Chelsea Leyland, DJ, activist, and founder of women’s health platform Looni, opens up about her endometriosis, pregnancy loss, and finding support in community.
At the age of 30, I started yearning for a baby. My journey to conception over the next few years was very layered and complex. To begin with, I have epilepsy and I was trying to figure out if I could avoid passing on this condition, that unfortunately exists in my family, via IVF embryo selection, which unfortunately wasn’t an option for me.
Leyland pictured in hospital right after the surgery she underwent to remove her right fallopian tube due to her ectopic pregnancy.Once you’ve already lost one baby, it’s hard not to feel apprehensive. But in the fall, I became pregnant again. As I was considered high risk and had previously had an ectopic pregnancy, I went in for a very, very early scan. The doctors confirmed I was pregnant and that everything was in the right place, meaning the fertilized egg wasn’t stuck in a fallopian tube.
He then told me my options, which were: wait and see if you miscarry naturally, or have a dilation and curettage procedure, which is essentially the same as the one performed when you have an abortion, in which the cervix is dilated so that the uterine lining can be scraped to remove the abnormal tissue. I’d had a D&C before because I had an abortion when I was in my late twenties, and it was a lot more taxing than one would think. But I made an appointment for the following week.
About four days later, I was walking to the beach and it was as if a switch had suddenly been flipped and I started miscarrying naturally. Blood was pouring, gushing, out of me. Within 30 minutes, I managed to return to my room, and then, the contractions started. I called the doctor who began guiding me through it, telling me, “This is going to be very similar to the pain when you’re in labor because you are having contractions.
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