I am one in four
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“You’re going to be GRANDPARENTS!”
Mum cries out and jumps around a little, I laugh with her and we both shed tears of happiness.
The lump in Dad’s throat won’t allow itself to clear and it prevents him from talking too much. There is “something in his eye,” of course…and we all bear hug.
What an unforgettable moment.
Just two hours later… two days before our first scan, I need to go to the bathroom. Blood on the toilet paper at any stage of the ‘let’s make a baby process’ hits you in the deepest pit of your stomach – whether it means that you haven’t conceived this month and your dreaded period’s arrived (something I had experienced month after month) or you are pregnant and suddenly filled with terror.
Okay, its fine. I’m only spotting. I’m sure it’s nothing.
I call the hospital, just to be sure. The appropriately kind nurse does her best to reassure me. “Fifty per cent of women experience some bleeding during pregnancy” she states calmly. Then comes the list of possible causes for the bleeding. “Relax”.
Ha! The amount of times that word is said to me over the next seven days actually begins to infuriate me. Despite how apparently common bleeding might be, it is absolutely entrenched in you that bleeding during pregnancy isn’t good. There is no “relaxing”.
My partner and I agree to monitor my bleeding. My beautiful Mum is still not over the bursting-into-happy-tears-every-time-she-looks-at-me stage, and I can’t bear to tell her something might be wrong.
Nothing worsens during the night except that sickening feeling in my growing stomach. Sleep is out of the question.
By mid-morning the next day, the bleeding has increased.
Has it though? Is my mind playing evil tricks on me?
I send a photo of the blood-stained pad to my pregnant best friend and on route to her baby shower (that I am hosting!) she calls me and forcefully – but gently – (because, you know, it’s probably nothing, right?) tells me to go to emergency. “I’m sure it’s okay and once you get it checked out you can still make the baby shower”.
We both know I won’t.
I am seen virtually straight away. Sitting in the doctor’s office and listening to him say “it could be perfectly normal” I know two things; it isn’t normal and it is getting worse.
I am asked to come back in a few hours for an ultrasound. Between the hospital and home, a 15-minute drive, I soak through a pad and the pain is exceedingly worse than bad period pain (which I have consistently suffered).
Then, using the bathroom at home, I feel something pass.
Looking into the now red toilet bowl, I see something. Is it a clot or have I just passed our baby? It’s a large clot, about the size of a golf ball. It will be the first of many over the coming days.
The ultrasound confirms that I was pregnant. Cheers. We see our baby for the first time. Instead of it being one of the most joyous and memorable moments of our lives, it is undoubtedly the most heart breaking.
We know our baby isn’t going to live. We are sent home to miscarry naturally.
I pass pregnancy tissue in the shower and prematurely feel slightly relieved. Monday morning arrives and I persuad my partner to go to work “I’m fine babe, honestly.” I am trying to convince us both. My best friend spends the day with me at home. We cry, we talk, we sit in silence and I wake to the smell of her making me vegetable soup. Things are awful, but I think I am ok.
By the rolling around of Tuesday morning, though, I am absolutely not okay. The bleeding has not slowed down – not even slightly – and the pain is intensifying. I am essentially having contractions.
We go back to emergency, because – not only can I not carry this baby properly, now I can’t miscarry properly either.
At least that was what I say to myself. After only having Panadol because anything stronger is “not recommended in pregnancy” I am finally given some localised morphine and for the first time in a few days I am not in pain. Physically, that is.
Everyone is hesitant to ‘make a call’ so an obstetrician comes to see me in emergency to determine whether I need surgery and to devise a plan to stop the bleeding. She decides to do an internal using a speculum so she can ‘collect’ any visible clots and tissue using a medical tool resembling kitchen tongs…
Oh good.
My cervix has dilated. My partner arrives and walks in to that view.
Brilliant.
Despite everything happening at that point, I still have time to apologise for not being maintained enough. I decline surgery – I want to be at home. I am given a course of Misoprostol, anti-nausea medication and pain killers. Strong but not too strong that I can’t feel pain, as they need to know what is happening.
They warn my partner that women experiencing a miscarriage often say they are fine when they’re not. De ja vu. He is in control of whether it is safe for me to be at home or if I need to go back to hospital.
The first seven days of my miscarriage are so focussed on the physical aspect that when I finally stop bleeding and the pain eases, I fall in a heap. Now I experience a pain so much worse than the past seven days. I spent hours down rabbit holes googling other women’s experiences.
I want to know that I am not alone.
I want to know how other women cope.
I wanted to find a sense of normality in my feelings.
I blame myself. Rationally, I know it isn’t my fault, yet I wholeheartedly believe it is. I start to question everything I have done in the last couple of months and search for answers – what had I done wrong to lose our baby? I feel a mistrust of my body. I feel and sometimes still feel, that I let my partner down and I let our baby down. Some babies are born into unimaginable circumstances and it would have been so different for ours, but I can’t give him or her that opportunity anymore.
People don’t know how to comfort me and truthfully, nothing really can in those very early days. The vegetable soup from my best friend was to nourish my body but my soul absorbs it more.
Seeing those closest to me feel my heartache on some level gives me security. My partner is my pillar of strength. Despite how confronting and truly awful the situation is for him too, he makes every part of himself available to me, every minute of the day.
What I do, perhaps unconventionally, take comfort from is the amount of time the word “f*ck” is used. Sometimes, there’s just nothing else you can say.
Five weeks on and some days are really good…but some definitely aren’t. I have learnt that the most unexpected things will sometimes trigger my grief and take me right back to that week, things you can’t really prepare yourself for. My first period after my miscarriage sparked a momentary meltdown but the key is – it’s momentary now.
I will forever grieve the loss of our baby but I promise anyone reading this in a hospital bed searching for camaraderie – what you’re feeling is normal. You’re not alone. Let your friends make the soup.
And probably most importantly – it wasn’t your fault.
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