’t want to go back to a time when I had no legal rights, no selfhood, no agency. I don’t want to go back to an era when I couldn’t earn a living, open a savings account, or purchase a home. It’s already horrifying that we now live in a time when doctors are unable to provide necessary medical care not only to women, but young girls who aren’t even old enough to drive, without fear of being prosecuted.
I voted for Kamala Harris because I do not want my country to go back any more than we already have.
