Blighted ovum

My pregnancy has been very well documented. From my firstcheckup, I have been seeing my doctor every weekend and having a transvaginal ultrasound (TVU) each time. It's unwanted but is necessary because for several weeks now, we have been trying and still failing to detect the baby’s heartbeat.

It’s quite hard that I’m pregnant but, at the same time, unsure whether we’re going to have a baby. It has become frustrating as we tirelessly go for successive consultations, take medications and even a prescribed break from work. Mainly because of this, the past few weeks have been a crazy roller coaster ride, especially emotionally. The drastic development of my pregnancy – with ultrasound results showing an embryo, and then twins and finally an empty sac – has made me feel confused and cheated, as if my body had betrayed me. After all the see-sawing emotional highs and lows, I don’t quite know what to feel anymore. To cope, I tried to read and research about what could possibly be my situation in order to understand what was happening.

Maybe because of too much physical and emotional stress, with my mood alternating between hopeful and depressed, I was more relieved than disheartened by my doctor’s conclusion that it was a blighted ovum. Finally, a closure. According to her and some of what I have read, it is a curious case where all the elements of pregnancy are there (gestational sac, placenta, etc.) except for the embryo (the early stage of the baby). It’s as if one is pregnant with nothing, like an egg without a yolk, or a penoy instead of a balut. There is no definite reason this happens (some even refer to it as an accident of nature), but it can be that the early embryo died and disintegrated due to a chromosomal defect. Her recommendation was to remove the remains of the failed pregnancy by dilatation and curettage, more popularly known as raspa.