I had an ectopic pregnancy where my fallopian tube ruptured and I had surgery to remove the tube. Since then, I’ve successfully fallen pregnant three times. This includes one twin pregnancy, one miscarriage and one singleton pregnancy – all conceived with one fallopian tube.
The first questions on my mind after my ectopic surgery were:
- Does having only one fallopian tube affect my chances of getting pregnant?
- Will I only ovulate half the time – so only half the chance each month?
- When can I start trying again?
- What can I do to increase my chances of getting pregnant with one tube?
I remember standing (or sitting) right where you are, and feeling so anxious and stressed about this. So in case it helps, here’s everything that happened, what my medical team told me when answering the above questions, and what we did to successfully conceive our babies after a ruptured ectopic pregnancy and laparoscopic surgery that removed one of my tubes.
I Didn’t Know I Was Having An Ectopic Pregnancy
I actually didn’t know that I was having an ectopic pregnancy. Crazy, right? But between my own naivety and some bad health advice, I was left none the wiser. So it was our very first month of trying for our first baby. It was exciting. I was so new to the game that I hadn’t even heard of an ovulation predictor kit (OPK) yet. I planned on waiting for my period to be missing before taking a pregnancy test. All in all, I had a very carefree approach to getting pregnant.
So when my menstrual period came more or less on time (I wasn’t tracking super closely at that point), I just figured that it didn’t work that month, and we were onto our next month. Except. One week went by and I was still bleeding – which is okay – that’s not completely abnormal. Then we got to two weeks and I was still having a full-on period. At this point I booked in with a GP – she asked me about my menstrual cycle, whether I was having any pain, other questions – and sent me home with some pain meds, having told me that everything was fine, and that I was just having an unusual cycle. No big deal, right? So I did what any trusting person does: I didn’t think twice about it and believed that advice.
It would have been 4 or 5 days after that when I was at work, that it suddenly felt like someone had punched me in the uterus. Hard. It hurt. A lot. But not enough that I couldn’t walk. I excused myself and let my boss, let’s call her Megan, know that I was experiencing quite a bit of pain. Very thankfully, Megan is an absolute gem of a human and told me to leave immediately to see a doctor. I went to an urgent medical center where they asked me if I could be pregnant, among many other questions. I instinctively and confidently said no, because I had my period at the time, and it came on time. So they had me take a pregnancy test and that’s the first time I ever saw two pink lines. While I was in shock, that’s when the alarm bells started ringing.
My Ectopic Pregnancy Was Found On Ultrasound
Very thankfully, the urgent care facility I went to shared a hub with radiology services, including ultrasound. So they had me do an emergency ultrasound – and that’s when they saw it. So so much internal bleeding. The scary level where I could have gone into hypovolemic shock at any moment. Eeek! And there was no pregnancy in my uterus. It was these findings on ultrasound that confirmed my ectopic pregnancy. I’m not sure if they actually saw a ruptured tube (or if it’s possible to see that), or if it’s just the other findings that were enough to diagnose an ectopic.
I Had Laparoscopic Surgery For My Ectopic Pregnancy
Now it was time for an ambulance ride to the hospital. I didn’t know it, but I’d be swiftly rushed for emergency laparoscopic surgery for a ruptured fallopian tube. It was done under general anaesthetic and honestly, it all happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to process what was happening. I remember being in the theater and counting down from 10, then I remember waking up and bursting into tears and not being able to control my emotions. It’s like my body just needed to let some feelings out, even if I couldn’t understand what they were or really register this situation just yet. I’m not sure I had even heard of an ectopic pregnancy before then?
The type of surgery I had was a keyhole surgery where they were able to do the whole thing from four small incision points – one inside my belly button, two out to either side, and one below – in the shape of a diamond down from my belly button. I’ll add a photo to show you. This means that all these years later, I have no visible scar (unless you really look and want to see the incision scars) and no one can ever tell that I had ectopic surgery.
Ectopic Surgery Recovery
I took about 1.5 weeks off work to recover following my procedure. The first 3-4 days after the procedure I had really bad pain at the tip of my left shoulder – apparently, that’s quite normal following being under general anaesthetic. My abdomen was quite sore and I had to adjust the way I moved and sat up to make it easier on my stomach. I watched a lot of movies and soaked in the downtime, given that I rarely took time off work. I also don’t think what had happened really sunk in, nor how close it all came to being life-threatening. Also – how could that first doctor have just sent me home with just some pain meds without having me do a pregnancy test?! This may have been the first event that taught me how important it is to advocate for ourselves, our health, and our gut instincts when something doesn’t feel right.
I had my post-op appointment at 6 or 8 weeks after the surgery where my surgeon cleared me to try to conceive again. It’s at this point that I was finally able to ask the questions I had on my list:
Does having one fallopian tube affect my chances of getting pregnant?
