Trigger warning: baby loss.
I found out I was pregnant on 26th August 2019. It was the Bank Holiday Monday and I'd just got home from Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
I'd been experiencing spotting and pain in my lower back for a few weeks prior, but because I travel a lot for work, I just put it down to too many uncomfortable EasyJet seats. Besides, I was diagnosed with endometriosis at 25, so I was pretty accustomed to being in pain.
I was at lunch in Notting Hill with my fiancé Diego, and suddenly, the pain just started getting worse and worse. I was so overcome with pain that I knew something serious was happening. "We've got to go to hospital right now," I told him.
By the time we got there, I was doubled over with piercing pain and couldn't stand up straight. The consultant told me to do a pregnancy test.
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"Why? It's probably just a hernia," I said. But she insisted.
When the test came back positive, my fiancé and I were overcome with shock and excitement. We hadn't actively been trying to get pregnant, but we'd talked about it and were at the stage in our relationship where we were just about ready to try. We looked each other, just so happy.
Then it hit me – the spotting, the back pain. I was told I was very likely having an ectopic pregnancy (when a fertilised egg implants outside of the womb), and that I would lose my baby.
We were transferred to an early pregnancy unit at another hospital. By this point, the pain was so bad I couldn't even throw up. It was just unbelievable. A cannula for morphine was in my left arm, then the nurse asked for my other arm. I hoped it was for more painkillers, but then she said: "This one is for the blood transfusion."
That's when absolute fear gripped me. My fallopian tube was at risk of bursting, and the internal bleeding could kill me within a couple of minutes.
Not only was I about to lose the baby I didn't know I had, but my own life was in very real danger.
I was told that the fallopian tube holding the egg would have to be completely removed, and I just burst into tears. Would that make me 50% less fertile? What if my other tube was so constricted by endometriosis that it rendered me infertile? What if this had been my one shot of conceiving? Being wheeled in to the operating theatre, I was petrified. I just kept thinking: 'How could I not have known?'
Before my endometriosis diagnosis five years earlier, I hadn't even heard of the condition. It is under-discussed, under-researched and under-diagnosed. 62% of women don't see their doctor with endometriosis symptoms because they don't think it's serious enough, they don't think they'd be taken seriously, or they think painful periods are normal. For young women aged 16 to 24, this statistic rises to 80%. Yet it's a condition that affects 1 in 10 of us.
Even years into my diagnosis, I had no idea about the impact of endometriosis on fertility – research suggests 30-50% of women with endometriosis are infertile – or the increased risk of ectopic pregnancy.
That's why I decided to make my film, The Topic, detailing my experience of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy and endometriosis, to raise awareness of these issues which so many women aren't aware of, or which they brush off, because they think it's unimportant or because they won't be taken seriously. Because our bodies deserve to be taken seriously, and I don't want any woman to be as uninformed as I was about my own fertility. Ultimately, I wanted to turn my pain and my loss into something informative and empowering. Something hopeful.
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Because for any woman in my position, I promise that there is a reason to be hopeful. During the surgery, doctors discovered that my remaining fallopian tube wasn't constricted by endometriosis, and Diego and I were thrilled when we found out we were pregnant again just a few weeks later. We got married last month, and our baby girl is due any day now.
So, my message for other women is don't ignore what your body is telling you. Ask for help, and demand to be taken seriously. Fertility, endometriosis and pregnancy can be one hell of a rocky path – but one thing I can promise is that you're not alone.
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Watch Charlotte's film 'The Topic' at thetopic.co.uk or stream via Argo Film.
If you’ve been affected by Charlotte's story, please visit miscarriageassociation.org.uk or sands.org.uk for advice and support.
