“You’ll go on to have another”
“It could be worse”
“At least you’ve got 1 already”
“Unfortunately it’s very common”
These are just a few things that you do NOT want to hear when you’ve just been told you’re miscarrying your baby. But, sadly, were things that were repeated to me on a couple of occasions by people whom I would have least expected to say it to me. It feels to me as though when your baby is alive in your tummy, people cannot do enough to help you but when your baby has died, no one really wants to help you – it becomes very clinical and the empathy goes straight out of the window.
I was approaching the 12 week mark of my pregnancy and so some of those early fears were beginning to fade. I’d had all the symptoms; nausea, fatigue, a little bump had started to appear. My 12 week scan was just days away when I started to bleed at work. It was light at first and so I felt reassured from speaking to my community midwife that this could be for a number of reasons and after following her advice and calling the early pregnancy unit, was reassured further when they advised to see how things go over the next couple of hours and keep my 12 week scan in place as ‘normal’.
However, a few hours later, the bleeding had worsened slightly and naturally I began to worry. I attempted to call the EPAU back (as advised) but everyone had gone home!! This was not something I had been told would happen, I assumed (again, because no one told me!), that this was a 24 hour team. After various phone calls to every man and his dog (panicking at this point!) and not being able to get through, I ended up with 111. After a tense wait, I was finally called back and advised that I’d have to go to A&E – not really what I wanted to hear. A&E was packed out busy, my husband (due to restrictions!) could not sit with me and so I had to sit alone facing my worst fear, that our baby had died.
By the time I was eventually seen the bleeding was continuing to get worse, but I was told “there’s nothing we can do here as we don’t have the specialist equipment you need”. Why are countless women advised to attend A&E then if they don’t have the equipment? Luckily for me, the triage nurse who dealt with me was very nice and did manage to get me an earlier appointment with the EPAU for a scan on the Saturday morning, however, we were currently only at Thursday night. We decided to book a private scan as we just wanted to know what was going on.
Friday morning, our hearts in our throat, we attended the scan we had booked privately. The bleeding was getting worse and at this point beginning to feel as though I was coming on my period. Our worst fear was confirmed when the sonographer very calmly and gently explained that she could see a baby but there was unfortunately no heartbeat. At this point, my husband and I just broke down. The little baby we had imagined welcoming into our lives at Christmas was gone; we were devastated.
The next few hours are a blur. We were told to go home and wait for a call to advise us when to go into the hospital for another scan – the next available appointment was Monday! So they expected us to wait until Monday to be given any further instruction as to what happens next – in my opinion, this is appalling. Luckily, I remembered the scan the triage nurse had managed to book for us for Saturday morning and so had every intention to attend this instead.
That night I must have gone straight out; exhausted from the emotional turmoil. At about midnight, I abruptly woke in a bit of a panic, feeling as though the period pains I’d been having earlier were getting worse and the immense fear that I’d get up for the loo and the baby would come out – at this point I realised that no one had actually explained what was going to happen next or indeed what might/could happen.
I told my husband how I was feeling and he said he would come with me every time I needed to get up and he would stay awake until I’d dropped to sleep. However, my gut was telling me that I wanted my mum there – I don’t know why, I just felt someone needed to be there for Rupert (my 2yo) incase Ben and I needed to go to hospital. My mum came over at 00:30.
I must have drifted off for a couple of hours then woke up again needing the toilet. I woke Ben and asked him to come with me. This time, I did pass more blood and maybe one or two very small clots. I started to walk back into the bedroom and began feeling very faint and dizzy. I told Ben how I was feeling, getting more clammy as the seconds went by and the next part is a blur. I ‘came to’ on the floor of the bathroom with Ben saying “Sarah, come on let’s get you back to bed”. Dazed and confused, I attempted to stand again and once again, don’t remember what happened next.
I ‘came to’ for a second time, slumped in my husband’s lap with him shaking me and shouting for my mum. He looked terrified. My mum rushed out of the spare bedroom and Ben called 999. After a short while of lying on the bathroom floor, I managed to crawl on my hands and knees to the bed. The paramedics arrived half an hour or so later and my blood pressure was very low. They did some fluid resuscitation whilst I was in the bed and gave me some IV paracetamol for the pain. When I felt stable, I walked down the stairs to the back of the ambulance and they took me to my local hospital.
