Cyst ate unborn baby
It devoured my insides
Pulling on my jeans, I couldn’t help but notice they felt snug.
My tum had been looking a bit podgy.
I need to lay off the biccies,
I thought to myself.
A week on, though, my belly seemed to have ballooned overnight. Then someone at work pulled me aside and asked me if I was pregnant. ‘Don’t be silly!’ I laughed. But my next period only lasted for three days.
‘Are you sure you’re not pregnant?’ my boyfriend Celern, 21, asked.
We’d been together two years, and I’d come off the Pill as I was worried about side effects.
A pregnancy test soon confirmed it…
‘We’re having a baby!’ I gasped.
Once it’d sunk in, Celern and I were over the moon.
Excited, I made a GP appointment.
Days later, in July last year, measuring my bump, she told me I was around 30 weeks pregnant.
‘I’m what?’ I asked, stunned that I was so far along already.
But then the doctor couldn’t find my baby’s heartbeat, so I was sent to Singleton Hospital for an emergency scan.
Celern and I were sick with worry. During the ultrasound, he clutched my hand tight.
‘Good news,’ the sonographer reassured us. ‘Your baby is perfectly healthy.’
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. But then she dropped a bombshell.
‘You’re only six weeks pregnant,’ she told us.
‘That can’t be right,’ I said. ‘Look at the size of my bump!’ I was huge! I must be carrying a giant baby, I thought.
But, the next moment, my world was brought crashing down around me…
‘There’s a cyst on your left ovary,’ she told us.
It was growing rapidly, and had caused my tum to swell. So my blossoming ‘baby bump’ was caused a giant cyst! I was distraught. Thankfully, doctors were confident the cyst was benign, but removing it would put my baby at risk.
So they wanted to wait until I was 12 weeks, when the baby was bigger and stronger.
Meanwhile, I was admitted, and my mum Alison, 50, and dad Mark, 45, came to comfort me. ‘It’ll be OK,’ Mum said, holding me. Over the next few weeks, my bump continued to grow. But, instead of filling me with excitement, I was scared. It was just a sign that the cyst was growing bigger. And by now it was just behind my ribs, so I was in constant agony. ‘It feels like my insides are getting crushed,’ I cried. And I was terrified the cyst would harm our baby. A few weeks on, doctors suggested operating sooner. ‘If the cyst grows any bigger, it could be dangerous for you, too,’ a doctor said. ‘But an operation isn’t safe for the baby,’ I protested. I couldn’t bring myself to put my child at risk. So, I made the hard decision to wait. At 11 weeks, a doctor gave me a scan ahead of my surgery the next
The look on the doctor’s face filled me with despair
week. But the look on his face filled me with despair.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t find a heartbeat.’
My baby had gone. It’d been overcome by the huge cyst.
‘Our baby!’ I sobbed to Celern, who was equally inconsolable.
During a four-hour op, the cyst was removed. It’d also affected my left ovary and Fallopian tube. So they had to be removed, too.
Afterwards, I felt numb, and doctors couldn’t be sure how my fertility would be affected. So not only had the cyst taken my baby, there was a chance it’d robbed me of motherhood.
The cyst was benign, which was a relief, but all I could think of was the baby I’d lost. I was heartbroken. Weeks on, I saw a psychic who told me my baby was a girl.
To keep her memory alive, Celern and I named her Celirsty – a mixture of both our names. It’s been tough. That monster cyst ate my baby.
But I refuse to let it rob me of my happiness forever.