I wanted to share my story as I am finding it hard to find stories that relate to my experience of having a haemorrhage. At the time of writing this it was less than two weeks ago that I was rushed to A&E. I am still recovering physically, so I haven’t really processed what has happened and I am hoping writing this will help me with that, as well as hopefully helping someone else know they are not alone.
It all started when I noticed I was spotting at around what I think would have been about 6/7 weeks pregnant. It was dark brown and rather stringy. As this was my third pregnancy I knew this could be normal so I didn’t think too much of it. I thought I would mention it at my booking in appointment.
At my booking in appointment the spotting had actually stopped, so when I was asked the question of spotting I advised I had some but that it had stopped. She didn’t seem bothered so I left it at that.
Around two weeks later a stomach bug passed through our house, first with my son who’s two and then me, then my husband. I’d recovered the night my husband became ill, but I had started bleeding again and this time it was red. It was this night that things would start to change. I instantly knew something was wrong. I’d reacted so badly to my husband being ill that night, I’d had a go at him and was really out of order. My emotions were all over the place. Looking back it may have been hormones or gut instinct.
I got my husband to ask my mum to have the kids and had a full on breakdown, crying in the bath, fully clothed, without water. I said I didn’t want to call anyone for help as I didn’t want to know what was happening. My husband was so patient with me and very calm about it all. We were also moving house in a week, so he was preoccupied – he had to be really, as I now couldn’t think about it and he knew this.
Eventually he persuaded me to phone someone, but I didn’t know who to call. The GP told me they couldn’t help and to try calling 111 or the midwives. The midwives told me I had to leave a message with the early pregnancy unit, but that wasn’t at the hospital I was going to give birth in, and the hospital I was going to give birth in only accepted referrals from a GP. As I was trying to navigate this, my first dating scan letter came through, so I called that number but no one could help there either. Eventually I relented and left a message with the other hospital.
I got a call back eventually from a midwife who asked about my symptoms etc. When I explained, she said “it doesn’t sound like a miscarriage, but to be safe we will book you in for an early scan”, which I think was two days later.
So we went to to the scan. My husband was still being optimistic, but I just knew. We got to the early pregnancy unit and had to sit in the waiting room with all the heavily pregnant women and people coming out looking at their first pictures with joy.
After what felt like an eternity I had an internal scan and the sonographer asked “did you say you are 10/11 weeks?”. I said yes and she explained that there was a sac and yolk, but no heartbeat. We were then taken into a private room, although we had to walk through the waiting room to get to it, to be told that it was likely the baby had stopped developing but we needed to wait a week to make sure. She went on to describe what a miscarriage would be like, which was incredibly inaccurate for what happened to me – she described it as a ‘bad period’ and that paracetamol should be enough to help. It wasn’t.
So we went home and over the next few days the bleeding comes and goes and the pain comes and goes. I just tried to watch TV, rest and do what I could to be normal. The kids stayed at my mum’s. We told my eldest, as painful as it was she knew something was wrong and she couldn’t be fooled. I felt so guilty telling her that I was pregnant, but now I’m losing the baby. It felt cruel, but she was scared as she witnessed my husband having to help me on the loo a few days before.
On the Sunday I passed my first few clots. I was starting to bleed what I thought was heavily this time. I’d started watching a film with my husband and I had to keep pausing it to go to the loo. I passed a big golf ball sized clot which resembled liver, then I passed something which looked like it had string. I thought this was the baby. After this, everything turned so quickly.
We were nearly at the end of the film but by then I’d leaked on to the sofa, gone through so many trousers and there was blood on the floor. My husband helped me clean up even though he’s squeamish. This was repeated over the next few hours. I was pulling my trousers down and clots were falling down my legs into my trousers. I decided to just wrap two bath towels around me and lie on the living room floor.
We finished the film and I said to my husband “I’m going to call 111”. He decided to cook lunch as we both needed it. I was laying on the floor and could just feel the blood rushing out of me. I was starting to feel hot and dizzy, I decided I needed to go back up to the toilet. I got there and the towel dropped on the floor and there was blood everywhere. I shouted to my husband to come up as I needed help. I didn’t know what to do, I just said “I can’t stop it, can you phone 111?”. He looked it up and said to maybe not mess about and call an ambulance, but I refused. I had been taken in an ambulance when I had a panic attack when I had COVID, so I didn’t want to be wrong again and look like a hypochondriac.
