So here is a little piece that I wrote after the second miscarriage. Reading it now is heartbreaking as I had no idea at that point how much much more was to come. I read this now almost from an outsider’s perspective as I was so full of hope and still had no grasp of the pain that was coming. Please be aware this will be huegely triggering to read and gets quite graphic in places. I’ve very much come to term with my issues towards recurrent miscarriage policies and why investigation has to wait until it’s happened more times.
“Miscarriage. Not a nice word is it? But that’s what it is. It’s not a *sympathetic face* LOSS. It’s not a stillbirth until you are 23 weeks pregnant. It’s a miscarriage. And thanks to hundreds of years of stigma surrounding people just absolutely do not talk about it. How can it be that something that affects 1 in 4 pregnancies is so socially avoided? I’d like to really drill down on the fact that it is 1 in 4 pregnancies. It’s not 1 in 4 attempts or even 1 in 4 women but 1 in 4 PREGNANCIES. That’s such a large proportion of people that go through this in their lifetime and yet how many people do you know that have had one? I personally have experienced 2 and on both occasions, there were at least 5 women in the same ward at the same time as me going through exactly the same thing. So why don’t we hear more about this life-changing event and why are women so afraid to speak about it?
My first miscarriage came in November 2018. I believed myself to be 12 weeks pregnant and we were just days away from the first scan. This pregnancy had not been planned but we were both over the moon and had already told our parents and a lot of our close friends as we already just so excited! Miscarriage wasn’t even something I’d thought about. Nobody talked about it. I didn’t believe I knew anyone who had gone through that and so all that was inside of me was excitement and nerves about a baby that I was sure would be with us in May. Three days before the scan I saw a small amount of blood when I had gone to the toilet. It was a tiny amount but it was there. I obviously Googled it and was filled with so many mixed messages. It was an ectopic pregnancy. It was a miscarriage. It was in an infection. I t was fine- just implantation bleeding. I then did the next best thing and asked my sister-in-law (a gynae nurse) what she thought it meant. Her advice was that it was probably nothing to worry about but I definitely go to a hospital to be sure. (In the months following this I did hear about a number of people who had experienced bleeding which had turned out to be nothing but I wasn’t one of the lucky ones)
That Monday morning we made the terrifying journey to the nearest hospital which I had never been to before. There are no words to describe that journey. I silently cried the whole way there, feeling sick to my stomach. I knew something wasn’t right. A few days earlier I had mentioned to my friend that I didn’t feel pregnant at all and it turns out I was right. We arrived at the hospital with all of those Google articles and explanations racing through my head, repeatedly telling ourselves and each other that it was fine and that we had nothing to worry about. The sonographer had that quiet sympathetic face that I have become so used to seeing now and as it was my first scan, he explained how he was sure everything would be fine but if he was to ‘go quiet’ it just meant he was concentrating. He went quiet. It felt like he was quiet for way too long and I began to cry. I knew it was over. He told us that he couldn’t see a 12 week foetus in there but we may have got our dates wrong (we hadn’t) and explained that he would need to do an internal examination to be sure. Hospitals have to have 2 sonographers present to confirm miscarriage and so then there were 2 of them staring at this screen whilst I had the probe inside of me searching for heartbeat that wasn’t there.
My husband told me some hours later that the foetus had only made it to 8 weeks. I don’t remember any of that. All I remember was crying in that dark room and then being at home an hour later in bed. The nurse explained everything to us apparently but I don’t remember anything she said. The thoughts you have in those first few hours just go round and round and they are so consuming that you don’t want to think about the next steps at all. You have to rely on someone else for that. I had never experienced loss like this before but the feelings bubbling up inside of me were all hitting at once and it was too overwhelming. I sobbed for a good 24 hours before having to make a decision on what I was going to do next. I felt huge waves of guilt: what had I done wrong? Maybe I’ve overworked myself? Were those shopping bags I carried too heavy? Had I stopped drinking alcohol too late? Had I eaten a bad egg? And how the hell did I not notice 4 weeks earlier when I had actually stopped being pregnant?! Then came the embarrassment: how do I tell everyone? Will they all think I’m a failure? Why has this only happened to me? Why does no one talk about this?
In those first few weeks after the miscarriage, I had the hardest physical time. I went for the tablets to help move things along a bit quicker but they didn’t work properly. I had no clue what I was doing and felt like I couldn’t speak to anyone about it because I didn’t know anyone who had gone through it. So I sat on my own in my house, slowly bleeding high volumes of blood for 2 weeks. I was in complete agony, off my nut on codeine because I had no idea that this wasn’t normal! Eventually I thought it was all over. I went out for a drink with a couple of friends after weeks of not leaving the bathroom, let alone the house and apart from a few period-level pains, I felt back to normal. 2 days later the agony started up again. I decided to have a bath to soothe my back and try to relax and I had barely slept. The bath water turned bright red and I knew something was wrong. I screamed in pain and was just so confused at what was happening. I slowly got myself out of the bath and shuffled over to the toilet but even that metre distance was too far for me and suddenly blood was spilling out of me all over the bathroom floor. My phone was in the bathroom but only at 10% battery. In that moment I honestly thought I was going to die. Noone had prepared me for this.I managed to get my husband home from work with my phone battery’s dying breath but in the half hour waiting for him, I honestly thought I wouldn’t be conscious by the time he got home.
