I’ve thought long and
hard about this one. I didn’t quite know
how to approach it as it’s quite a personal experience and can be very
different for everyone. I worried about
upsetting those who didn’t react the way I did and quite possibly offending others
with my attitude. I’m talking about
miscarriage. In particular, “my”
miscarriage and by “owning it”, I’m hoping I will not be judged or criticized for
my feelings. I wrote a couple of
different accounts of my experience.
This is my third. The one I am
going to share with you. I’m still not
sure how to go about it. Do people want
a medical account, a personal account, a partner’s account, or should I combine
all three? The one thing that did strike
me was how differently people are affected by it. My husband reacted very differently to me. Some might
be of the opinion that our reactions should have been reversed. You see, my husband grieved. I did not.
I had a miscarriage, it physically happened to me, so naturally I was
affected by it. I was very disappointed
by our loss but I didn’t grieve. I
accepted that it just wasn’t the right time for us.
I have the utmost
respect for Mother Nature and truly believe that all things happen for a
reason. I know this is how I was able
to make my peace with my body’s loss.
My husband surprised
me with a very uncharacteristic statement after I had given birth to our first
child. He told me he hates pregnancy and
cannot rest until both of us are safely delivered of each other. Having had a very happy and healthy pregnancy
followed by a normal and straightforward birth, as far as I was concerned, he
was worrying and stressing unnecessarily.
I didn’t understand how he felt until I was expecting our second
son. And our third and fourth. I spent the first trimester of each of those
pregnancies on knicker watch, not expecting to find, but waiting nonetheless,
for spotting. Those little drops of
blood that can signify all is not well in uturo. Our first son was 10 months old when I
discovered I was pregnant for the second time.
On New Year's Eve I
came belting down the stairs waving a freshly pee’d on stick at Mister Husband
who was lying on the couch. He leapt up,
hugged me and kissed me and Only Child Screecher Creature looked on at the two
nutters like we had lost it! So on New
Year's Eve five years ago, we discovered I was about 5 weeks nearer to
birthin'.
Life went on and a
month later I attended my GP for a routine check up. There was a locum attending
and I found him to be quite unfriendly.
He made me feel silly coming in for a check up when I was only 10 weeks
and hadn’t had a scan yet. I told him I
was just following my usual doctor’s instructions.
That evening I
noticed some period like discomfort which I thought was odd but soon forgot
about it as Mister Husband was heading off to a class. Later on there was some blood and I knew by
the colour what was more than likely happening.
When Mister Husband
came home, I waited until we were in bed before I mentioned it to him. We were both very calm and matter of fact,
both of us in our own way, accepting the inevitable even though there was no
pain or anything like that. Because I
was lying down, the bleeding stopped over night but once I was up and about the
following morning, it began again so I rang the GP. I was dreading getting the locum but I was put
straight through to the nurse and I explained what was happening. She said it sounded
like a miscarriage or it could be a
threatened miss. Her advice to me was to
go and lie down, take it easy to see if the bleeding would stop. It never occurred to me to ask her what could
I expect to happen if it was indeed a miscarriage. Unfortunately I was to find out. Mister Husband came home from work to mind
our son and I took to my bed. I managed
to snooze on and off, the bleeding was getting slightly heavier but still no
cramping.
At about 5pm that
afternoon cramping started and I needed to get to the bathroom pretty quickly. There followed a long and very uncomfortable
50 minutes where I passed an enormous and frightening volume of blood. It was impossible to deny what was happening
to my body. The cramping was slightly
stronger now and when I was able to, I got my phone and rang my GP. The nurse had left for the weekend and I was
advised to ring the hospital. They asked
me was I sure I was having a miscarriage.
I told them I had lost a lot of blood and passed several large clots. Convinced, they told me to come straight away
and be prepared to stay overnight. That stopped me in my tracks. For the first time, I felt panicked. “But I’ve got a baby.” I blurted out. “And I’m breastfeeding.” It was quickly established, by them, that my
baby was almost a year old and all of a sudden their concern changed back to
brisk business as usual. How were they
to know that I had never been apart from my boy and was fretting over it? I hung up the phone and had a little cry out
of sheer panic. How on earth was I going
to leave him overnight and for the first time ever!! I think it was a delayed reaction to what was
happening with my body.
I was freaking out
over his bath time/bedtime/defrosting expressed breast milk from the freezer,
anything other than the task at hand.
Mister Husband had taken him for a walk so I rang him and quickly filled
him in. He engulfed me in a brief hug as
soon as he came in the door. I started
to fling overnight stuff into a bag, still visiting the loo frequently. By the time I was ready and had our son’s night
clothes packed to bring with us so Mister Husband could get him ready for bed
in the hospital, it took well over an hour to arrive at our destination.
I didn’t think it was
possible to loose any more blood, in fact, I thought the worst was over and the
flow would have slowed down but I was wrong.
Maybe it was due to the fact that I was sitting down but it started up
again and despite the provisions I had made for it, I was soaked within
minutes.