I was putting all the pads, trousers etc. in a bag. There seemed to be so much red. My husband called 111 while he finished lunch. They wanted to speak to me and by this point I was sweating profusely and felt weak. When they asked me how many pads I’d soaked thorough I realised I had gone through five or six in two hours. Two hours? Had it been that long? They told me then that they were calling an ambulance. I just stayed on the toilet, as stupid as it sounds I was worried about the carpet because we were moving out.
It seemed like an eternity waiting for the ambulance to come. At some point my husband actually helped remove a clot that was stuck. I can’t remember the order of events, if it was before the ambulance was confirmed or after. The 111 operator told me to keep everything that had come out and not flush, I hadn’t the energy to do anything with it anymore anyway. So I sat and eventually they came and they asked if they could look. I explained as much as I could and said I don’t think I need this scan. They wanted me to lie down. I went to go downstairs but they wanted me to go into the bedroom. It was a tip as we were moving, I had white sheets and I was worried about the carpet. What if we didn’t get our deposit back? I tried to protest but they wouldn’t let me. I have no idea how or why that was my worry.
The ambulance crew were brilliant. I was feeling really spaced out by this point. They asked questions and took my vital signs. They said I was tachycardic and my husband asked what that was. They said it meant that my blood pressure was fighting because I’d lost a lot of blood. It wasn’t at a dangerous level but I needed to go to hospital. They couldn’t get a line in, they tried but I have rubbish veins anyway. They wanted to do it because it made it easier for the hospital. I knew it was because if I needed blood quickly.
They couldn’t get a line in so just got me in the ambulance to go to hospital. After about 10 minutes I started to really tire, the person in the back with me said “are we doing blue lights?”. The other responded with a timescale of twenty minutes. I managed to think ‘hang on, the hospital’s about 40 minutes away’ and then started to close my eyes again. I felt the ambulance speed up and whenever it started to slow the siren would go on. It was at this point I realised it was an emergency, the blue lights were on.
Even though it was an emergency there was a short wait outside in the ambulance of about 10 mins or so, then I was taken to A&E and transferred to a side room. When they removed me from the ambulance it became apparent I was still bleeding heavily as there was a pool of blood on the trolley. The ambulance crew stayed for about half hour as they had to clean up, but the driver also came back before he left. He attached me to the heart rate monitor as no one had done that yet.
Eventually a nurse did see me briefly, he’d been distracted because of a man who was most definitely drunk, I could smell the alcohol. He tried to deal with putting my line in but kept apologising, I asked for something for the pain. My husband arrived and the nurse from just moments ago grabbed my hand and said “I’m so sorry for what you are going through”. It was meant to be kind but it sounded so patronising, especially as I’d been there an hour already, I was still bleeding and while the paramedics seemed to be worried, they weren’t. I knew it was because of how busy they were but being in this side room I felt scared and was feeling sicker and sicker.
Luckily there was a handover and a new nurse came in and explained a lot more to me. She also explained that she had had miscarriages herself, it was a comfort to hear someone open up. And she managed to get a line in me finally! I was still losing blood, although it had slowed down naturally. The nurse explained that she had to transfer to another hospital and that she would hopefully come and see me when she got back, but in case she didn’t she said to take all the time I needed and that it would be hard. She even talked about my rights at work, which was lovely but I was still in pain and no doctor had checked the blood loss. This was 5 hours in. My husband said it be okay, I wouldn’t be left waiting if I needed a transfusion.
Eventually a doctor saw me and fully confirmed that I was miscarrying, and said that it looked like it had all gone from the amount of blood in the pictures the ambulance took and the amount that was in the loo. They said that I looked dehydrated, took blood to check levels and I finally got some pain relief too.
When the levels came back she said they were actually good so I wouldn’t need a transfusion. I’d been there six hours at this point. My husband asked if I’d be going home and she said “yeah, I’d say so, after some fluids through a drip, but I will check with the gynaecologist”.
