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'I suffered a molar pregnancy. Here's what every woman should know'
Molar pregnancy is a very rare and little-known condition, but – for the women who experience molar pregnancy – the trauma and health effects can be long-lasting.
What is a molar pregnancy?
'A molar pregnancy is when there's a problem with a fertilised egg, which means a baby and a placenta do not develop the way they should after conception,' the NHS website explains. 'A molar pregnancy will not be able to survive. It happens by chance and is very rare.'
As the NHS explain, 'a molar pregnancy happens by chance. It's not caused by either parent doing something wrong'. Molar pregnancy is usually picked up during the first ultrasound scan or after a miscarriage.
Red reader Eleanor Gage suffered a molar pregnancy. Here, she shares her experience to raise awareness.
'Have you ever heard of a molar pregnancy? Nope me neither. In Jan 2017, I excitedly confided to a friend that I was pregnant over dinner. I’d thought I was about nine weeks gone; admittedly I was absolutely crap at keeping track of my periods, but that was as accurate a figure as I was able to come up with.
On the drive home I experienced some bleeding and after contacting NHS 111 was advised to go to A&E.
I'd initially taken a pregnancy test after feeling extremely sick for a while. Getting ready for work in the mornings took me two hours, and I’d turned down so much food over Christmas (VERY out of character for me). On New Year's Eve I’d conked out on the sofa at around 9pm leaving my husband to enjoy Jools Holland with a pizza alone.
I knew I was feeling really rough – and the prospect of feeling like this over the coming weeks was a daunting one – but this suffering was for a purpose and therefore I knew I had to get on with it. This was my first pregnancy and, after all, the Duchess of Cambridge had just been admitted to hospital with morning sickness, so this must just be pregnancy right?
When I arrived at the hospital I took a pregnancy test and it came back negative. What?! I was so confused. My three previous tests at home had pretty much instantly glowed 'pregnant', my breasts were absolutely bursting from any bra that I owned (and, in fact, had even started milk production) and my stomach had begun to create that hard domed shape that I was now carefully selecting garments to conceal. This clearly was not the body of a woman who was not pregnant.
"Have I had a miscarriage?", I asked the doctor feeling like a mad woman, but also entirely unable to explain my body in its current form. The doctor reluctantly nodded, having some inkling of what was happening. "Was this baby planned?" asked the doctor. "Not exactly, but we were happy about it," I explained.
I will admit that upon taking the first pregnancy test, my reaction was to sit alone on my bathroom floor and swear with an adrift expression on my face. I may have even cried for about four seconds, but I knew I wouldn’t be terminating the pregnancy and therefore any tears were very pointless. The only reasonable choice was to pick myself off the floor and forge ahead.
I timidly wandered down the stairs and muttered: "Pregnancy test says yes" to my husband. He looked up at me smiling and whispered "Baby!" Practical to a fault, I curtly responded: "You’re not allowed to get excited until 12 weeks". There are so many things that can go wrong in pregnancy, I just didn’t realise molar pregnancy was one of them.
"We want to scan you," the doctor explained. "Go home and get some rest for tonight but we’ll have you back here tomorrow." I walked out of A&E with my head bowed, quiet tears rolling down my face. My husband knew it wasn’t good news and put his arm around me.
In the early hours of the morning my husband and I got into bed with our sadness. I’d already been on such a personal journey with this news – and had just let myself get to a point where I was accepting the pregnancy was happening and was excited about it.
On Sunday morning I saw the sonographer. Cool jelly was smeared across my reasonably pronounced pregnancy bump. The sonographer consulted with a colleague and took extract photos from certain lesions on my scan. I watched the screen for any familiar signs of motherhood. The sonographer confirmed that she couldn’t see a baby.
"Am I going nuts? My boobs are massive. I mean look at this," I said gesturing to my stomach. "Have you heard of a molar pregnancy?" she asked. I shook my head. "Sometimes something goes wrong at conception which means the fetus doesn’t develop," she explained.
In a sense I felt relief because – whilst still coming to terms with the news I was no longer having a baby – I was at least being served with some explanation as to what had happened. Why my body was appearing and behaving the way it had been.
A molar pregnancy is essentially a type of "phantom pregnancy" that occurs in roughly one in every 600 pregnancies. Cells that would have developed into a healthy placenta develop into pre-cancerous cells. They give off gargantuan levels of the HcG pregnancy hormone, tricking your body into thinking you’re carrying a child where in fact there is no fetus.
A normal HcG level for a woman that is not pregnant is less than 5. In a normal pregnancy your level of HcG would peak at approximately 250,000 at the nine-12 week stage. The reading from my blood had come back at over 1,000,000. That's so high that it had gone off the chart, causing the negative pregnancy test result. Now I had an explanation as to why I had been feeling so ill.
I later learned I'd had a complete molar pregnancy. This means that the sperm had tried to fertilise an empty egg void of any genetic material.
My husband and I waited in the consultation room to be advised of next steps. The next stage would be an evacuation procedure. "Will I have to wait?", I asked. "If there’s no baby in there I don’t want to get any bigger, I want to do it as soon as possible".
Leaving the hospital I felt despondent. I was struggling to get my head around the fact that I was never carrying a baby and thinking about how ill I had been, which felt as if it was now for nothing.
The evacuation procedure was completed two days later. The surgeon politely describes the mound of abnormal cysts which have been removed as "like a bunch of grapes". In reality their appearance is far more offensive, but I’m relieved to have had this mass removed from my body.
I’m advised following the procedure that I have a roughly one in 10 chance of requiring further intervention in the form of chemotherapy. I will be closely monitored over the coming weeks for any signs of abnormal growth, indicating that these harmful cells are not dying away on their own and have indeed become cancerous.
For now, I just feel so comforted not to feel sick anymore and look forward to the shape of my body returning to normal.'
For molar pregnancy help and support, visit MolarPregnancy.co.uk or Tommy's. The NHS website has more information on molar pregnancy.
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