Men get so overlooked when talking about miscarriage. It’s just as much their loss and they have to grieve too. In my experience, he was so much more concerned that I was ok and making sure he was supporting me. In turn, I was constantly worried that he wasn’t getting his time to deal with it whilst looking after me. I didn’t appreciate his level of burden until he was home and cleaning the bathroom and I watched him scoop the pregnancy tissue that I had just lost out of the bath. He just got on with it whilst I sobbed and watched him. At least, I thought, it was all over now and we could move on.
Following on from the bathroom trauma, I went back to work and felt fine for a week. But when the pains started to build back up 1 week later, I knew something wasn’t right. I returned to the depressing GAU unit where I had already been dealt one blow and didn’t fancy getting more bad news. I had another external and internal scan and was told that there was still a lot of pregnancy tissue left in there and there was a good chance it was causing an infection, hence the pain and the fact I was still bleeding nearly 1 month after the miscarriage. So there I was again: more tablets, more pain, more blood and more tears. This time I had the added excitement of antibiotics and anti-sickness tablets as this tissue that was left over was actually making me really sick. I just wanted it to be over. That day I spent 8 hours in the GAU.
Despite 3 weeks of pain, I had no idea that the real trauma hadn’t started yet. I had been so focused on the physical aspect of the miscarriage that I had no clue where the real pain was. This is the second important reason for talking about miscarriage. Once all of the pain and bleeding had cleared up, I had to deal with all of those questions that had run through my head initially. The biggest and scariest of these, of course, is ‘why am I the only one this is happening to?’ This question really needs to be split in half: why has this happened? And who else has it happened to? Both of these will be answered 10 times a day by the people around you: ‘it’s really common’ ‘I know loads of people who have had miscarriages’ ‘it’s nothing that you did wrong’ etc. Your friends are trying to help but it really doesn’t. Being told that it’s ‘really common’ isn’t helpful when you just have no evidence of that (I knew no one this happened to at this point). No-one talks about it which meant that both the emotional and physical pain was a complete surprise that there was no advice or true sympathy for. You get a lot of ‘my daughter had a miscarriage and went on to have a healthy baby a year later’ or ‘you’re only young, plenty more time for you yet!’ That’s great, but what about the baby I just lost?! It’s a grieving process. If you lost a grandparent, you wouldn’t say ‘it’s ok, I have 3 more!’
The biggest question for most women is WHY? Unfortunately, most of the time, they have no clue why you’ve miscarried. And this area of medical research is so incredibly underfunded that finding answers is just such an unlikely possibility. One thing I was told a lot was that ‘It just wasn’t meant to be’ which as you can imagine, is not what my scientific brain needed to hear. I wanted statistics and solutions and I just wanted them to look inside me and tell me where the problem was like some sort of uterus MOT. I also read quite a few times that a miscarriage was your body’s natural way of ending a pregnancy that would never have made it to term. And once again: OK BUT WHY?! Healthcare professionals obviously give us guidelines of ways to avoid miscarriage but they are things that we all give up anyway. These guidelines are things such as cutting down caffeine, avoiding alcohol and smoking completely, taking folic acid and obviously not taking recreational drugs. Most women do all of these things anyway so it’s not too helpful in most cases. As far as I know, after a miscarriage, you are unlikely to think ‘oh so that’s why I wasn’t supposed to smoke 20 fags a day’. I know a lot of women also struggle with conflicting medical advice online vs. their midwife vs. friends’ personal experiences. Diet and exercise are a huge example of this. We know that you need to exercise and eat well when you’re pregnant. But also don’t START exercising if you didn’t pre-pregnancy and don’t go on a diet whilst pregnant either. This leaves us lazy junk food eaters feeling like we’ve already harmed the baby before we’ve even got to 4 weeks. Going for a run will hurt the baby but so will not exercising?! Help!! Then there are the rumours you hear which just aren’t true. Having sex whilst pregnant is ok if you are comfortable doing so. Working long hours is ok too believe it or not, as long as you are eating, drinking and sleeping well alongside this. Having a fright, experiencing stress or just feeling really sad also does not harm your baby. Again, if miscarriage was talked about more, then perhaps we would not be putting all of this blame on ourselves and others. Repeat after me: you did not cause this, I did not cause this.