The gynaecologist came to see me and she completely threw out what the doctor had said. She was concerned. I was pale, I felt cold to touch and she re-took my blood pressure and saw I was still tachycardic. She did an internal examination. I managed to crack some joke about when she said if it hurts you have to say stop – I said “what, like a safe word?” which made the nurse chuckle. By this point I felt almost drunk, I was so spaced out.
She tried to do a procedure to take out any remaining tissue and examine my cervix. A box with a butterfly on was brought in. I hoped she couldn’t get anything out, I didn’t want that box. She could see some but couldn’t get it, so wanted me to have a scan in the morning and to admit me. She said with the amount of blood loss I may need a transfusion if tranexamic acid didn’t slow the bleeding down. She didn’t seem impressed that the previous doctor had even thought about sending me home. She was really kind and explained that the miscarriage wouldn’t be my fault and that generally it just wasn’t healthy to begin with.
The nurse who promised she would be back if I was still there kept her promise and came with me to the ward, even told me stories of robots in the hospital she visited that were basically porters. It was nice to be treated normally and included in the conversation, even though I was still rather spaced out. She will never really know how grateful I am to her and the gynaecologist and also the male nurse who was with them, they all treated me like a human being and were happy to facilitate my joking even though it was probably an odd thing to do. I always joke to push my emotions down.
Thank god the gynaecologist kept me in as the scan confirmed that everything was still intact, I even said to the sonographer “what an earth came out of me then?!”. The next gynaecologist tried the same procedure as before to remove the tissue, but it was too painful and he said it wouldn’t be fair to do it while I was still awake. He told me the options and I opted for surgery. He told me to go home and that it would be scheduled for the next morning, or that I could wait on the emergency list in hospital but then it could keep being put back.
I went back to the same waiting room where all the scans were being done, seeing pregnant women go in and in out. I told the reception I couldn’t wait for the porter, I needed to walk back. I couldn’t remember the way though, so I went back to the reception and asked if I could have the porter after all. I waited and waited and waited in that same waiting room for 3 hours, no one came.
I was just about to go to the reception again when the sonographer found me. I told her it was my fault and she pushed me back to the ward and said “no it’s not, you don’t want to be sat there”. She could see my heart was breaking watching all those women. I held back the tears in the waiting room as I had done the whole time with every doctor, even with the sonographer, although she could see through me, she was so, so kind. She was the same sonographer who saw me the week before and she remembered me. She was happy to let me crack jokes and smile like it was all okay.
Back in the ward they told me I wasn’t to go home, my heart rate was still high and my blood pressure wasn’t stable. I was relieved, I couldn’t bare the thought of going home knowing that I could haemorrhage again. It was the gynaecologist that just recommended I go home who had just told me that although when they did my blood test the levels were good, when he compared it to my other births I had lost a significant amount more. It was only because my levels were excellent to begin with that I didn’t have a blood transfusion – and it was indeed a haemorrhage. How could he have just read that and told me to go home for the night? He even said “if you bleed heavily call an ambulance”.
I told my husband this when he visited, before I knew I was staying in, and he told me I would be staying in. I fell asleep while he was there. He was so stressed packing and moving everything to our new home, I felt so guilty I couldn’t help but also I just wanted him with me. I knew he had to move as we had to give our keys back because they wanted the house back. It wasn’t our choice so I couldn’t stop him or ask him to delay it. He was, and is, my rock and while he may have seemed distant I knew why he had to be.
The next morning I told the ward my appointment time an hour before, but 10 minutes before and the porter was not there. They phoned eventually and he arrived. He was lovely and we had a chat about the fact that I was moving house. When I got to my appointment the nurse looked harassed and sarcastically said “we thought you were going home” and the nurse with the gynaecologist from the day before made a breezy remark. In the end I got snappy as she said “What went on? I need to understand as we didn’t know where you were”, and replied “I get that, but the ward didn’t want me to go because my vital signs were still not good so they didn’t want to release me they wanted to give me more fluids”.
The porter was still there and said to me “I’ll come and get you to take you back to the ward”, but the nurse said “no, we will send for her stuff, she’s going home today”. The porter even tried to protest. In the end I gave in and she calmed down. The doctor was better, but still going on about it. When she looked through my notes she was huffing and said in the tone an adult talks to a child “you’ve been in hospital for long enough, this has been drawn out, I feel like we should get you home”. I said the concern was the amount of blood I had lost.
