- So I went from being like, "Oh my God, I'm pregnant,"
to being like, "You have to go back for surgery immediately,
or you could die."
(upbeat music)
Hi, I'm Krista and I got pregnant on an IUD.
Before I get into my story, I just wanna say
that I am in no way against IUDs,
I actually still have the IUD that I got pregnant on,
and I talked to a doctor to make sure
this was the right decision for me
and actually I had a doctor
who answered a lot of the questions
as to why my pregnancy happened,
but I'll get to that later.
So in my early twenties, I decided to get the copper IUD,
which is called the paraguard.
And I chose this one because,
it is the only form of contraception on the market
that does not have hormones.
And so, this was the best option for me,
because I just don't do well with hormones at all.
After I'd had it in for two years, no complications,
everything was going smooth.
And then one day,
when I was getting intimate with my husband, he stopped me
and he was like, "It feels like I just put my penis
in fiberglass."
I freaked out, we stopped and I was like very concerned.
I reached my fingers up to fill a string,
because that's how you tell if your IUD is in place,
and it felt perfectly in place,
so I was like, "What the heck?"
So the next day I called my OBGYN
and explained the situation to them,
and their immediate thought was, "Okay,
it sounds like even though you can fill the strings,
maybe the IUD is just slightly out of place."
So they scheduled me for a couple days later.
But, the doctor got on the phone and she was like,
"Hey Krista, in the meantime,
just go ahead and get a pregnancy test.
It's gonna be negative, don't worry about it,
we just do this as a precaution."
And I'm like, "I've already had an unplanned pregnancy."
So I was freaking out.
I went to the store, I got a pregnancy test.
And the three minutes that I had to wait were so awful,
because I had had an unplanned pregnancy before,
and I have an amazing son from it,
but at that point in my life,
three months before I was about to get married,
I was not ready to have another baby.
I take the test and lo and behold, it's positive.
I did everything I was supposed to do, I did it right,
why am I getting pregnant and right before my wedding?
So I call the doctor and they're like,
"You have to go to the emergency room immediately."
And so my husband or my fiance took off work, met me there.
I waited a very long time in the emergency room.
They verify that I am pregnant,
and the first thing they wanna do is a sonogram,
'cause they were like,
"We think this may have happened because your IUD fell out."
When I heard the word sonogram, I'm thinking,
"Okay yeah, it's the little like gel thing
that I've done before on my belly."
No, no, no, it's a giant thing
that they put up you.
They cover it with like a condom,
a ton of lube and they shove it up you.
And it is the most uncomfortable, most painful thing ever.
Especially, I don't know, I could feel like my IUD in there.
So they do that and they're looking around and they're like,
"Well, your IUD is perfectly in place."
And I'm like, "Great, that doesn't solve my problem here."
So they had to bring in three different doctors,
because no one could find the fetus
or the heartbeat or where was coming from.
I just felt defeated at that point.
And they were like, "Okay, so what we're gonna have to do,
is over the course of the next couple of weeks,
we are going to have to have you come in every day
and give blood and we're gonna monitor your HCG levels."
So the HCG levels, are a hormone that women only produce
when they are pregnant.
So basically if you're pregnant,
the hormones will start going up.
And they said, "Okay, since we can't find
where the fetus is,
we're worried that it might be in your uterus
or in your fallopian tube."
Sometimes in these cases, you would just have a miscarriage.
So, in order to see what was gonna happen,
they just had to monitor the HCG levels.
If they kept going up, then I was in fact pregnant,
but if they kept declining,
that means I was just having a natural miscarriage.
The second day I went in, I got the hormones
and they're like, "It's doubling."
And at that point in time,
I think I was just numb to everything.
I was just blocking off my feelings, it was just like,
"Okay, here we go again."
If you are worried about being pregnant,
trying to sleep during this time was like impossible.
So this goes on with them monitoring my blood,
and all of a sudden, after about like a week and a half,
it was stable and then I think it was slowly going up.
I go into the doctor's office and right away they're like,
"Okay, we need to do another sonogram."
I'm like, "No."
This sonogram is called a Transvaginal Ultrasound.
And it really is just like a giant penis,
with condom on it and they shove it up you.
They insert it, it's awful, again,
but this time I looked over at the screen
and I saw this little like butterfly looking flicker thing,
it just brought everything basically to reality.