The hospital is no stranger to me as I am a nurse, however, I have never felt further removed from somewhere as I did on Saturday morning, yet felt so reassured to be there. The staff in A&E – particularly a Clinical Support Worker called Happiness – were just so wonderful. Happiness held my hand, wiped my tears and told me she was so sorry for my loss; the first time anyone properly acknowledged what had happened. After a couple of hours, I was seen by a doctor, who again, was very compassionate and wanted me to be seen by a gynae doctor. He explained that he thought I may be in cervical shock as my bloods had come back normal – suggesting that I’d not lost as much blood as initially thought. However, it was this doctor that said “at least you have one already”; this is never ever going to be ok to say to someone who has just lost a baby.
The gynae registrar came up – I have to say she was not very compassionate, in fact she almost came across as cold. She wanted to do a vaginal examination, using a speculum – this was probably one of the worst experiences of my life. It felt very very uncomfortable and all she kept saying was “relax, it shouldn’t be hurting you”. I just burst into tears, I didn’t know how much more I could cope with. In the end, she gave up with the speculum because I just could not tolerate it and she used her finger instead – this was not much more comfortable. The outcome was to get me down to EPAU to be re-scanned. This happened fairly quickly and I had a lovely nurse specialist called Amanda and a sonographer. Both were extremely patient, caring and compassionate.
The sonographer explained that she really needed to do a vaginal examination as the baby was low down. At this point, I once again was overwhelmed with emotion and just burst into tears. I explained I could not tolerate the examination in A&E and I was petrified. Without hesitation, both Amanda and the sonographer jumped immediately to my side and put their arms around me. Amanda gave me her hand and told me to squeeze it. The sonographer explained she would be very gentle and would stop whenever I needed – she also explained that it should be less uncomfortable as the probe just slips in and does not open your cervix like the speculum. She was not wrong and the examination was far more tolerable and over quite quickly, although I wept the whole way through.
Post examination, Amanda explained the baby was very low down and was bigger than they anticipated; they actually think it was more 11/12 weeks as opposed to the estimated 8 weeks they’d told us at the private scan. She anticipated I would miscarry in the next couple of hours. She explained that the reason the vaginal examination was so uncomfortable in A&E was because baby was so low down and there was no room for the doctor to look around – which begs the question, why did she persist for so long when this was clearly a factor? Why not send me for the scan first? Amanda explained what would happen next in terms of removing the remains of my pregnancy.
Back in A&E, the gynae doctor came to review me and informed me that it was likely I’d have ‘medical management’ to complete the miscarriage. I knew I didn’t want this – I wanted surgery because as awful as it sounds, I just wanted it over with. This is the first time I saw a glimpse of empathy in the doctor’s face and she just very calmly said that it was my choice and if that’s what I wanted, they could arrange that. She said it would likely be Monday as the weekends are only usually for emergencies.
In the meantime I was admitted to Surgical Assessment Unit to wait it out. I asked one of the doctors what would happen if the baby came out before then – he explained this was unlikely as my cervix was closed when the gynae doctor examined me. Again, first time anyone had explained this to me.
Sunday morning came and the gynae team came to see me and explained they would get me into theatre that day. They told me to remain nil by mouth and they would come up between 3pm and 9pm. The anaesthetist followed and explained the procedure but this was the point he said “unfortunately it’s very common” – he did not mean anything by it, but it made it sound like I was another statistic. I’m aware miscarriage is common, but it is not common to me – it’s completely unnatural and new.
3pm on the dot and the theatre staff came for me. I was very nervous but was immediately put at ease by the theatre staff who were very patient. Before I knew it, I was put to sleep and waking up in recovery. I recovered very well. The nurse from the ward came to get me (again just a general female surgical ward and so not specialised in the procedure I had had done). I still, to this point, do not know what that nurse’s name is – she did not introduce herself, she barely made eye contact with me and quite honestly, made me feel as though I was a burden to her because her shift was ending and I was ‘just another admission’.
I was taken to a bay where a health care assistant did my post op obs – my blood pressure was running low and the anaesthetist had requested an ECG immediately on the ward as my heart rate was abnormal. The nurse didn’t take one set of observations on me and didn’t even acknowledge it when the health care assistant told her my blood pressure was low and temperature high. As a nurse, I recognise these symptoms and so was naturally worried. The health care assistant then proceeded to quite brazenly ask me “what have you had done then?”, as if it was a beauty salon – where is the compassion in this? I do not want to repeat over and over again that my baby has died and has just been removed from me. Unsurprisingly the post op nurse’s shift finished and she did not come to say bye to her patients. From here, the care improved and I felt more at peace that everything had gone well and was discharged the following day.
The real journey starts here though, coming to terms with an experience that will change me as a person forever.