On 4 January 2020, my husband Ben and I found out we were expecting our third child. Those who know me weren’t surprised when I immediately started planning whether I would still be able to run the London and Boston marathons later in the Spring… Little did we know what 2020 had in store for us all!
We decided to tell our two young daughters (then 3 and 5) and immediate family straight away, followed closely by those friends and colleagues who I saw frequently. I’m a small build and knew that I would ‘show’ early and I couldn’t be bothered with hiding a bump or pretending that giving up caffeine was my New Year’s resolution. When, just a few days later, I developed a sizeable baby bump, I was glad I’d gone public so early. There was no hiding it and, very quickly, the joke with everyone I met was that I must be carrying twins.
When the 6-week mark came and went and the vomiting and nausea I experienced in the 1st trimester of my previous pregnancies didn’t materialise, I giddily told myself that third times a charm. Finally, a first trimester I could enjoy as much I had enjoyed the second and third trimesters! I had lots of other pregnancy symptoms – the big comedy bump, fatigue, a need to eat frequently, ligament pain, a new and random dislike of apples… On the whole I felt amazing, and although life was very busy, I was so buoyed by happiness I felt as if I could take on anything. I didn’t, in all honesty, give miscarriage much thought. I had conceived quickly 3 times and had two, normal and straightforward pregnancies. I knew the statistics, but that happened to other women, not me.
At 10 weeks pregnant, I saw a tiny, tiny bit of pink blood and panicked. I knew spotting in early pregnancy was common, but I had never experienced it before. A couple of days later it happened again. I called the Early Pregnancy Unit who advised that this was normal, but if the bleeds continued I could call back and arrange a scan. They didn’t continue, but I couldn’t relax. In the end, I decided to book a private scan for reassurance and peace of mind.
On 19 February, I left work mid-morning to head to the clinic with Ben, fully anticipating I would be back in the office for my afternoon meetings. I was nervous and excited; I just wanted to see our baby and know that all was well. I planned to share the scan picture with friends and family who didn’t yet know I was pregnant.
One of the perks of a private scan I hadn’t counted on is a large screen in front of you so that you can see everything as the scan takes place, rather than waiting until the end. All I remember is a screen with nothing on it that looked like a baby, silence where there should have been a heartbeat, and the sonographer saying “have you definitely got your dates right?”. I started to cry. She explained that the sack and foetus didn’t look the right size for an 11 week pregnancy and she would need to do an internal scan to confirm.
I was shaking so much Ben had to hold my legs. I remember saying “I’m so scared” and the sonographer saying kindly “I know you are, rest your leg on me”. I remember her saying that she was very sorry, but there was no heartbeat, the baby was only measuring 6 weeks instead of 11 weeks and it wasn’t a viable pregnancy. I completely lost it at that point. She left us for a few minutes and came back with paperwork and a scan picture saying she was sorry, but I would need it to take to the hospital tomorrow for another scan to confirm her findings. In that moment, I was horrified to be given a picture, it seemed so cruel. Now it’s a precious memory. She said she was sorry again, then we left and drove home.
I had had a missed miscarriage. This is when the baby has died or not developed properly, but has not been physically miscarried. There are none of the usual physical signs of miscarriage and your body still thinks you are pregnant so keeps pumping out pregnancy hormones, growing the placenta and uterus. For 5 weeks, my baby had been dead and I had been walking around with a huge smile on my face and my huge bump. 5 weeks.
The next day we told our girls. The Miscarriage Association has excellent resources on how to talk to children about miscarriage, but explaining to a 3 and a 5 years old that the baby in Mummy’s tummy has died, that it couldn’t grow big and strong like they did, that the baby was like seeds we plant in the garden, some can grow and some can’t, was heart breaking. We all cried. My 3 year old asked “if we water it, can we bring it back to life?”. She also said (randomly), “now you aren’t pregnant anymore can I punch you in the stomach?” thus showing that even in the darkest of moments, children can make you laugh.
I tried to be clear, concise and avoided euphemisms about ‘losing the baby’ or the baby ‘sleeping’. At bedtime that night, our 5 year old became very upset. As we talked it became clear that she was worried that the baby had suffered and had died in pain. I showed her the scan picture so she could see it wasn’t a baby in the way she was thinking. It was hard to know at that point what was helpful or not. For days our 3 year old talked on a constant loop about the dead baby in Mummy’s tummy, how sad she was and how she wished the baby hadn’t died. To start with it was upsetting to hear, but after a bit I became immune to it.