Like, "Okay, you're for sure pregnant."
I had to focus and I didn't know what I was looking at,
but they knew right away, they were like,
"This is actually in your fallopian tube."
And I didn't know what that meant.
When a pregnancy is in your fallopian tube,
that means it's an ectopic pregnancy.
When it's in your uterus, that is just a normal pregnancy.
So the fetus attached onto the wall of my fallopian tube.
And in those instances, if they don't operate immediately,
because it's growing, your tube is literally
the size of one of those small little coffee straws,
and so they said that is life threatening,
they have to operate immediately,
because they have to remove it.
So I went from being like, "Oh my God, I'm pregnant,"
to being like, "You have to go back for surgery immediately,
or you could die."
My mom is a nurse in that hospital where it happened,
but she was on a different floor.
Once she got the message, she was trying to come down,
but I was like, "I'm going back for surgery,
I need you here, they're asking me all the questions."
And when they were like, "Do you want us to go ahead
and remove the IUD while you're under?"
And I'm like, "Hell yeah, get this thing out of me.
Like it clearly doesn't work."
So I signed the paperwork and it's a done deal.
The IUD is coming out, good riddance.
Wheeling me back to surgery, and I hear
my mom's voice yelling down the hallway, and she's like,
"Krista, Krista, don't remove the IUD."
So after she catches up to me,
she starts explaining all these reasons
why I should not have the IUD taken out.
A, I'm not good at taking pills.
B, this is the only form of birth control
that doesn't use hormones besides condoms,
and condoms can break.
So really, in the grand scheme of things,
no birth control is a hundred percent effective.
So she was like, "Just leave this in,
if you decide later on that you wanna get the IUD out,
then you can, it's no big deal,
it's just a simple doctor to visit, they can pull it out."
So before the surgery, the doctor had explained
that there was a chance that she wouldn't be able
to save the tube, and you know, you have two tubes,
that connect to your uterus.
And if they remove one, you can still get pregnant,
but you can only get pregnant on that one side.
I was in my early twenties,
I didn't really think about having more kids,
but just the thought of knowing like,
"Oh wow, well, this really impactful moment
is going to maybe jeopardize my chance
of having kids in the future if I wanted to."
So I went in with a lot of anxiety.
The surgery went fine, thankfully,
and the doctor came out and she said that,
because it was so early on,
they were able to cut a little split and save my tube,
because in a lot of cases,
they have to remove the entire tube.
So I was thankful for that,
and I was thankful that the surgery went well,
and throughout all this, she remains that my IUD
is perfectly in place.
How they did the surgery was actually kind of interesting.
They blew up my stomach like a balloon
and they took these tools inside and with a camera
and they're able to cut the pregnancy
and remove it successfully.
And all of this happened,
literally like two days before my birthday
and three months before my wedding.
So after I healed from the surgery
and we got intimate again,
my husband never felt any discomfort,
I never felt any discomfort and so,
that's why I ended up keeping the IUD
and I have had it in now for almost 10 years.
I think what happened to me was rare and unfortunate,
but also I think it would have been helpful
if I would have been a little more educated
about what could have happened,
so that I would have been a little more prepared
in that instance.
So that's why I talked to a doctor about
some of the things that happened to me
to get a little more information.
So I talked to an expert, Dr. Mary Jane Minkin,
to get some information about IUD
and about getting pregnant on them.
And first and foremost, what she told me is that,
IUDs are the most effective form of birth control,
they're over 99% effective.
The most important question that I wanted answered,
was is it more common to have an ectopic pregnancy,
if you have an IUD?
(drum beats)
If the IUD was perfectly in place,
why did my husband feel that pain
and then never felt it again afterwards?
And then I also wanted to know, what would have happened
if the pregnancy would have been in my uterus
and not in my fallopian tube.
So finally, I just wanna say,
please do not let this story scare you
out of wanting to use contraceptives or an IUD,
if you think that that's the right fit for you.
And I wanna reiterate that what happened to me,
was a very rare occurrence, and as you can see,
I've still had the IUD and have not had
any more instances like that.
If you wanna learn more about the questions
that I asked Dr. Minkin,
you can click the link in the YouTube description below.
(upbeat music)