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Ellie’s Pregnancy Journey Part 1: Am I Pregnant?

It came as quite a surprise that I was pregnant as me and my partner did not plan it, but it has to probably be one of the best surprises that could have possibly happened to us. At the time my partner and me were still living separately and both of us lived with our parents. He lived in London and I lived an hour outside of the capital. We had been together for two years, and we were both studying for our master’s degree.

To begin with I had no idea that I was pregnant, the only way I knew something wasn’t quite right was because my period was two weeks late. It was a Saturday night that I decided to take the test, as I knew my mother wasn’t home, so she wouldn’t be suspicious about what I was up to.

As soon as I took the test, it came up positive.

I was very shocked to begin with and ended up spending most of the night talking to one of my closest friends. I did try to ring my partner at first, but it was the earlier hours of the morning and he was fast asleep.

I decided to take another test in the morning just in case it was wrong and, to more surprise, it came up negative!

So I headed to Brighton to pick up more tests with my friend. I actually purchased a further 6 tests just to be on the safe side. All of these tests came up still negative, so I was left extremely confused about whether or not I was pregnant. I can remember my friend telling me that she thought the first one was just a faulty test and that I should probably just leave it, because she didn’t think I was pregnant, due to the amount of other tests that said negative.

However, I had an instinct that was telling me that I should go and get it checked out at the doctors just in case, so I didn’t actually listen to her and I listened to what my body was telling me instead. I’m so glad I listened to my body and not my friend, because I was completely right. Due to it being a Sunday there were no doctors open, so I couldn’t book an appointment to find out what was going on.

First thing on Monday morning, I booked a doctor’s appointment. While I was there, the doctor asked me to do another pregnancy test, which again came back negative. After the examination, the doctor suggested to me that she thought I might have had a miscarriage overnight. This was probably one of the hardest things to hear. Although it was all very much a surprise, it hurt so much hearing that and even believing that this is what I might be going through. She then booked me straight into the closest hospital to see what was going on.

While all this was happening, my partner’s father was visiting from Syria so, at the time, my partner was spending most of the time with his family, making it difficult for him to come and see me. However, as soon as I heard that I had to go to the hospital, I knew I needed my partner’s support and I needed him to be with me. With neither of our parents knowing the situation, we both had to be careful about them not finding out just yet!

We waited in the hospital for several hours with numerous amounts of tests and scans conducted. At first, they took a blood test and the results came back straight away, saying that I was pregnant. Blood tests are normally more accurate compared to normal pregnancy tests, and this is because they can pick up the hGC hormone earlier. The results came back that my hGC hormone level was very low, which is why it wasn’t showing up on any of the pregnancy tests I took. They told me the reason for this could be because I was in the very early stages of being pregnant.

 

We had to wait for a while in the hospital because I had to have an internal scan next. You cannot imagine the level of anxiety I was going through while I was waiting in the hospital! I was not sure what was entirely going on, and whether or not I was still losing our baby.

We were both sitting there looking at a black and grey screen while they scanned my womb to see if they could see any signs of our baby inside me. All I wanted to see was a slight glimmer of hope that everything was fine, but the ultrasound showed us nothing, not even a few couple of cells…

Due to there not being any sign of a baby, we were told that we had to wait another week for the doctors to scan me again to see if they could then see any sign of a fetus or any other development. This week felt like one of the longest weeks of my life, as everything was so unclear and unknown. I didn’t even know what was going on with my own body. The only thing either of us could do was wait and see what was going to happen.

Read how the story continues here.

Ellie Style
Ellie-Louise Style has just finished her Master's degree in Broadcast Journalism at City, University of London. She is a new mum to her three-week-old daughter. She currently lives in London with her fiancé, and enjoys writing about her pregnancy and parenting experiences.

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