Snuggling up with a book on the sofa with twin daughters Emily and Melissa, Linda Jones can’t imagine life being any better than this but the day she was told she had lost her babies is still a heart wrenching memory…
Finding out I was pregnant
April Fool’s Day 1998 was one hell of a day. Just 24 hours after a home pregnancy test revealed I was expecting, I was having a scan to find out if I had an ectopic pregnancy. I had gone to my GP to get the pregnancy confirmed but instead she sent me to hospital for further investigation of stomach pains. Thankfully the pregnancy was not ectopic, and the resulting scan showed not one but two tiny heartbeats! At that moment, I was ecstatic. Little did I know that just seven days later I would be having another scan, in more sombre circumstances.
A visit to A&E
That weekend my partner Neil and I sat down for a serious talk. There was no question of us not keeping the babies but money was tight. How on earth were we going to manage?
Lying down after the tough discussion, I felt a strange sensation and realised I was bleeding heavily. This was it, I thought, I was miscarrying. I screamed and collapsed in a flood of tears. Beside himself with worry, Neil came running and gently led me to his car before driving like a maniac to the nearby Leicester Royal Infirmary. I was whisked from A&E to a ward to be examined by a doctor. I remember being struck by how kind she was. She gently
quizzed me on what the ‘loss’ had looked like.
She told me I had ‘passed the pregnancy’ and gave me a leaflet about a support group for women who miscarry. Back on the ward, Neil curled up on the bed with me until he had to leave. I handed him my scan pictures from the week before showing the tiny dots inside me. “You’ll have to get rid of these, ” I said, I could not bear to see them again.
An emotional rollercoaster
The following morning I was due for another scan. It actually showed a single heartbeat so I was sent home and booked in for another scan the following week. I did not know how to react. I felt like I was in limbo. I spent the days fretting that the surviving heartbeat would have been snuffed out by the time I went back.
But when I went back to the hospital a week later the scan showed not one but two heartbeats again. I went into shock. Going from expecting two babies to none to one and back to two again in a matter of days was an emotional rollercoaster.
I couldn’t – and didn’t – relax until Emily and Melissa were born at 34 weeks, weighing a healthy 5lb 3oz and 5lb 10oz respectively. I will never find out what exactly happened on the night I was told I’d miscarried. But the sense of loss I felt as I lay weeping in that
hospital bed will stay with me forever.
Threatened miscarriage: The facts
According to the Miscarriage Association, threatened miscarriage is simply the name given to unexplained bleeding in early pregnancy. It is very common and about half of these pregnancies continue normally. It can happen any time in the first 24 weeks, with the first 12 weeks being the most common. There are no figures available on how often it happens.
Visit the Miscarriage Association’s website. Or ring their helpline: 01924 200799 (Mon-Fri, 9am – 4pm).
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