'I want another baby… but I want to stay alive for the one I already have'

Exclusive: “How many more times am I going to be sent home with a dead baby still inside me?” Trigger warning: Infant loss.  

“Oh my god, you’re pregnant.”

The nurse had whispered it like a revelation. As if she had been delivering good news.

But all Ash could do was blink at her.

She had to once again recount her nightmare: “That’s literally the whole reason I’m here… There’s a baby in there. But it’s dead.”  

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RELATED: With half a uterus, doctors said I'd never be a mum 

"It could have been life-threatening"

Ash had just completed a routine urine test ahead of surgery, which had flagged high hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) levels. 

Weeks beforehand, The Gold Coast mum terminated her pregnancy after the embryo implanted in her C-section scar, left behind from her previous pregnancy.

“It would have been like life-threatening had I continued that pregnancy ” Ash revealed to Kidspot.

The frightening list of risks she was faced with included permanent bladder damage, severe haemorrhaging and the potential need for a hysterectomy.

Scar tissue doesn’t stretch like the uterus does. Had the baby been left to grow with the placenta attached to her scar, the outcome could have been devastating.

It is one of the rarest forms of pregnancy, so rare that many doctors hadn’t had much experience with a case like hers. It meant different specialists, numerous appointments and trying to find whatever information she could online.

She turned to Google, Facebook groups and Tik Tok to find others who had experienced the same thing. 

 "I tried every possible like hashtag like 'cesarean scar', 'c-section defect.' I tried all of them," she revealed.

"It’s crazy that as women, we don’t even know our own bodies and how things can work. It’s just… it’s crazy."

Originally, after terminating her pregnancy, doctors were keen to wait for her body to absorb and pass the pregnancy. The doctors treated her with methotrexate. Only they didn’t foresee the complications. 

Ash was in and out of emergency rooms, consistently begging doctors to do something to help.

“That led to like a cascade of months of like emergency trips to the hospital where I was having haemorrhaging bleeds and intense pain," she said. 

"I'd get to the emergency and then they would say there's nothing that we can do. You've just got to wait for this to be absorbed by your body."

The mental toll of waiting became too much.

“I snapped one day” she admitted.

"How many more emergency trips to the hospital am I going to have to go through?" 

Ash spent weeks taking emergency trips back and forth to the hospital, begging doctors to do something. Image: TikTok/ashmckenzie

"My bladder was fully adhered to my caesarean scar defect"

Throughout this process, Ash repeatedly asked for other options. She'd asked doctors to perform a D&C (dilatation and curettage). 

"They're like no you can't have a D&C due to the location of the pregnancy," she recounted. 

Doctors were concerned it could lead to a rupture of her uterus. 

After months of complications, pain, and being medically gaslit, a private surgeon in Brisbane performed a robot-assisted laparoscopic resection of her uterus. 

"They cut open the uterus. He took out the old pregnancy," she explained.

But he found something else. 

"My bladder was like fully adhered to my caesarean scar defect on the outside of my uterus," Ash revealed.

“He said it was like folded like a concertina three times and attached.”

It explained so much. 

“I just thought, no wonder I could never fully empty my bladder after giving birth,” she said. 

For Ash, it explained symptoms she had ignored for years.

“So I remember asking him ‘So is this the reason why that like I could never fully empty my bladder?’” she said.

“Since the surgery my bladder has been performing like normal. Like pre-children."

Ash has used her TikTok account to spread awareness and share her story with other mothers facing similar. Image: TikTok/ashmckenzie

RELATED: For nine months I 'forgot' I was pregnant

"No one’s talking about this"

More and more mothers are experiencing chapters of her story, and in some cases some mothers replicate her experience. 

“That's what made me want to share on TikTok. The amount of women that have come into my inbox and say 'I had this, I never even knew',” Ash revealed. 

“We don’t even know our own bodies, because no one’s talking about this.”

And through all of it, one thing kept her going. Her son. 

“I kept thinking, ‘I have to be okay. I have to be here for him,’” she said. “

As much as I wanted this baby, I already had a little boy who needed his mum.”

The door isn’t closed to more children, but the risks are now clear.

"I am allowed to try again after the three month mark,” Ash said.

“But there’s a chance it could be an ectopic again.”

Any new pregnancy would be high-risk and require close monitoring and early delivery by repeat caesarean.

“I don't know if I'm brave enough to risk it,” she admitted.

“I want another baby… but I also want to stay alive for the one I already have.”

Originally published as 'I want another baby… but I want to stay alive for the one I already have'