Can't explain the emptiness (Miscarriage in general)

Member Name: christinemc

Product:	Miscarriage in general
Date:	01/11/00 (124 review reads)
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My husband and I decided to try for a baby in October 1996. To our surprise and delight I fell pregnant the first month of trying, despite having just come off the pill. I did 5 pregnancy tests and still had trouble believing it! We were so excited. When I started having spotting a few days later I dismissed it, I'd read that it's very common around the time your period was due and is rarely anything to worry about. Being an optimist, I decided to be happy and not worry.

My GP also said there was no need to be worried as the bleeding wasn't red and there was no pain, but she referred me for a dating scan as I'd just come off the pill, to be sure how far on I was. We were excited at the prospect of having an early scan, seeing our tiny baby.

A few days before the scan, we went to a Christmas party. We stayed overnight in a hotel, and the next morning I noticed bright red blood. It was not very much, but I immediately said to my husband, "I think I'm losing the baby". I had to go to work later that day to do some overtime. That was very hard to do. But the next day the bleeding had lessened and by the scan date it had stopped, so we were feeling more hopeful.

I was 6.5 weeks at that first scan. They could not really see anything, so had to do an internal scan, which is a bit uncomfortable. They found the baby, but said it was about a week smaller than expected, and there was no heart beat. I was not worried at all, because as far as I was concerned the scan was for dating purposes, and the heart starts to beat around week 6 so there was room for error. They tried to tell me otherwise, very gently, saying "I think that bleeding was bad news", but I wouldn't have it. If it was up to them I'd have been in the clinic the next day booking in for a D&C, but instead we asked to return in a couple of weeks for a further scan to see if the baby had developed any further.

Someh
ow we got through Christmas. I was tired, worried, having some symptoms but not sure if I was imagining them, it was a worrying time. Finally the scan date, 30th December, came around. I had been having more red bleeding, quite heavy, for 2 days so was expecting bad news. I was very surprised therefore to be told it had grown, and seemed to have a slow heartbeat. They were concerned that the rate of growth was not as much as normal, also the heart beat was slow, and could just be the maternal pulse going to the baby, rather than the baby's own heart (babies heart beats are very fast). So I was invited to return for another scan a couple of weeks later.

Optimistic and happy we left the hospital and told everyone it looked like all was well. The bleeding settled down, I even told work I was pregnant, then on my mum's birthday, we went for the 3rd scan. This time there was no doubt. They said the sac was there but the baby was not. It had died and been reabsorbed, and I was diagnosed with a missed miscarriage. Well, actually they called it a "missed abortion", abortion being the medical term for miscarriage. A rather insensitive one.

Two days later I went in for my D&C (they called it an ERPC but it's basically the same thing). It was a very long day. After meeting what seemed like an endless stream of people, all of whom were very sympathetic and reassuring that it was just bad luck, finally I was alone. I sat, wearing just a gown and my shoes, waiting to go to theatre. As I looked out of the window at the people coming and going from the busy maternity unit, I placed my hands on my tummy, and said "goodbye baby". Soon I was taken for the operation, and went home a few hours later.

I tried to return to work 5 days after the operation. But on the same day, I was hit by the hormones disappearing, a bout of "baby blues". I had been warned about it, but was still unprepared. Work se
nt me home, my GP signed me off. I ended up being off work for 3 weeks. I felt empty and cheated. With it being my first baby, the reassurances that next time it would be ok meant nothing to me. As far as I was concerned, how did I know that this wasn't how it would always be? Maybe I would never carry a child to term? Maybe I couldn't? I tried to be positive, but I couldn't look forward. I wanted my baby back, I wanted to be pregnant. For the next few weeks, I could pretend I was. I would stick my tummy out and imagine. I became manic about conceiving again, we tried straight away and when my first period after the miscarriage came on my birthday, I was so depressed about it. To add to my misery, my mother in law rang that day to tell us of another pregnancy in the family. Just what I needed to hear.

Someone once told me that everything happens for a reason. I found it hard to believe about miscarriage, yet a few months later, something happened to change my opinion completely.

I was lucky enough to fall pregnant again fairly soon, and when I was 3 months pregnant, my husband was in a motorcycle accident. He was very seriously injured, required emergency surgery, and then spent 28 days in intensive care on a ventilator fighting for his life. You may wonder how this fits in. Well, if I hadn't miscarried the first baby, I would have been 8 months pregnant when he had his accident. He was between jobs at the time so had no sick pay. He was in hospital an hours drive from where we lived. If I had been 8 months pregnant, I could not have spent every day at his bedside, he would have been in hospital when the baby was born (not the same one either) so would have missed the birth of his first child, been no use to me afterwards as he was so weak himself, in short, what was a nightmare anyway, would have been made many times worse.

I have since gone on to have 2 healthy children and am expecting another. For
tunately for me, miscarriage does seem to have been a one off event, bad luck, but that doesn't mean I will ever forget that baby. I still cry when I think about that time, I remember the heartache and loneliness after the operation. I remember the desperate longing to be pregnant again. And I've never felt so empty in my life.

I hope that my "happy ending" can offer hope to readers who are experiencing a loss.

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