Later that day we went to the EPU at the hospital. It was a repeat of the day before, the scan and internal, more pictures to take home. Confirmation of what we already knew. There are three ways to complete a missed miscarriage – waiting for the miscarriage to happen naturally, taking pills to medically induce it, or having the pregnancy removed surgically. I wanted to have the surgical option and assumed I would be able to have the procedure within the next couple of days. The thing I wanted to avoid at all costs was a natural miscarriage. I was scared about miscarrying at home, with 2 small children to look after and no control over when it would happen or what it would be like. However, the EPU insisted I had to carry for another week and then they would rescan to confirm that there was no growth or heartbeat. If I didn’t miscarry naturally in the meantime, I could then choose to have the baby removed surgically.
Looking back, I wish I had pushed harder for the surgical operation straightaway. I was certain of my dates, and I now had two full scans both showing the same outcome. The baby was clearly dead and to this day I don’t fully understand the rationale for making me wait.
The next few days were strange. Not pregnant, but not, not pregnant. Still in maternity clothes, with a big bump. Still carrying our baby, but knowing it was dead. Trying to carry on with normal family life for the girls. Waiting and knowing that I was unlikely to make it to the third scan and would miscarry at home, the option I had so badly wanted to avoid. To start with I cried a lot and then the crying was replaced with a dreadful emotional numbness.
I had awful lower back ache for a day or so and then I started to bleed. For a couple of days it was low key and then on 24 February, just as we were getting ready to bath the girls before bed, it was like someone turned a tap on. The level of blood loss was unnerving and as quickly as I fitted a night-time pad, blood was pouring down my legs. I ended up in our bedroom with my Mum (who, thank goodness jumped on the first train out of Suffolk to come and support us) bleeding over a pile of towels whilst Ben tried to get the girls off to bed. As well as blood I was losing very large clots, some the size of the palm of my hand. Again, I was grateful for the personal stories I had been reading on the MA website. I knew very heavy bleeding was what some women experienced, but I was scared.
After about 2 hours of heavy loss we contacted the EPU and they advised me to come to hospital. A registrar carried out a long, painful and distressing examination and advised that I had probably passed the pregnancy at home and the bleeding should now start to slow down. I’m an optimistic person by nature and I desperately wanted to believe that the worst of it was over, but physically it didn’t feel like it was.
Back at home, I bled heavily during the remainder of the night. The next few days were characterised by 2-3 heavy bleeds each day, each lasting for a couple of hours, and periods of more manageable blood loss. I made the move into TENA pants so that I could lie down and get some rest without destroying our cream sofas and bedding, a successful idea that pleased me no end! I became very weak and dizzy. When friends stopped by to drop off pre-cooked meals or to take the kids out for a couple of hours I could see the concern on their faces. In hindsight, I should have gone back to hospital sooner. I looked at everything that came out, desperately trying to identify the foetus, and deliberately made sure I didn’t bleed over the toilet. We washed a lot of towels that week.
A week after the second scan we trundled back to the EPU for the third scan. I hadn’t been able to identify the baby at home, and when the scan showed that there was no pregnancy remaining I was consumed by the thought that the baby was in a rubbish bag in the black bin, alone and without me to keep it safe anymore. At the time, that was a very powerful emotion – this idea that even though the baby had been dead for so many weeks that, somehow, for as long as it was in me, I was keeping it safe. The strength of my feelings at that particular point were overwhelming, it felt like I was losing my mind. We left the hospital, clutching the pregnancy test you get given to take 3 weeks later, and with the assurance that the bleeding should now slow down and stop.
A side note here about the care I had received up till this point: blood tests taken in hospital unsurprisingly showed I had become badly anaemic and my surgery were concerned enough to ask to see me. We saw a lovely doctor who, alongside dealing with my physical symptoms, also took the time to ask us both how we were coping emotionally. I realised it was the first time in this process that we had been asked and the first time Ben had even really been acknowledged. The process at hospital was, at best, mechanical and perfunctory, and at its worst insensitive and inappropriate. We still laugh about the nurse who repeatedly tried to get me to fill out an evaluation form, whilst I sat shell shocked and crying in one of those small, depressing side rooms (you know, the ones with faux leather cream sofas and pictures of fields lavender on the walls) where you get taken after receiving bad news.
Meanwhile the heavy bleeding wasn’t stopping, it was getting worse. Finally, on the Saturday evening, 6 days after the heavy bleeding started and after yet another heavy loss, my Mum kindly but firmly suggested that enough was enough and I needed to go to A&E. We arrived late on a wet and cold February night, me looking an absolute state in my TENA pants, PJs and dressing gown. I was very tired and very faint. I could see the concern on Ben’s face and he later told me my eyes kept rolling round in my head. I randomly started to cry when ‘I’ll Stand By You’ played on the hospital radio.
The waiting time was 4-6 hours but I was enormously grateful to be triaged in an hour and transferred back to the EPU. A doctor carried out another examination and as she examined me said that she could see pregnancy matter trapped at the entrance to my cervix. She removed it and explained it was the sac and foetus. The scan had been wrong and the baby had remained trapped inside, causing the ongoing heavy bleeding. I later learnt that it is extremely rare for this to happen.
