My Miscarriage - Apparently It's Common

Loss for me can be placed into different tiers, I've lost money in slot machines before (sharp stab, never again) and I've lost my Dad, a grief that's happily softening each day, but remains. Having a miscarriage and being told there's no heartbeat, stole the euphoric feeling of being pregnant. My miscarriage experience felt painfully drawn-out with initial shock and tears, anxious googling, and a new sort of grief that was both awful and confusing and apparently very common.

My back story being, I have endometriosis. I had my Implanon taken out when I was 29, with the plan to give my body a few years to reset from birth control and then an open agenda to whether I'd fall pregnant or not. I'm now 36 and in the span of those years, I learned I have endometriosis (the severe type) and 2 surgeries to try and remove as much as the tissue as they could. 3 months after the second surgery, I saw the two lines on my pregnancy test. I was in absolute disbelief. After years of googling pregnancy symptoms and convinced I was having them, I was finally having them.

The first heartache was completely my fault. For some reason, I had read my period app wrong and when my doctor and the ultrasound technician asked for the “first day of your last bleed” I told them the completely wrong month. At my first ultrasound (when I was meant to be 9 weeks pregnant) the technician went quiet before saying, “I can't see a 9-week old baby”. She told me to get my bloods done ASAP. I ended up running out into the carpark, hiding in the bushes and crying. It was brutal. I rang work, canceled my afternoon shift, went to the doctor got my bloods done, and then back to the doctor the next day. He told me my HCG was rising but the scan showed my fallopian tubes inflamed and told me to go straight to the ER. I did. At the hospital, they diagnosed me with having a molar pregnancy. I'd learn quickly that was definitely not a baby. They booked me in to have a D&C to “suck out” the molar pregnancy (I'm sure there's a nicer way to say that). Before signing off on the paperwork, they wanted me to have a final ultrasound at the hospital. The technician went quiet again. “I don't know what this means but I'm actually recording a heartbeat”. The doctors came in to tell me, everything was okay. They smiled and gave me my new due date, the 17th of Feb and told me to have another ultrasound in 2 weeks. 

Walking out of the hospital felt amazing.

In that two week period, Ben and I started to talk about life as parents. It's where I tripled check my period app and got tremendous shame for messing up my dates. It's where I rearrange my bedroom to fit the baby in, it's where we told our parents and got the most positive reactions from them. It's where I started to look at baby clothes and borrowed a book from the library “motherhood and creativity” (it's a great book btw). It's where I started to imagine myself as a Mum. It's where I got scared and excited. It's where I started to rub my tummy and picture myself with a huge tummy. It's where I thought about the 17th of Feb and got excited I'd be swimming with a ginormous tummy in the middle of summer. It's where I got way too much hope.

After those 2 weeks passed, I booked in for my follow up ultrasound. I brought in anxiety from the previous scan but reassured myself that I was “back on track” that it had been my mistake about dates. I remember how the hospital had given me the all clear that there was an actual baby inside of me. The technician asked that horrible phrase again “is there any way you could have your dates wrong, I don't see an 8-week old baby”. She told me I was only measuring at 6 weeks 4 days. She told me she couldn't find a heartbeat and that the baby died a few days after my hospital ultrasound. She gave me a box of tissues. I got home and laid on the grass outside. The next 24 hours were the worst of the whole journey. I went through shock, sadness, disbelief, and anger. I cried and cried. I told the parents.

I also didn't actually believe. The first ultrasound had shown nothing but the potential of a 5 week old something and a day later, the hospital scan showed a 6-week baby and heartbeat. Maybe the same thing had happened. I went back to my doctor, for more answers and was sent for more blood work to check my HCG levels again.

I booked the earliest appointment I could to find out the results (the stress and anxiety was real!). The doctor told me my figure 21,000. I told him “that sounds really low”. Not being my regular doctor, he tried to catch up on everything that had happened, I just wanted to go home. He printed me off the form to have a D&C at the women's clinic in town. I went to the counter to pay for the appointment. The doctor called out to me and ask me to come back into his office.  “I don't want to give you false hope but your HCG are just at the lowest end of week 8, do you want a follow-up blood test?”.

I walked out of the clinic and sat down in the fire escape in tears. It was too much. My body couldn't handle it anymore. I had no idea if I was pregnant or not. I felt pregnant. My HCG levels definitely made me feel pregnant.

I took the second blood test and a few days later I was back to my original doctor, trying to fill her in on everything, waiting anxiously to hear the number. 20,000. My HCG levels had dropped. As I was walking out of her office she asked about my previous D&C. “No I've never had one” and then she said, smiling “OH, so is this your first pregnancy - you'll be fine”. I really didn't feel fine. 

A week later I started bleeding; bright red, crampy bleeding. The previous days, I had brown spotting but the bright red blood was new and I knew. The pain was comparable to the worst day of my period but with slightly more intense cramps. It makes sense in my head, my body needed to ramp up the contractions to be able to pass all the tissue. I filled my menstrual cup every 3 hours and took as much panadol and nurofen as the time allowed + a hot water bottle on constant rotation. I passed a lot of tissue the first night and what I'm guessing was the sac and baby and everything else two nights later.

When I started to bleed, I didn't cry. I told my body after the final ultrasound that it was okay to let the baby go if it had died. It was equally okay if they'd made a mistake and it wanted to keep on growing. I was definitely okay with that :) When I started to bleed I knew it was my body telling me it was time and it was over.

Ben's family bought me a red kangaroo paw plant after finding out the good news. I was shocked, “why I was getting a present?”, “because your body is growing a baby”. I thought that was sweet. I like having little reminders of things in my life, especially since I'll see the kangaroo paw every day when I water the garden. I'm proud of myself for getting through the unknown for saying goodbye and for still being here. I offer enormous empathy for others who have experienced the grief that comes from having something you loved (and the hope and the vision) taken away. I'm amazed at the resilience of the human spirit. The ability to not completely lose your mind with excessive googling. I'm amazed that we can all just keep going on.

My story carried on a little further, as my bleeding started to peter out, I had a cyst burst and then an infection which landed me in hospital, twice. I struggled at the hospital to explain and be heard about the differing pain but that falls more into my endo journey and really, a whole other story.

I'm alive now, I'm no longer sad, no longer feel pregnant. I'm optimistic about the future. I can see my doctor was only trying to be kind when she told me I'd be okay. I no longer want to do the middle finger, to the male doctor who (surrounded by his kid's art) told me that he and his wife had a miscarriage for their first pregnancy before having their kids. My grief no longer needs that bubble-wrapped sensitivity. I'm grateful to still be here.