When I got to the surgeons the anaesthetist was lovely, he had really kind blue eyes. He knelt down in front of the bed and looked me straight in the eye and asked if I understood the procedure and asked all the normal health questions too. I told him I was nervous about the anaesthetic as I remembered how much pain it caused. The door then opened for another one of the team to come in and then I clock the sign above the door opposite which said ‘birthing centre’. My door said ‘theatre 1’. I twigged that pregnancies that are full term must go there, then I saw a sign in my room for the chaplain.
The surgeons looked through my notes and mentioned the fact that I was late, but they also said “why an earth didn’t they book you in the same day you had the scan?”. I said “the blood loss, I don’t know” and they said “you could have been given blood if you needed it”. I manage to still make jokes with the surgeons when they ask about my family and I call my 2 year old feral. They gave me the first injection. It didn’t sting like I remembered. Then the second. I say “it’s not stinging”, then suddenly I get the shooting pain I remember from my laparoscopy for my endometriosis. I scream and one of the surgeons says “does it hurt that bad?”, then another says “with small veins it hurts more”. I felt the trolley being moved and then the voices trail off…
The next thing I remember was waking up in a different room. I was messaging my husband about what time to pick me up, he said he wasn’t expecting to pick me up and I argue with him. Then a woman starts asking me questions and telling me ‘it’s ok’. She asks personal questions about my family, she even asks if I have a favourite child. Ashamedly I answer then instantly feel guilty. I think the question was asked to bring me out of confusion, I am not sure. I don’t have a favourite child, I have a child and I’m their favourite, but in my confused state I answer. I am in pain and given fentanyl, which calms me. I go into my life story with the person who just asked me that horrendous question! As if I need any more guilt to carry with me.
After a few hours I’m able to go home and well, here I am nearly two weeks later. I was told I would be back to normal in a few days by the nurse. But while the first few days after I managed to do things and didn’t feel that bad (adrenaline and it was my birthday the day after surgery), there was the house move of course. And since Thursday, which was about 9 days after surgery, I felt so tired and drained and ill.
I had my son on my own for stints on Wednesday because my husband had to deal with the MOT and do the shopping for my mother-in-law. Then on Friday she had a hospital appointment and while I know she needed my husband it was hard not to be annoyed or feel like the fact I had a haemorrhage and surgery had just been forgotten. I know this was irrational, just as it was irrational that I was having a go at my husband on the Tuesday while he was making calls about the house move. Things needed doing but it all felt so soon. It wasn’t his fault and he was trying to get it done so I didn’t have to. Whether it was the hormones I don’t know.
I had only just stopped being scared of the loo!! I tried to hide this but I don’t think I did a good job. Then on Thursday evening I suddenly got severe diarrhoea to the point it has only just stopped on Sunday which was now yesterday as I write this at 4.00 am. I feel unwell generally, but the 111 nurse has said it probably isn’t an infection as too many days have passed.
I don’t know what is normal after blood loss because I didn’t go back to the ward so no one has told me. I think I will try my GP tomorrow, but I don’t want any more needles, I am still bruised from the last lot.
I am angry that I’ve not been told what to expect. I am angry at some of the ways I was treated in hospital. It wasn’t their fault, it’s obvious they can’t cope with the sheer volume of people, and while it was passed off as being what is best, I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like pre-COVID. Would they have actually told me I was having a haemorrhage rather than blood loss in A&E? If it hadn’t been for the gynaecologist in A&E what could have happened? And most of all, if the second gynaecologist finally said haemorrhage why did he want to send me home?
And why wasn’t it explained to me what to expect then in terms of recovery? And when will the constant focus on these things and the flashbacks stop and the grief kick in?
Why do I keep going over and over the physical stuff in my head? Why can’t I just grieve for the baby my husband and I lost? Especially when I don’t think he’s going to want to risk trying again, especially as we had to downsize. He’s just been through the stress of moving, he doesn’t want to move again. So even with all of that, why do I keep putting a smile on?
I feel guilty that I am not recovered physically and that the kids aren’t here again.
Why can’t I cry or feel something, anything?