Once the examination was complete, the nurse – Olivia – asked if we wanted to see the baby. She brought it to us in a Tupperware container along with a beautiful Memory Box, containing a little teddy bear, a candle and flower seeds amongst other things. I held the baby, hugging the tub as close to me as I could. I cried. But there was peace in that moment too. A realisation – like when you have given birth – that the physical pain was now over.
At 4am on Sunday 1 March 2020, it was just me, Ben and our baby. I was pleased that the baby had hung on in there and that I hadn’t unknowingly thrown it out with the rubbish. It gave me closure that I thought we wouldn’t get. It was a positive. The care at this most critical of points was everything it hadn’t been before – kind, gentle, compassionate – and I will never forget that.
Once on the ward I was hooked up to a drip. I settled down in bed and Ben headed home. I spent the next three days in hospital, on a drip initially and then getting an iron transfusion. I slept when I could, ate everything in sight (making friends with the lady serving food was a good move – by day 3 she was bringing me extra breakfast before I asked), read trashy magazines and watched the film Bridesmaids on repeat on my phone. To bring home the remains of the baby with me I had to sign a big ledger next to the words: ‘the mother is taking home the products of conception’. A truly horrible phrase. A few days later, we had the baby cremated using the wonderful services of Special Care Foetal Cremations. That process and the gentle way it was managed brought me a lot of peace.
Getting home was a low point, I was physically so tired and I felt utterly empty. I went back to work the following week and a few days later, on 19 March and one month after the first scan, I took the pregnancy test the hospital had sent me home with. It was negative. Physically, although I still felt pretty washed out, it was over. In fact, just a few days later my periods returned with what felt like brutal efficiency. However, I quickly realised I’d done the ‘easy’ bit. I enjoy endurance sports and, in a way, I had treated the miscarriage a bit like an ultra-marathon or mountain expedition – focus in, keep going and have a sense of humour, especially in the worst moments.
Emotionally, it has been a longer journey. On 23 March, the UK went into Coronavirus lockdown and the things I wanted and needed more than anything – a return to normal life – disappeared overnight. It was a very strange time to grieve and in lockdown I felt trapped in my home – surrounded 24/7 by vivid memories of everything that had happened – and cut off from family, friends and normality. I have never wanted to run away so badly in my entire life. I have been very lucky with my mental health so I was unprepared when, one night, anxiety slithered silently into my house, wrapped its arms around me and squeezed tighter and tighter each day until I felt I couldn’t breathe. March and April were dark months for me, set against a backdrop of the pandemic. Grief within grief. Ben was a rock and I focused on ensuring the girls were happy and supported, delivering in my job, home schooling, running, and binge watching Parks and Recreation. It wasn’t easy, but as early summer rolled around I felt the old me returning.
One year on and I can reflect on everything that happened and everything I’ve learnt. It doesn’t happen often, but I have unexpected moments of sadness, and there have been a couple of car crash moments where someone I haven’t crossed paths with for ages asks how the baby is. The feeling of failure lurks in the background. My body has generally always done what I have wanted and needed it to; the fact that it had let me down and tricked me quite so well was difficult to accept. In truth it’s hard to respond to pregnancy announcements from friends with pure, unaffected happiness. I was also horrified to discover I even felt envious of friends who hadn’t experienced a loss and also of friends with 3 children, because that is what I should have, but don’t. I realise I attached quite a lot of personal pride to my ability to get pregnant and have babies which, when you think about it, is utterly ridiculous.
I’m a glass half full person so I’ll end with the positives: during the miscarriage I had the most incredible support from friends, family and colleagues, a benefit we wouldn’t have realised if we had done the traditional thing and kept the pregnancy under wraps until the second trimester. We had to buy extra vases for flowers, endless pre-cooked meals arrived on our doorstep, the kids were taken off our hands for play dates, and I had a constant stream of visitors, phone calls, emails and WhatsApp messages. Ben and my Mum were at my side throughout and without them, and the support of so many others, there are times when I would have sunk.
Our wonderful girls gave me great strength and whilst lockdown came at the worst possible time for me, it gave our girls us 24/7 which was what they needed as they tried to make sense of what had happened. I like to fix things and overcome challenges, so my natural inclination was that I should get pregnant again ASAP. Deciding together that this wasn’t the right path for us was hard, but it was the right decision and our lives have gone in an exciting direction that I couldn’t have imagined a year ago.
Finally, I hope that I’m a more compassionate, rounded person and that I can better support someone going through a similar experience. There are so many things I wish I had known, but so many things that I have learnt and that is a good thing.
I’m a passionate runner and in July 2021 will undertake my first 100km race to raise money for the Miscarriage Association. I would have been lost without their advice and guidance and want to contribute in some small way to the continuation of this vital organisation.
