11 October 2007
I’d only had the pregnancy confirmed the week before so it was very early. By dates I was seven weeks, but the scan showed a gestation sac equivalent to about five weeks so there was something not right very early on.
I had noticed a brown discharge Monday lunchtime. That was all to start with. I wasn’t worried. I know that early bleeding or ‘spotting’ is quite common. By late evening, a little bit of browny discharge was showing on the tissue paper when I wiped below so I called NHS Direct. They told me that as well as the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), that maintains the pregnancy, women also have their normal cyclical hormones that run their course too. So it’s not uncommon for women to have a small bleed around the time that their periods would have happened during the month. Also, it’s common for a small show when the embryo implants itself in the uterus.
I didn’t have any pains to start with, and the browny discharge seemed to keep stopping and starting. I went to see my doctor on Tuesday who told me to rest (she's got a sense of humour!) and finally went to A&E on Wednesday after feeling a ‘gush’.
They referred me to the Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit for a scan on Thursday morning, which showed the gestation sac was small for dates. Also it was too early at five weeks to see a heart beat. A blood test confirmed that my pregnancy hormone was below the 40 milli-international units per millilitre (mIU/ml) it should have been at that stage of my pregnancy. Mine was just 25.
They wanted to rescan the following week, ‘just to make sure’ asit is normal procedure to leave a week between scans to measure growth of the foetus. But deep down I knew it was all over. It wasn’t the results of the tests so much as by now my breasts had stopped feeling tender and I had developed this particularly distasteful smell down below. I was crying so much I couldn’t sit in the waiting room with the other women!
By Friday the bleeding was REALLY heavy and I had to change the pad almost with each gush. The pains were like severe period pains, although four hourly paracetamol took the edge off. It finally came away and I hardly felt it pass it was so small – about the size of a cocktail sausage. A relief that it was all over
Miscarriage is as much a part of life as anything is. Only it's one of the sadder parts that no-one wants to talk about. No-one wants to hear about it for a start. People like to hear about success stories, not the failures.
I’m glad I had mine. At least it shows I’m still fertile, if nothing else and it’s made me sure that I do want to keep trying. I comfort myself with the knowledge that its just nature's way of sorting the wheat from the chaff and that maybe next time, things will be different…..Fingers crossed!
Related link:
Miscarriage - you’re not alone...More than one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage - around a quarter of a million in the UK each year. But many women still say they feel terribly alone when they have one. The Supernanny team explains that this isn’t the case – and offers advice to try and help you get through such a hard loss……