I had to get out of
the car with what the medical profession called “pregnancy product” coming out
of the leg of my trousers. I walked like
John Wayne in a Western, with blood everywhere, squelching out of my shoes and
trailing behind me on the floor. I stood
there with everyone in A&E looking at the sorry state of me as I was told I
would have to go to gynae upstairs. I
pointed out that I was bleeding heavily and was making a mess on their floor.
Someone found a
wheelchair for me then and I was turbo speeded up to gynae where everything was
cut off me, bagged and binned. Nothing
was salvageable. A quick scan confirmed that
the sac was empty and I was in the throes of a dramatic miscarriage!! A doctor asked me if I had “saved any
product from home.” Surgery was
mentioned in the event that the bleeding didn’t stop and a form was
produced. I didn’t get a chance to read
it, instead I was shown where they had X’d the spot I was to sign. A couple of lines above that there was some
wording to the tune of “anything retained from surgery was to be property of
the hospital and the lab.” It was all
very disconcerting but I knew that my pregnancy was over and signed the
form. A drip was magiced up from
somewhere, a couple of bags of blood were on standby due to the amount of blood
I had lost and I was given a nice jab in the bum to stem the bleeding. I then had what was very similar to a mini
smear. All the while Mister Husband was
told to stay outside in the corridor. He
had no idea what was happening to me.
All I had left behind in the car was a sodden seat and the last he saw
of me was my back as they ran with me to gynae.
Finally I was brought
to a ward where I was re-united with a very scared and upset Mister Husband and
our lovey, lovely boy.
I was still operating
on auto pilot and as it was getting late, I asked Mister Husband to get our son
into his night clothes. We had been at
the hospital for a while, he was tired and they were probably going to have to go
home soon. Things started to go blurry
suddenly and everything started to sound like it was very, very far away. I began to shake. I could feel myself loosing all sense of what
was going on, a very weird sensation. I
could hear Mister Husband calling me from afar.
I saw him grab our half naked son and run for a nurse. Through my eyes this was all happening in
slow motion. The nurse got me to lie
down which was easy as I was halfway there already. My blood pressure had
dropped dramatically. A couple of doctors
came in to check my "bandages" and as the bleeding wasn't stopping
they decided there and then that surgery was the only way to go. So I was prepped for a visit to theatre for
10pm to have a D&C.
I remember someone
rousing me and when I opened my eyes a nurse was wiping a tear from my
cheek. I had no idea I was crying. She told me everything went well and I would
be brought back to the ward shortly. I
fell into a deep sleep despite the drip inserted in the back of my hand.
I was in the car and
on my way home by 11.30 the following morning.
The entire thing over and done with in less than 24 hours. How fragile human life is.
More than one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage for
any number of reasons. It is never
anyone’s fault. Although for some
people, this is a mere platitude. Some
women grieve for long periods of time, often finding it difficult or impossible
to even contemplate conceiving again.
And when they do, guilt wracks them.
For some odd reason, I scoured the Pregnancy Loss board on a parenting
site I frequent. I never felt like I
identified with anyone there but I felt drawn to it nonetheless. Once, Mister Husband asked me to stop talking
about it. He found it too
upsetting. And I think he addressed the
problem head on with that statement.
Oftentimes the support out there is for the woman and the woman alone. The men, the fathers to be, are brushed to
one side and as in the case of my husband, they can feel the loss all too
keenly. This was driven home too in the
hospital. The nurse that was on the
night shift came in to see me before she finished up and went home the
following morning. Mister Husband and
Only Child Screecher Creature were there to take me home. The nurse commented on how much better I
looked after “my ordeal” the night before and reminded me that I had been in a
bad way. Nobody said anything to Mister
Husband. It was as if he hadn’t been a part of it. When I became pregnant again, for the third
time but with our second son, he couldn’t relax until the pregnancy was well
under way. He has spoken off and on
about the miscarriage and once, when I was trying to figure out how old an acquaintance’s
child was, he knew straight away.
Because, he said, their boy was born around the same time our miscarried
baby would have been. It was then I realised
how much he had been affected by it. I
had all but put it out of my mind. Of
course, I was affected by it because it happened to me, but I had very much
gotten on with my life and the pregnancy that happened three months later. If I were to sit down and do the sums on my
fingers, I would have that lost date of birth as well, but Mister Husband
doesn’t have to think about it.
People are funny and life is funnier. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason for the
events that take place. For me, I
literally picked myself up, dusted myself down and got on with things. I was back in the office on Monday. But that’s me. I still feel today that because I had an
early miscarriage, I was able to cope with it.
I know for an absolute fact that had I been for a scan, saw the
heartbeat and then for the miscarriage to happen, it would have been a very
different experience for me. A couple of
people said I was lucky to have a child already as that softened the loss. Maybe so.
But naturally enough, as it wasn’t my first pregnancy, I cannot possibly
comment on how I might have reacted if that were not the case. I’m not one bit religious, I prefer to think
of myself as spiritual, but for me, it just meant waiting an extra couple of
months before Screecher Creature No. 2 came into our lives. Maybe, but absolutely in this case, some
things are worth waiting for.
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