So my first post on my first blog and I’m jumping in at the deep end. Let’s talk about miscarriage. I’m currently suffering my third miscarriage and the insanity of some of the stuff you come up against has made me realise sharing the experience may help other people get through a similar situation. Reading lots online from people who have had to deal with the same thing has certainly helped me try and make sense of something that you can’t control – pretty hard for a control freak like me.

I had an early scan at 6+3 weeks, kind of accidentally. Since the birth of my beautiful, amazing, inquisitive son in 2013 after two previous miscarriages (separate posts on those coming up later), I have suffered over the last 18 months or so from debilitating pain during my periods that may be connected to a very quick Category 1 Caesarean section with my son and possible adhesions from that – although we haven’t got that far into investigations yet. The first step on this journey of discovery into the workings of my womb meant a scan to rule out anything else it could be. By a twist of fate, or simply a drawn out wait for the scan, I became pregnant during the wait but went for the scan anyway as it meant an extra check along the way, being the same scan you receive during early pregnancy. That was ok – measurements not unusual but no fetal heartbeat yet so a follow up reassurance scan booked for another week and a half later.

Three days before the scan, the bleeding started. It was slow going so rang the Early Pregnancy Unit – who are brilliant by the way – and they said to monitor things and then come in for the scan as planned. Well I really was ‘Entering a Whole World of Pain’ over the next few days so being old hat at this now, I knew things weren’t right.

My gut instinct was proved correct when the scan showed the embryo had grown slightly but there was still no heartbeat and the pregnancy sac was slowly moving down the uterus ready to escape. Our sonographer is one of the most understanding, informed and engaged people I’ve had the luck to meet in my fertility journey so far and spent time over and above what was needed discussing recurrent miscarriage thinking and the realistic decisions we would need to face in dealing with a missed miscarriage. So far, as good as it could be in an epically shit situation.

My husband and I were then able to weigh up the options of leaving nature to take its cause, having tablets (me not him) to move things along or what they now call an SMM (Surgical Management of Miscarriage), an important shift in the even colder terminology of the past when it was referred to as an ERPC (Evacuation of Retained Products of Conception). One – who the fuck can remember what that stands for and two – makes it sound like the hoovering up of an accidental spill on the floor of your uterus.

So, still pondering the options, we had to wait in a sort of claustrophobic box room which would make you sweat at the best of times, for the doctor to properly explain things and go through importanty stuff like consent. The doctor arrived, talked at us at an 100 miles an hour and told us the complete opposite of what we’d just been processing. The embryo had doubled in size, it was still there, it might still be viable – ‘so come back in a week’, yeah? Oh and ‘hopefully the bleeding will settle down’ (TMI alert – the pregnancy was slipping further out of my vagina as we spoke).

My husband’s face was what I like to call livid in action but I’ve heard so much stupid shit from consultants who should never have left the safety of their labs over the years, that nothing surprises me now. Plus, I was pretty heavily under the influence of a crap load of co-codamol, which dulled my irateness significantly at that stage.

I popped to the toilet to deal with the latest blood loss and my husband went to talk to the much more sensible and sensitive sonographer who was so fucked off she had to take the doctor aside and ask her what planet she was on. Unfortunately consultants trump sonographers, expecially on the imbecilic communication front, and we are now left waiting it out until our next scan on Tuesday; I know what the outcome will be, but there is now this illogical 1% glimmer of hope, which I know isn’t real.

Well that doctor can take that hope and shove it up her arse, along with the notes she obviously didn’t fucking read properly. I expect she’ll discover her mouth there too.

Updates to follow and love to all those going through the same confusing, heart-wrenching, ridiculous time.

Photo credit: Ildar Sagdejev