February 2024 I found out I was pregnant. I had been on the pill since 2017, so it came as quite the shock to myself and my partner at the time who I had been with for two years.
We went to a scan at 7 weeks after I had some bleeding to be told they were really sorry but they couldn’t find a baby. After blood tests confirmed my HCG was slowly rising (around 30% in 48 hours) we had another scan a week later to be told that they could see what looked to be a 3-4 week pregnancy.
I had miscarried and gotten pregnant again all before my first scan, and two days after the second one I miscarried again.
My ex partner and I proceeded to continue trying for a year, a new pregnancy nearly every month; a new pregnancy that failed by the 4 week mark.
Did you know that in the UK you need to have had a minimum of 3 pregnancy losses to be given help on the NHS? Did you know that when you do qualify for that help there is a limited amount of testing they do, and if you come back clear you are discharged and you’re back to square one having no more answers than you did to begin with?
This is what happened to me, so I went to my GP with my own research about potential causes to have a female doctor refuse to look at a sentence of my three pages of information.
“Just keep trying and hope that one eventually sticks.”
Sorry? At this point I had been through somewhere between 15-20 chemical pregnancies at only 27 years old, and that’s just the ones I was aware of. How many heavy periods did I have that may have been more than just a heavy period but I just didn’t test to know? I decided to just not test at all until I fully missed a period.
I knew it wasn’t a case of the partner I had after a miscarriage with my ex husband, my ex partner I was trying for a year with, and now my current partner. I knew it was an issue with me, but I kept getting the same barriers of being told that I was young and to keep trying.
Two weeks after this deflating and dismissive doctors appointment I missed my period. It had only gone over by a day but I knew the likelihood was that I was pregnant yet again, and I was so scared of finding out for just another heartbreak in a day or two when that “period” finally came.
Positive.
I cried. I cried because after you have a miscarriage you lose the joy of telling your partner that they’re going to be a parent, and it’s replaced with telling them how scared you are of going through the loss again.
After having as many as I had at that point my hope was gone, I waited for the bleeding to start, but it didn’t. I got something even worse - false hope.
At 7 weeks we went for our first scan and were told that they could find a small misshapen sac, nothing in it, and much smaller than they were anticipating for how many weeks I was.
My heart was shattered once again, but I knew the process, they had to do blood tests to see what was happening and book another scan in a week’s time.
Prior to this pregnancy the highest my HCG had ever been was enough to get a faint line and a 1-2 week clear blue digital, but at 7 weeks I had a dye stealer and a 3+ digital test, I had clear signs that my pregnancy was progressing as it should have been until that scan.
They told me what they were expecting to find with my HCG and what my scan suggested: a mishappen sac suggested a failing pregnancy, an impending miscarriage, and they expected that my HCG would be starting to drop.
I went back to the Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit 48 hours later to get a second blood test to be met with a rather confused midwife. She had no idea what the second test would show, as my first one showed my HCG at over 10,000. That afternoon I was told that my HCG was still rising, but as it was over the 10,000 mark the fact that it wasn’t doubling didn’t really tell us anything.
A couple of weeks of back and forth visits to the EPAU for scans and it was clear the pregnancy wasn’t progressing properly, and at nearly 9 weeks pregnant I started to bleed.
I was sat down by my midwife to discuss options of how to treat my miscarriage as my pregnancy tissue hadn’t passed: wait for it to happen naturally; which may have still not progressed correctly, leaving me to choose one of the two other choices given to me anyway of A) managing it will effectively the abortion pill to move it along quicker, or B) surgery to remove all pregnancy tissue.
I have always been pro-choice, but as someone who has always wanted to be a parent I have never been so thankful for abortion rights in the UK, thinking that they would never affect me personally.
I chose to try and let the miscarriage progress naturally, but with the knowledge that I could change my mind at any point and ask for medical intervention, and I very nearly had to.
At what should have been 10 weeks and 5 days I ended up in A&E.
Warning: This next sentence is graphic but I’m including the worst parts of my experience for a very important and realistic point of view.
I had a roughly four inch long blood clot stuck in my cervix, the bottom half that was protruding out of my cervix had oxidised and become hard, and it was stopping any other tissue from my pregnancy from passing.
I was terrified and grieving all at the same time.
Now that you’ve read all about the horrific experience that I had, it’s probably at this point that you’re thinking “I hope she had support through all of that”, and in a way I did, my partner, my parents, my in-laws were so supportive and caring.
I was lucky that I had my support system, and from very early in my pregnancy I openly talked to friends and online about it because I didn’t believe that the well known 12 week rule worked for me.
I have never gotten to 12 weeks of pregnancy, but I did spend 11 weeks pregnant and miscarrying a very loved and wanted baby, and the fact that I didn’t reach 12 weeks doesn’t invalidate the joy we felt for the hope of adding another person to our family or the grief afterwards.
I had so many women who went through early losses tell me how reading my posts about my experience made them feel less alone in their grief they were living in privately because of constantly being told that you shouldn’t announce a pregnancy before 12 weeks and miscarrying before that point.
However, what shocked me was the amount of people with something negative to say about how I was dealing with the most heart-breaking experience of my life.
Things I’ve heard after losing my baby:
“Next time just don’t say anything until you’re further along.” Why?
“Just stop trying and it will happen.” Trust me, we weren’t trying for a baby 4 months into a relationship when we first got pregnant.
“At least you know you can get pregnant.” Honestly I would much prefer not being able to get pregnant over having multiple pregnancy losses and not knowing why.
“I found it annoying seeing all the posts about all the pregnancies.” You know what’s more annoying? Multiple miscarriages with zero explanation or treatment.
“Have you tried X-Y-Z?” Babes I have even tried wrapping a baby blanket and putting it under a Christmas tree, taking every supplement I can get my hands on, I would have tried yodelling if it gave me a healthy baby.
That’s just some of them. Imagine being told that you’re “posting for attention” just because you want other grieving mothers to know that they’re not alone.
I didn’t just lose a tiny clump of cells, I lost all the joy that comes with pregnancy. I see videos of people announcing to their partners and the happy tears and I feel robbed. I see people excited about going for scans and the idea of that first scan with another pregnancy makes me feel sick with anxiety as I expect to be told bad news again like every time before.
How a person deals with the loss of their child at any stage is up to them, it’s not something that should be judged or commented on negatively.
At 27 years old I am having to battle with infertility and the possibility that I may never be able to carry to term because I’m getting no investigation or answers as to why this is happening.
Bonfire night I sat watching my partner play football with my best friend’s son and help her daughter with maths homework, and what should have been a sweet memory of found family getting to be the honorary aunt and uncle turned in to me in tears when we got home out of how unfair life feels, and how I feel less of a valid partner because I may never be able to make him a dad.
Infertility can take over people’s lives, and there’s those self centred individuals commenting on how someone else’s grief journey is offensive or boring to them, keeping the entire conversation about early loss a taboo subject that so many still feel like they have to justify themselves talking about.
If someone else’s loss journey is making you uncomfortable it may be time to confront why that is, and why you think that your comfort is more important than someone’s need for community and care when going through the loss of their baby. If you don’t know what to do when someone you are close to is miscarrying, ASK. Ask what they need and how you can be there for them.
You can choose to be anything in this world, choose to be kind.