In March 2019, I experienced my second miscarriage. I was so much more careful this time. I didn’t even so much as smell a glass of wine, I ran away from cigarette smoke like the plague, I ate at least 4 pieces of fruit a day. I was determined that I would not let it happen again. Again, no matter how many times you are told that it isn’t your fault, you will believe that it is in your power to control it. You will believe that if you miscarry, it’s because you stayed at work that extra hour or you lingered in the vape cloud a little bit too long outside that bar. Whatever your reason, you convince yourself it was you. You reach a point where you do not enjoy pregnancy. Which, to put it bluntly, is shit. With the first pregnancy, I was so happy, I enjoyed taking the vitamins, avoiding the nights out and even the nausea because I knew what it meant. But second time around, the excitement had faded and it was replaced with pure fear. I was terrified. We decided that this time we wouldn’t tell as many people other than those who needed to know or had guessed. I didn’t feel the secret bubbling up in me and the need to tell everyone I knew and worked with because I just knew how awful it was when you have to tell them the opposite news later on. Another thing we did differently was book an early scan privately because, no matter how much you beg, and despite the history of miscarriage, they just won’t scan you early on the NHS at all. So, £80 later, we were waiting to go into the room to be scanned in a private clinic. I wanted so much to be excited and I had been a lot more sick and hormonal this time around so I assumed this was a positive sign. I lay on the bed whilst the sonographer told me the spiel about ‘if I go quiet, it’s just because I’m concentrating’ I felt so overwhelmed and wanted to run out and cry. I couldn’t go through this again. Once again the sonographer went quiet and asked how pregnant I ‘thought I was’, and when my last period was. I knew there was something wrong again. She had found the foetus which as expected measured 8 weeks and 1 day. There was no heartbeat. I remember my reaction this time: one long wail/sob/cry. “Not again” I shouted at her. My husband held me there for what felt like forever whilst I sobbed into his chest.
The clinic referred us to the hospital but as it was a Sunday there were no sonographers there to do a second scan. I spoke to a gynae doctor who booked me in for an appointment 2 days later in the GAU. No chance of an earlier appointment due to backlog. So I began my 48 hours of sobbing, grieving and ultimately false hope. As I had to wait for the scan for so long, I had managed to convince myself that the first scan was wrong. 8 weeks and 1 day was exactly right which meant that my baby had died on the day of the scan. I reasoned that it was too much of a coincidence and that she was just a crap sonographer who couldn’t find a heartbeat. But her diagnosis was confirmed by the doctor at what had become my absolute nightmare hospital which I could now only associate with bad news. There was no heartbeat. 8 weeks. Again.
Based on the agony and length of what I had gone through less than 4 months earlier, I opted for surgery this time. And I was booked in for the next morning. It’s a day surgery so you sit in a waiting room full of people for a full day, waiting for it to be your turn. My husband wasn’t allowed to stay with me which is just as cruel as it sounds. I had never had surgery before so I was terrified and had to wait all alone for the procedure with no food or water for what ended up being 6 hours. There is little point going in to too much detail about the inadequacy of the nurses that day. But in summary, I was barked at several times and got zero sympathy for what I was going through, I was ‘misplaced’ twice, I was referred to by my middle name more than once and by a complete other name many more times, and the icing on the cake was the nurse asking me ‘do you think there could be any chance you are pregnant?’ By the time I got to surgery I was pretty scared, not only that they thought I was someone completely different, but that one of the ‘rare’ complications could be about to happen to me or that when I woke up, I would be completely alone.
Surgery went well and only resulted in a few days of pain afterwards. Which, compared to last time, was a huge relief. But when I woke up I was completely alone and they had lost the paperwork which allowed me to return to the recovery area and contact my husband. So I sat on my uncomfortable bed, with an extremely empty stomach, a woozy head and a massive sense of emptiness and just had to wait until I could finally go home and recover. The doctors signed me off work for a week this time to recover from surgery but with the pain dying down so quickly, I was left with a lot more time to dwell on my feelings and come to terms with the fact this had now happened to us twice. Now try and tell me there isn’t something wrong with me.
1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. And 1 in 100 women have 3 or more miscarriages in a row which they call recurrent miscarriages. On the NHS, your miscarriage will not be investigated and you will not receive any tests until you reach this stage. I’m sorry but this is bonkers. It is honestly cruel after a person has endured 2 miscarriages at 8 weeks to tell them that, despite a clear pattern, they still need to go through it 1 more time before it is looked into. Tommy’s, the charity, began research into miscarriage in 2016 as they agree that it’s not good enough. They believe that so many miscarriages have underlying causes that can be cured if more research is done into it. It’s not just about preventing the miscarriage either. I, for one, would find it so much easier to move on if I knew why it had happened to me. I can’t change the past but perhaps one day I can make peace with it.
SO now the healing process has to start again. It is not easy to write about what has happened to me. My experience, I know, is only a blip on what some women have endured. I would never claim to ‘understand’ another person’s pain or suffering. I have to crack on with all of the pregnant women and babies in my life flourishing around me and hope that in the future, people will be educated properly on the frequency and effects of miscarriage. I have to be brave and talk about it so that when this lonely and terrifying experience happens to the next person, they will hopefully know it is normal, it is not their fault, and they are not alone”
So there it is. It was really hard to write, even harder to re-read several months later and a huge challenge to write. If this helps even one person, then it’s been worth posting.
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