Miscarriage - a mother's devastation

 

There's a pattern to look out for on Mummy blogs, the posts become shorter, more sporadic, less in depth and then a few months later there's a pregnancy announcement, a flood of newborn preparation posts and cute older brother/sister photos.

This was supposed to happen to me but instead at 12 weeks I had a silent miscarriage and only knew about it 6 days later at my first scan.

I want to write about it here for selfish reasons, I hope it will be cathartic to have everything that's raw and painful written in one place so I can move on, I can't speak to family and friends about it face to face yet but hope to direct those close to me here if they want to know more about what happened and I hope it will give some help/support to those going through the same experience. I have definitely found understanding and comfort in reading messages in blogs and forums from other strong women.

My first pregnancy was pretty much textbook, I was a little queasy but only physically sick once, no real issues came up and I gave birth to a healthy 8lb,9oz baby boy in 4 hours from start to finish. We started trying for baby no. 2 last year and the little pink line appeared this February with baby due 20th September. Almost immediately after finding out I knew this pregnancy was different, I was queasy 22 hours a day every day, I was fatigued constantly and put all my energy into getting through work and then spending time with my son. Reading on the computer screen gave me headaches and so I stopped posting on the blog, stopped taking photos and felt guilty about spending weekends inside instead of taking my boy out and about. When I spoke about these symptoms to the midwife she said this was normal and repeated what I'd read in What to Expect When You're Expecting, morning sickness is caused by increased hormone levels and so it's possible I was expecting twins as the higher the levels the more sick you get.

About a week and a half before my scan I started being physically sick, at first once over a few days and then daily, usually in the evening after work. In total I was physically sick nine times, but when I looked it up in the pregnancy book, it was down as a sign of pregnancy and nothing flagged up that it could be a sign that I'd lost the baby. It was only in hindsight, reading specifically about silent miscarriage that I read vomiting is sometimes a symptom.

My '12 week scan' was booked for 12 weeks, 6 days, we planned to announce baby two to family and friends after the scan and were annoyed that it was 6 days later then the name suggests. We had told close family (including Charlie) at 7 weeks, and at 12 weeks told a few selected friends, in total 19 people knew I was pregnant, including my line manager at work because I'd been feeling so ill. I feel absolutely terrible that we even had a mini-dinner party with two friends to tell them the news without knowing that my baby had already died.

On Tuesday my husband and I took the afternoon off work and got the train together to the hospital for the scan. I was so excited to see the baby, that morning I had dug out the 12 week scan pic of Charlie so I could compare them when we arrived home.

The waiting room was full of pregnant women, young, old with families, kids, partners. It was busy and noisy and I was pleased when we were called in relatively quickly. The sonographer turned the screen on, located the baby and said something like 'there's your beautiful baby'. The first thought to go through my head was 'it's very still, is it sleeping?' Almost immediately after this I replaced that with 'no, something's wrong'. In Charlie's scan's he'd always been at an upright angle, swishing around. This little one, the size of a plum, was lying flat at the very bottom of the womb with, I think, his back to the screen. He looked perfect, but wasn't moving. The sonographer asked if I'd had cramps or bleeding and I said no, but long before this the message was flashing on repeat through my brain 'he's dead, he's dead, he's dead'. She looked for maybe a minute or two and then said she thought it was sad news but she needed to get a nurse to confirm. My husband and I were left staring at the screen for 2 or 3 minutes (which felt like hours) at our dead baby.

I'm not sure when the baby turned into a boy in my mind, at 12 week's it's too early to tell, but talking to the nurse the next day she suggested that you should almost always go with your gut feeling as this is usually right. The nurse came in, looked at the screen and confirmed there was no heartbeat. The sonographer said the baby was the right size for 12 weeks so would have died then. Tom pointed out later that the biggest thing missing was the noise. With Charlie the room had been filled with the sound of his beating heart, but from the start there was absolutely no noise here.

The tears started falling immediately. I got up and wiped the gel from my bump with flooded cheeks and the feeling of my contact lenses welding to my eyes. We were told that we'd need to come back tomorrow to talk through options but the sonographer would take us to a nurse now to give us a little more information. So we had to go back through that waiting room brimming with pregnant women and feel all eyes on us as I clutched my belly and silent tears fell down my cheeks. We went to the waiting room in the EPAU ward, which thankfully was empty, and had a long wait to see the nurse. She was very good, she kept things short, gave me leaflets about the options which I didn't have to read unless I felt up to, and gave us written instructions to come back between 9am-11am the following day to discuss everything fully. We got a taxi home.