According to him, if I was at 100% for fertility beforehand, I was at about 85% now. My fertility reduced slightly (statistically), but definitely not by half. He told me that there’s so much more to getting pregnant – the eggs release chemicals that actually draw the fallopian tubes toward them to ‘catch’ the egg – meaning that the opposite tube is perfectly capable of catching an egg released in the other ovary. This gave me lots of reassurance. I asked him if the fallopian tubes were like Harry Potter staircases in that they take you to where you need to go. He said he’d never thought of or heard that terminology before, but yes.
Will I only ovulate half the time with one tube?
Again, this answer wasn’t black and white. According to him, I will ovulate normally as they didn’t touch my ovaries, but it won’t always be at the side of the intact fallopian tube. And that was okay – the fallopian tube could move because it’s not attached to the ovary. He also told me that many people tend to have a dominant side from which they tend to ovulate more often, so that’s a factor too.
When could I start trying again?
By 8 weeks post-op, trying again from then on was fine as my body had had a couple of cycles to heal and regulate.
What could I do to increase my chances of getting pregnant with one tube?
According to him, all the same things that I could do to increase my likelihood of getting pregnant if I had two tubes. Getting the timing right, understanding my cycle, taking care of myself – eating well, sleeping more, stressing less – all the standard (and often unhelpful) things you hear. He didn’t offer anything new in that department, unfortunately.
Getting Pregnant After My Ectopic Surgery
So after learning everything I could from the surgeon, we restarted our trying to conceive journey. I’ll create a new post on everything I did to get pregnant with one fallopian tube, but if you’re reading this because you’ve also lost a fallopian tube to an ectopic pregnancy, I hope the fact that I’ve had both a singleton baby and twins on one tube gives you lots of reassurance! I know I looked for lots of success stories online too.
My Early Ectopic Pregnancy Symptoms
Once you have one ectopic pregnancy, I found I was monitored very closely in my subsequent pregnancies because the chance of another ectopic is much higher. During every pregnancy I had my beta HCG levels checked every 2 days, several times. But before that, the only ‘early’ symptom of an ectopic that I had before the pain and rupture was the bleeding. And if it comes around the same time that your period would, it can be super confusing!
I can tell you what my early pregnancy symptoms were and how they differed between my singleton and my twins, if that helps.
Ectopic Pregnancy Pain
I know that everything says that abdominal discomfort or pain is an early sign, but I really didn’t have that at all. Not until the rupture. I still went to the gym most days. Any discomfort I did have was no greater than what I’d normally have during my menstrual period, which isn’t very much. I think this is why ectopic pregnancies pose major risks to so many people – because in many cases, they’re very difficult to detect.
My Ectopic Pregnancy HCG Levels
I never had my HCG levels checked for my ectopic pregnancy, but when I did take the pregnancy test at the urgent care facility, the second ‘test’ line wasn’t super dark like what you’d see with a dye stealer. I’d guess by that point, it would have been less than 300, given that I’ve had tests on the same day as my HCG tests with other pregnancies so I can roughly equate the test darkness with my HCG level.
Putting my medical research hat on, medical journals have published that in over 70% of ectopic pregnancy cases, HCG levels either fail to double appropriately or begin dropping. Interestingly, there have also been published cases where ectopic pregnancies have occurred even with negative pregnancy tests and no HCG detected in the body.
Why Ectopic Pregnancies Happen
It took me a while to accept that there isn’t a clear answer to this, or anything definitive that I nor anyone can offer you if you’re looking for an answer. Could your ectopic be related to the fertilized egg itself moving too slowly down the tube due to egg-related factors? Possibly. Could it be the tube itself? Possibly. Could you have inflammation that gets the egg ‘stuck’? Possibly. It could also be something chemical or biological that goes wrong and ‘allows’ our egg to stick to the fallopian tube (or somewhere else), whereas ideally, it should only be able to stick to the inside of the uterus. It’s so hard to say, and I’m sure there’s new research coming out all the time that will disprove many of these possibilities or add new possibilities to the list. But what I do know for sure is that it’s not your fault or anything you did – it just is what it is.
Can Ectopic Pregnancies Survive?
In almost all cases (aside from a few featured on medical TV shows), no they can’t. This is because it’s only your uterus that is designed to house a baby, support a placenta, and grow and expand with your pregnancy. 90% of ectopic pregnancies are in the fallopian tubes and pregnancies in the tube are not viable.
If you have any questions about ectopic pregnancies, please feel free to reach out! I’m always so honoured when I receive emails from those of you sharing your stories and asking questions, so please don’t hesitate. I’ve been in your shoes so I absolutely get it.
I’ve also created a prayer for twins for those wanting to add it to their prayer list, and shared everything I did to help manifest my twins.