Woman thought she was 3 months pregnant but her baby bump turned out to be a TUMOR

A Kansas mom was 12 weeks into her second pregnancy when she learned what she thought was a growing embryo was actually a tumor in her uterus.

Sarah Lundry of Topeka, Kansas, got pregnant in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced her and her husband to wait for an appointment with their doctor for three months.

In that time, she experienced some of the trademark symptoms of early pregnancy, until all of a sudden she began to lose weight.

After finally being able to visit her doctor and an abnormal sonogram, it was discovered she was experiencing a molar pregnancy, a very rare complication that occurs when sperm fertilizes a defective egg and instead of a baby forming, abnormal tissue builds up in the uterus that becomes a tumor.

Mrs Lundry’s pregnancy was one of the less than one percent of pregnancies that become molar pregnancies.

Sarah Lundry is shown with her husband Garrett and their son Brooks, now four years old. The Kansas couple was excited at the prospect of having baby number two when they received the horrible news about her pregnancy

Mrs Lundry’s tumor was surgically removed within days of detection, but it eventually returned multiple times and turned into cancer that spread to her lungs and uterus

It was not uncommon for Americans to delay medical care early in the pandemic either because they were concerned about exposure to Covid or their healthcare providers cut back on services like preventative screening in order to free up resources for other patients.

Mrs Lundry, who was barely 30 when her life was upended, and her husband were excited to grow their family by one, giving their then-infant son Brooks a sibling.

She told Kentucky’s NBC affiliate KSNT that first she experienced all the symptoms of early pregnancy, which can include nausea and fatigue, but pretty soon she could no longer keep food down. She even lost weight.

When she and her husband were finally able to get to a doctor, they could not find a heartbeat, which should be detectable in a pregnancy at 12 weeks.

Mrs Lundry said: ‘They tried every source to be able to find the heartbeat and they couldn’t find it. And I knew at that time that, I was like, “this is not normal”. At 12 weeks, you should be able to hear the heartbeat pretty immediately.’

It was not until doctors performed a sonogram was it discovered she had a molar pregnancy. Where an embryo should have been forming, doctors found a tumor.

Within a narrow span of just three days, she was set to undergo surgery to remove the tumor from her womb.

While she had the tumor removed, her health problems did not stop there. 

By May of 2021, she had been diagnosed with gestational trophoblastic neoplasia, a collective term for a group of rare tumors that begin when the cells that would normally develop into placenta grow abnormally.

During a normal conception sperm fertilizes an egg that contains genes from the mother. But in the case of a complete molar pregnancy, the egg is empty, so the only genetic material comes from the father. This forms a mass of abnormal placenta cells but not a baby.

A pregnancy test will still come back positive, though, because it picks up on the body’s release of a pregnancy hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). In the case of a molar pregnancy, those hormones are coming not from a fetus but from the faulty placenta cells.

Mrs Lundry had to undergo several rounds of chemotherapy. She also had a partial hysterectomy to remove her uterus in June 2022

The Lundrys still want to expand their family and have begun raising funds with the help of their neighbors to adopt

Even after Mrs Lundry’s tumorous mass was removed, others formed again and again, eventually becoming cancer that spread to her lungs and uterus.

She said in May, reflecting on being told for the first time two years ago she has cancer: ‘Nobody prepares you for that moment. Nobody tells you how you have to face your mortality because of one short sentence. Nobody explains to you how heavy it is to explain your situation to other people, or even how to form it into words.

‘No one tells you because cancer doesn’t have a one size fits all mentality. It seeks to kill. It seeks to destroy… Today I’m so grateful to be on the other side of cancer. I’m so grateful that my story includes more life on Earth.’

After multiple rounds of chemotherapy, she eventually had to have a partial hysterectomy to remove her uterus. Now, Mrs Lundry is one year cancer-free, but unable to have children.

She said: ‘I never expected to go through any of this. Obviously! It’s not like anybody wakes up one day and thinks, “Today…I’m going to beat cancer. I’m going to go through all these things.”’

Mrs Lundry and her husband Garrett of six years have not given up on their dream to expand their family. They are now raising money to be able to adopt with the help of a local business, Milk & Honey Coffee Co.

The coffee shop is keeping a running tab for the Lundrys’ adoption fund and people can donate by mentioning ‘The Lundrys’ when they visit.