I found I couldn't face talking to any family or friends, so T took charge, he was amazing phoning our parents and my brother, arranging time off from his work and making me tea. I emailed a short email to my manager requesting time off and cancelled a visit to see a friend's new baby for the following week.

We read through the leaflets over a cup of tea and found out about the three options:

Surgically: an operation, often called an ERPC which removes everything from the womb, I'd be booked in quickly and take a couple of weeks to physically recover. You have to have a general anaesthetic and there's the usual risks involved in doing this.
Medically: with a combination of pills and vaginal pessaries which will make labour start, I would have to give birth to the baby and it could take a long time, there would be a lot of blood.
Naturally: letting nature take its course which could take up to 6 weeks and I would be at home alone with the blood and possibly an intact body.

When I first heard the names of the three options, I immediately thought I'd want to go with the medical one, but on reading the details and with Charlie in mind, I opted for the surgery. I wanted everything to be over quickly and there was no way I wanted Charlie to walk in and find me bleeding or in pain. T and I talked things over and then we had some respite when he collected Charlie from nursery and I had two hours before bedtime playing with my boys rather then thinking dark thoughts.

Night time was the worst. I dropped in and out of consciousness crying almost continually and never  forgetting even for a minute what had happened. My brain conjured up all sorts of images, but the one I couldn't shake was of a jelly Futurama toy T had at university. It was filled with a fluorescent green slime and inside was a small plastic model of Bender, the robot. Bender floated in the gunk and fell around whichever way you shook it. I couldn't shake the image of my baby being like the plastic Bender and my womb having a snow globe effect so that every time I moved the dead baby would float and sink like the plastic robot. I had strong thoughts of denial, I prayed for some kind of maternal magic to prove the scan wrong, that actually my baby was fine, I still felt pregnant and somehow my baby would come alive again. I thought dark thoughts of sharp things, knives and glass and teeth and claws, tearing me apart inside and most of all I hated my treacherous body for not giving me a clue. Not a single cramp or drop of blood which would have taken me to the hospital a little earlier. I couldn't bear that my baby had been dead inside me for 6 whole days and I'd been none the wiser.

Morning dawned and I stayed in bed whilst T got my son ready and took him to nursery. I couldn't eat but did shower, dress and have a cup of tea which I felt was pretty good. I even stopped crying and gave my puffy face some relief.

When we drove to the hospital I found I couldn't speak to the receptionist so handed my card to him silently. Already it felt wrong, the hospital had kept hold of my green baby book, so unlike the other pregnant women in the queue, I had a tiny appointment card rather then a big A4 booklet to clutch. We sat in the exact same seats as we had for our scan, and my tears started again. We had to wait amidst all the other pregnant women knowing that ours was dead. After what seemed like an eternity (20 mins) we were given the number 19 and taken to the EPAU waiting room. Yesterday we'd been told the other women waiting there may be in the same situation as us or experiencing bleeding and the symptoms you'd expect with a regular miscarriage. However the waiting room was full and I don't think any of the women there had had confirmation of a dead baby. I was the only one with a puffy swollen face and most were going through for scans rather then just seeing the nurse like we were. What made it worse was there was a beautiful little girl, about 18 months in a pretty dress with her pregnant mother, it was incredibly hard to watch a child (particularly as she was loud and having tantrums) when I knew I was a massive step backwards from having an 18 month old again.

As it was a drop-in clinic we spent most of the day in that waiting room, waiting to see the nurse, filling in paperwork and seeing the surgeon to discuss the procedure. It was the same lady we'd seen the day before and she handled everything really amazingly. It was a very tough conversation, I was in tears for much of it and twice, when describing the options and next steps she used the phrase 'I'm sorry but I'm not going to sugar coat this for you'. I was booked in for the ERPC operation for 7.30am the following morning, we filled in paperwork asking for the hospital to cremate the remains for us and they took a blood sample. We were sent for a coffee and then came back to talk to the surgeon, although she wouldn't be doing the surgery, she talked us through the procedure (some very gruesome details) and more paperwork was filled in. She explained the risks involved with general anaesthetic, the infection risk of having surgical equipment inside me and the fact that they are as gentle as they can be, so it's possible that I'd need another operation if not everything was removed first time. We were also given stats, 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage and the overall resounding message from everyone we talked to was that it was not our fault, there was nothing that could be done to stop a miscarriage once it started and it would almost certainly be chromosomal, the baby wasn't right genetically. After spending hours downstairs we went upstairs to the ward I'd be arriving on the following day. Here they took my stats, filled in more forms did an MRSA swab (it came back negative) and gave us details on what to bring and where to go the following day.

