Kids complete a family. They are the life of the home and you may agree if you have any kid that no matter how much do they trouble you with their careless actions, the home doesn't feel like home without them. And if you are newly married then you must be thinking about starting a family. Lauren Knowles a Scottish mother was very happy about knowing that she was pregnant with her second child. However, things took an ugly turn when she learned that she was not pregnant with a child but with a cancerous mass. What happened next was more unbelievable......
Lauren Knowles belongs to Aberdeen of Scotland. She had not been feeling well for a few days and as the situation persists she thought of seeing a doctor. Well, it was an apt decision. The doctor told her that she was bearing another child in her womb. The twist was not this, the good news was coupled with something0 horrible that she was soon going to learn.
The 27-year-old woman was already parenting a kid when she learned that she was going to be a mother for one more time. Well, the news got her and her fiancee over the moon. The two had a son named Charlie and now the boy was going to have a baby of its own.
Prior to that, they were already parenting a son so having another one was not a problem for them. Charlie was born in 2012 and two years later the couple was pregnant again. All that they were feeling at that time was excitement. They were very thrilled to welcome a new member in their family.
The first seven weeks passed by normally. The would-be mother and father had already started preparing for their unborn baby. They wanted it to be a girl this time as they already had a son. Well, planning about a baby in just a few days was actually too early. But they were too excited to think about all this.
In the seventh week of her pregnancy, she experienced something weird. Lauren saw heavy spottings. However, it did not bother him as she had experienced the same thing when she was carrying Charlie in her womb. The bleeding did not stop. The continuous bleeding began to bother her and so she decided to see a doctor.
Lauren was having a hunch that something was wrong! She went to see a doctor to figure out what exactly was wrong with her. The lady had never imagined in her wildest dream about what the doctor was going to tell her.
Even the doctor grew suspicious when she told her about the constant bleeding. The doctor herself baffled, suggested her to undergo some medical tests in order to find out the root cause. The result came after a week. Lauren was indeed pregnant but not with a child........
Doctors told her that she was having a molar pregnancy. Lauren had never heard of anything like this. But by seeing the expressions of the doctor she figured that it was not a good news. She asked her doctor what does it mean and what doctor told her was something that she had not imagined even in her wildest dream.
Molar pregnancy, also known as the Gestational trophoblastic disease develops a tumor in the womb. The tumor is the accumulation of trophoblast cells. The disease is often confused as pregnancy by the people as the body at that time produces the pregnancy hormone.
People who mistake the tumor for a baby usually get to know about this when it's too late. All this while, the tumor keeps growing like a baby. Which makes the body give positive signs. It was a heartbreaking news for Lauren. She had planned so many things for her baby. Wait, that was not the worst news........
She learned that the tumor she had carried was cancerous. They needed to get it removed surgically. Meanwhile, they got her on low-grade chemotherapy to destroy and keep a check on the cancerous cells. The medicines were doing no good as the hormones kept breeding tumor. Consequently, they had to get on with the chemotherapy.
Five months went by like this. The woman had made thousands of visits to the hospital in these five months. Her home was filled with grief and stress. Her little son was the only source of happiness in the house. Lauren's fiancee stayed by her side all the time.
One evening she took her son out. Lauren really needed some fresh air after months of emotional and physical strain. She went to a park with her son. Lauren did not know for how long was she going to live and so she wanted to spend as much time with her son as possible. That was the first time she felt so good in these five months. It was then something very unexpected happened.
Charlie seemed to be enjoying the day to its fullest. His mother was pushing him on a swing just like old days. Lauren too had begun to feel good when all of a sudden she felt severe cramps. She ran back to her home suspecting something wrong. When she checked she realized that she had been bleeding heavily.
The woman immediately called the doctor who advised her to come to the hospital. Lauren was admitted into the cancer ward. Lauren wrote to a website named Kidspot, "I arrived at the women's hospital emergency department and saw the specialist Gynaecologist. He examined me and found two new tumors growing at the entrance of my vagina which had ruptured and caused my huge bleed." She was in a critical stage.
The following week, Lauren was medicated with six high doses of chemotherapy. The therapies were so strong that the woman went bald in a matter of a week. However, despite strong medication, her condition continued to worsen. Apparently, Lauren was struggling physically and mentally.
Lauren began to lose hope. The lady gradually started slithering into depression. Her body was not responding well to the treatment and she knew if it goes the same way she would die soon. Though her son and fiancee would visit her every day, she often ended up crying alone at night in the bathroom.
