Staring expectantly at the screen my husband Simon and I waited with baited breath to hear our baby’s heartbeat.
Instead, once again we were told something was wrong.
‘You were pregnant at some point,’ said the nurse. ‘But now all we can see is a lot of little tumors.’
All I could think was: ‘Here we go again.’ But little did I know what was to follow.
My husband and I met when I was 35. We married two years later in 2019 and knew we wanted to try for a family.
The first time I fell pregnant was in January 2021, following a holiday in Thailand. We were so excited.
For a while, it seemed everything was progressing as it should then, at 11 weeks, we were told the devastating news that there was no heartbeat – I’d had a missed miscarriage.
Naturally, we were heartbroken and it took nine months to feel emotionally ready to try again.
Luckily we conceived quickly again, but I was silently worried about what could happen.
To ease my anxiety, we had a scan at the early pregnancy clinic at nine weeks hoping it would have a different outcome.
That’s when nurses said I had something called a molar pregnancy.
What is a molar pregnancy?
A molar pregnancy occurs when the fertilisation of the egg by the sperm goes wrong and so abnormal cells or clusters of water filled sacs grow inside the womb.
There are two kinds of molar pregnancy: Partial and complete.
A complete molar means that a sperm has fertilised an empty egg and no embryo forms. The placenta grows abnormally and contains fluid filled cysts.
A partial molar pregnancy means that the abnormal placenta grows alongside an embryo, which two sperm have fertilised. The latter means the embryo has an extra set of chromosomes and likely won’t survive.
A few days later I had to have surgery to remove all the tumors.
Afterwards, doctors said they believed they had got everything out.
However, I wasn’t recovering how I should be – I was still very sick, unable to keep water down – I was given antibiotics and something felt different.
I still felt under the weather, which is not what had happened after my first miscarriage. I just continued to feel tired and nauseous and started being physically sick.
Eventually, a checkup revealed the tumours had come back.
I began to feel scared – especially as, after reading up on molar pregnancies, I learned that there is a risk that the cells can become cancerous if they are not all removed.
When I queried this, doctors assured me that, usually, molar pregnancies are benign and that it was very rare for them to become cancerous. But it was hard not to still worry and I remained anxious.
Once again I underwent the surgery and the consultant said they were happy they had everything out. Sure enough though, the sickness continued. It was so bad that even just a smell could set me off.
To be safe, a week later I was given a blood test. The same day I got a phone call from the nurse.
‘It’s cancer, isn’t it?’ I said. A simple ‘yes’ and an instruction to phone the hospital came back in reply.
As soon as I hung up, I burst into tears. Heartbroken and confused, I could hardly believe what was happening to me. All I could think was: ‘Who gets cancer from a pregnancy?’
Find out more about Sophie
Sophie is the founder of not-for-profit organisation Transform Training and has a holistic business called Heart & Soul with Sophie, which specialises in emotional resilience and runs wellbeing workshops for women living with cancer.
Sophie is also an ambassador for The Cancer Treatment and Research Trust who are fundraising to trial immunotherapy for treatment for women with GTD.
At Weston Park hospital in Sheffield I had an MRI and it was explained to me that I had something called Gestational Trophoblastic Disease (GTD) – a condition that causes abnormal tumors to grow in the uterus during pregnancy.
While it is extremely rare, molar pregnancies, which are caused by GTD, are the most common type affecting about 1 in 590 pregnancies in the UK. I’d just unfortunately become part of the 8% of women whose molar cells become cancerous.
There was some relief in that I knew it hadn’t spread to any organs and it could be cured by chemotherapy but I was still anxious and worried about losing my hair.
Fortunately I needed the lowest dose of chemotherapy – not that that stopped it taking a toll on my body for four months – and had six weeks of treatment to return my HCG levels to normal.
By autumn 2023 though I was, once again, cancer free. But as relieved as I was, that’s when the grief hit.
After being so focused on the cancer, only then could I deal with the loss of another pregnancy. It was really difficult to deal with as my best friend and sister had been pregnant at the same time and babies were being born around me. But I felt grateful I had got through the process.
I am now in the process of going through IVF – Simon and I are still hopeful we will be parents.
If nothing else, going through a molar pregnancy and then beating cancer has taught me that I am stronger and more emotionally resilient than I ever thought.
As told to Louisa Gregson
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