My agony as 12-week scan showed ‘baby’ was really a tumour
Mum tells how joy turned to heartbreak and fear
LIKE any expectant parents, Siobhan and Alexander McFarlane eagerly awaited her 12-week scan.
But their joy turned to despair and fear when they were told the developing ‘baby’ was actually a tumour.
Mrs McFarlane, 26, had suffered a molar pregnancy, where abnormal cells grow in the womb instead of a foetus.
It affects one in 600 pregnancies and the only treatment is to remove the cells.
Mrs McFarlane then had to undergo five gruelling months of chemotherapy because there was also a risk the abnormal cells could have developed into cancer.
Now she has been given the all-clear she is determined to raise awareness of molar pregnancies to other families.
The couple, from Portree, Skye, have an 18-month-old son, James. Mrs McFarlane became ‘pregnant’ shortly after starting to try for a second child in August 2016.
Though she had experienced no problems during her first pregnancy, this time she suffered severe nausea.
However, she and her joiner husband, 26, were left stunned by the results of her scan at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness.
Mrs McFarlane, a dog groomer, said: ‘The nurse just turned to us and said “I’m sorry, there’s no baby”. I could see on the screen, it was just like someone had blown bubbles in my uterus. It was so weird.’
In a molar pregnancy, the egg is fertilised but multiplies into a mass of abnormal cells.
‘We were put in a side room and told to wait for a specialist who told us I had a molar pregnancy. I’d never heard of it before,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t get my head around it. I had a belly and everything, so to be told I wasn’t having a baby, I just couldn’t accept it. I was totally overwhelmed. We just sat and cried for hours.’
She added: ‘I had lost a child and gained this horrible tumour. It was terrifying.’
After a procedure to remove the tumour at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, Mrs McFarlane was allowed home. But two weeks later she was flown to London’s Charing Cross Hospital, which has a specialist centre treating molar pregnancy. Mrs McFarlane had developed a complication where any abnormal cells left in the womb will not die off.
She needed chemotherapy as the cells can then spread to other areas of the body and could develop into cancer if left untreated. Following her ordeal Mrs McFarlane said: ‘If I can raise awareness and stop someone else having to go through all that and going through the fear of being diagnosed with something they’ve never heard of then it will be worthwhile.’
Mrs McFarlane has set up a JustGiving page for Charing Cross Hospital’s Cancer Treatment and Research Trust.
‘We just sat and cried for hours’