Along with the hopes, Lauren lost her confidence too. She hated looking in the mirror. Har skin had wrinkled, eyes looked puffy, tired and surrounded with dark circles. She had lost all her hair. She stopped meeting anyone other than her own family.
One day she was lying on her bed when she felt those excruciating cramps again. By now she had become used to of these and so, thought they would go away after a while. However, it only got worse. She headed towards the bathroom.
She took her IV with herself to the bathroom. The pain was increasing minute by minute. Lauren could not understand what should she do. She sat on the seat of the toilet and then something odd happened. All of a sudden, she felt like pushing.
She was having contractions. Just the way a pregnant woman undergoes right before delivery. As she already had birthed a child, she knew what exactly to do. She began pushing hard as if she was giving birth to a child. Though there was no child inside her, the pain of bringing this thing out was the same. Unfortunately, there was no one around her who could assist her all through the process. Would she be able to make it?
Lauren said, “It was the same size as a baby at 17 weeks, so it was a big tumor to push out with no assistance.” For once she felt like giving up. But she knew that succumbing now would be akin to inviting the death. So she kept on trying. After a while, she felt an instant relief.
She looked down and began to cry incessantly. She was shivering with weakness and soon collapsed on the floor. Her whole body had gone red and was bathed with sweats. Had she won the battle or was it just a harbinger of something worse? It was to see. For now, the lady felt relieved. She kept lying on the floor until a hospital aid noticed her.
Lauren said, “A massive sense of relief came over me — I felt so thankful that the tumor was finally out of me.” The mass that the twenty-seven-year-old woman gave birth to had the same size as of a giant pear. Now she was out of danger. She had tears in her eyes when the doctor told her that she was perfectly fine.
Lauren stayed in hospital till the time she got her strength back. The woman with new confidence was recuperating quickly. She got back in her older self in a few days. The doctor discharged her but also told her something that broke her heart again.
She learned that tumor had damaged her womb badly. And because of that, she was not able to conceive another child. The news did disturb her but now she had understood the value of life and that is why she decided to focus more on people who were already in her life.
Soon after, the family relocated to Perth, Austrailia. The weather was extremely pleasant and warm. Perfect to overcome their dark past. Everything had gone back to normal and Lauren was living a blissful life when another news hit her.
Once again she felt pain in her stomach. Her old fear returned. Though it had been a year, the scars were still there. She informed Trent about it. So, was it happening again? They went to the hospital to see the doctor. What doctor told them was what they were not prepared for at all.
She said, “I wasn’t able to enjoy the feeling.” The doctor told her that she was pregnant. However, the news did not seem to be a good news for her. She was worried what if it was just like the last time. What if it was not a baby but another tumor? The doubts terrified her.
Her doubts dissipated when the doctor detected a heartbeat inside her. She was indeed pregnant. Lauren wrote in Kidspot, "desperate to find out if we had a viable pregnancy we had an ultrasound scan at five weeks and two days. I was told that it might be too early to see anything, but almost immediately we saw the flicker of a strong heartbeat on the screen and I burst into tears. We could not believe it."
She thought she would never get pregnant. So when the doctor told her that she was actually going to have a baby, she could not believe it. It seemed that nature was playing a game with her. However, she was extremely happy after getting the news. But Lauren had no idea how Trent was going to react to that?
Just like Lauren, Trent too was utterly surprised when he heard about it. However, he was skeptical about keeping the baby. He feared that the pregnancy might cause complications for Lauren. He expressed her confusion to her. But on the insistence of Lauren, he relented.
A new journey had begun. The couple was actually going to have another baby. As Lauren had already faced her share of pain and hardships, her pregnancy did not bring up any problem. It went smooth. She would routinely go to the doctor to get her and her baby checked. Finally, Lauren gave birth to a healthy and beautiful daughter.
As normally delivery wasn't an option for her, she had to undergo C-section to get the baby out of her. The surgery was done five weeks before the actual delivery date. They named their newborn child "Indi." Lauren said, “After all my treatment, the light at the end of the tunnel was falling pregnant with Indi."
Instead of keeping her story to herself, Lauren decided to share it with the public so that they could know more about the molar pregnancy. According to her, many women die of molar pregnancy because of their ignorance. Along with that, she also believes that her story would give hope to many people struggling to overcome their grief. She said, “I want to give people hope that even in the worst scenarios, what seems impossible is still possible while raising more awareness to molar pregnancy.”