*Disclaimer - this post contains sensitive content about miscarriage. If this is too raw or a possible trigger for you, please click back now.*
After miscarrying our Baby, we held each other and cried.
It was hard to fathom that this was actually happening to us.
We felt so disconnected from the world and life itself.
I heard that you should put Baby's remains in the fridge to slow down the process of decay. This would give us a chance to work out our options and how we could best give a fitting tribute to the very much wanted and loved little Baby.
I phoned the GP and booked an appointment for 9 am. I knew we were meant to be going for a scan now, but seeing the Baby had been lost, I didn't really see the point.
Caz took me to the doctor and she was sympathetic but quite to the point.
She wanted us to go to the scan anyway to check if there were 'any remaining products in the uterus'.
I know that would be the technical term, but it is so cold when to us this little 11 weeks 6-days old being was our Baby.
You love them from the moment you realise you are pregnant.
So we went to the hospital anyway and were sent to the gynaecological and breast surgery ward.
There we met a staff nurse called Gail. She was like a mother hen - wrapping you up and being very kind.
We had an initial assessment by a nurse called Hannah. She wanted to see if a scan was necessary. When I said that I had passed a pregnancy sac she looked at me with a bit of shock and filled in the slip to have the scan.
Downstairs we went to the ultrasound unit. In there were 2 men waiting for some form of a scan, a young teen occupying himself and a happy couple waiting for photographs from their dating scan.
I tried not to dwell on anything as I knew I would cry.
Caz was with me every step of the way but I asked him not to hold my hand as I knew I would crumble.
In the scanning room, there was a sonographer and a student. I am always happy for students to stay as they have to learn somehow.
After lifting my top to expose my abdomen, cold jelly was applied.
"Do you have a pelvic kidney?" the sonographer asked in a bit of surprise.
"Oh yes, sorry I forgot to mention, I had a kidney transplant in 2011".
They would check the health of my kidney while they checked out the viability of my pregnancy.
I knew 100% that it was gone.
She said she couldn't see any signs of pregnancy but wanted to use the internal camera too just to check.
After stripping from the waist down (again) and dressed in the gown, I sat on this foam wedge with my feet together and knees splayed.
Bejesus, the probe looked vast.
She inserted the probe and pointed it this way and that and after a few minutes confirmed that the pregnancy had gone but it looked like some clots still remained. She would write a report and put it in my file. She offered her condolences.
We returned back upstairs to the ward and waited on the results. A junior doctor called Hayley, along with nurse Hannah both saw me and wanted to do a physical exam. They said they were sorry that we had lost our Baby.
For the 3rd time in less than 24 hours, I had to strip from the waist down and be poked and prodded yet again.
She first wanted to check the softness of the cervix. For this, she had to insert a gloved finger into me.
Then she used the speculum to look inside and confirmed it looked like there was no remaining tissue and just a few clots to pass.
They did 3 swabs to check for infections to rule out any other potential reasons for the miscarriage to have happened. One was for chlamydia (I think), another to check the health of the cervix and the last to check the vagina.
Hayley confirmed that 1 in 4 women have a miscarriage.
I didn't realise the statistics were so high.
You think that this is just something that happens to other people, and only a handful for that matter.
This was too many lost Babies in my opinion. How could life be so cruel? I'd always thought it would be the getting pregnant that was the hard part not in trying to stay pregnant.
We waited again for staff nurse Gail to discharge me and she handed us a leaflet and a few blood tests. I had to have one set of blood tests there and then and another set in 48 hours. Then in 3 weeks, I had to do a pregnancy test to confirm 'all the tissue was gone'.
Why do you have to go for all these tests and be poked and prodded for, in my case, the best part of 3 hours?
I was tired, I was emotional, I was bleeding and my body ached.
All I wanted to do was go home and curl up in a ball and give up. I didn't want to be sat around in a hospital feeling that all dignity had left me and I was just some interesting test subject.
Why do medical professionals not realise how deeply this entire process will affect you?
I had lost my pregnancy, we had lost our Baby and all our hopes and dreams had been lost with it.
At no point do they consider you emotional and mental well-being.
You have gone through sudden, unexpected trauma as well as losing a loved one.
You will grieve and you will be hurting in more ways than one.
Bereavement counselling would be such a huge help in this process. Maybe not everyone would want this level of assistance but it would be a thousand times better than receiving a badly photocopied leaflet on miscarriage.
The cause of the miscarriage might never be known.
It could be that the egg or sperm had a fault. Perhaps the Baby had some deformity.
But it wasn't our fault. It wasn't anything we had done or not done. We did everything within our power the right way. We were eating healthily and keeping active. But still, you feel guilty and wonder why.
Thinking in this way doesn't help. It just keeps you dwelling on the problem. You can't change the past, you don't know what the future holds but you can focus on the here and now.
For our sake and to honour the passing of our Baby, we knew we needed to keep going.
It is difficult but little by little, day by day things do improve.
In time you will move forward, you will smile again and it will feel easier.
You won't ever forget but you will find a way to survive.
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