We picked Charlie up on the way home and Tom arranged for his parents to come and collect him that evening and have him for a few days. We have yet to tell him that the tiny baby in Mama's tummy has gone, but did explain that Mummy was poorly and going to see the doctor the following day. At home there was a beautiful bunch of white flowers waiting for us from my parents and we had had lots of messages of help and support from our close family. I found I still couldn't face talking about it to anyone but Tom, so after playing with Charlie for an hour or so, I went to bed whilst the boys waited for T's parents to arrive. T then called my family to give them an update on where things stood.

The second night was easier, I was exhausted and slept deeply until about 3am, then it was time to face more tears, more dark thoughts and after I finally fell back to sleep the alarm was waking me at 5.45am. I had to wash with hibiscrub, an antiseptic medical wash and dressed in my maternity combats and soft grey maternity jumper. Still having the bump and being uncomfortable in normal clothes is very hard, part of me feels I shouldn't wear maternity clothes without a baby, but I can't fit comfortably in my normal ones so am stuck with stretchy waists and bump sized jumpers.

On this, day three of knowing about the death of our baby, the initial grief and raw harsh emotions had passed. The long day of focus and filling in paperwork at hospital had helped and emotionally although still very upset I could control the tears better and stay calmer. We were focussed on the removal of the body rather then the loss of all the hopes and dreams of our future family. The baby was no longer an alive, bright future, it had slipped quietly into becoming a much loved and missed being. I found that I could begin to think more rationally about my feelings surrounding the loss.

At the hospital I was taken to a bed and had the curtains pulled round. T stayed with me as I put on the hospital gown, dressing gown and slippers. Then the surgeon came to see us, he was very good. The nurse yesterday had reassured us that these operations happen every day and no students or trainee surgeons do them, it is always a senior surgeon. He spoke to us for 5 minutes about what he was going to do and assured us that it wasn't our fault, that humans are very complicated to make and sometimes the chromosomes don't come together properly. After the surgeon we saw the anaesthetist. He was also very reassuring and explained the medicines I'd be taking and the process. At 8.50am I said goodbye to Tom and was taken down to the anaesthetist's room. Here I stripped to the gown, lay on a trolley and had the cannulae put into my hand (it took ages because of my 'tiny veins'). Then they gave me a strong painkiller followed by the anaesthetic and I was asked to breathe in oxygen. After 10 slow breathes I was completely unconscious until the nurse in recovery was calling my name.

The operation was quick, less then an hour and I recovered quickly too. I breathed more oxygen and was fully awake and wheeled down to another ward. Here I ate toast, rested, went to the loo and then at 12.30pm was released. I was given some antibiotics to take when I got home, to stop possible infection from the operation, and given discharge papers. These confirmed the baby died at 12 weeks and that it was removed through the ERPC. Tom met me and took me home.

So now I'm recovering, it's the day after the operation and I'm pretty numb. Paracetemol and Ibuprofen keep the pain in my womb away (as long as I remember to take them at the right times), I'm bleeding but it's light and the parallels to feelings after actual birth are pretty similar, though I'm less sore this time round. I spent yesterday afternoon watching cheesy movies and reading websites and forums about what I've been through. Most helpful have been The Miscarriage Association and the Miscarriage Support pages on NetMums. Charlie is still with his grandparents, Tom will pick him up tomorrow. Tom is off work today, I have to have someone with me for 24 hours after a GA, so he's planning on doing some odd jobs around the house. Emotionally I'm nowhere near ready to go back to work or even to talk about this experience face to face, but I hope (and already feel) that writing this down is helping, it's no longer bouncing around my head so much, and I look forward to things returning to a sense of normality soon.

The final thought I want to leave here is how wonderful the team were at Lewisham Hospital, every step of the way we were supported and the information given was emotionally right for the stage we were at. The fact that the maternity unit is one of those under threat of closure and that this caring team of professionals may not be helping other grieving families in the near future is terrible. For more information and to show your support visit the Save Lewisham Hospital website.