“I had a miscarriage at 14 weeks with my first pregnancy, and am quite happy to talk about it if it might help other people. Of course, it was a difficult time for me: it was our first attempt at a baby and we had been delighted I had got pregnant so quickly at age 34.
“My pregnancy had progressed with ‘normal’ symptoms – sickness, fatigue, bust size increasing. However, just after moving house and having both sets of parents over for a dinner party, I began to bleed. Obviously I was very scared, went to bed, rang the doctor. He advised rest: the bleeding might stop, but if it did not and I began to pass clots, I should go to hospital. About 3am I woke up and went to the loo.
Big clots of blood were apparent, so we went to hospital. We had mostly sympathetic staff there. I was examined by a junior doctor who told me that since the cervix was wide open, a miscarriage was inevitable. I accepted this, although of course I was still sad.
In the morning, I was seen by an altogether less sympathetic registrar, who did not seem to believe that I had been pregnant at all (apparently my abdomen was not rounded enough). She and the junior doctor tried to do an ultrasound scan (it being the weekend, there was no one there properly experienced in the scanning technique), but could see nothing.
Telling me all the time that there was nothing there, she suggested a vaginal probe ultrasound (and I quote: “Do you mind if I stick this up you?”). After jiggling it around a bit, she said: “Oh, that’s it, you’ve miscarried”, as the contents of my uterus dislodged themselves. Not very impressive.
“As it happened, the pregnancy had not been developing normally – nothing which looked remotely like an embryo could be discerned. However, to me, it had been my baby – my hopes and dreams – so there was a mourning period for me. I had lost quite a lot of blood and was signed off from work for two weeks (when I rang to tell my boss, he expressed his sympathy, then started twittering on about the work we had on the stocks – like I cared!)
“We had read in the baby books that most miscarriages happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. When we got past week 12, we were a bit like ‘phew, that’s the danger period over’ and began telling friends and family about the baby. What we didn’t know (as they explained to me in hospital) was that, during the first 12 weeks, the embryo ’manages’ the pregnancy, and that then the placenta takes over. If the body finds anything untoward, it can pull the plug on the pregnancy at that point, ie after 12 weeks. I wish we had known this was also a common point for miscarriage.
“I also wish there had been more about miscarriage in the baby books I had read so avidly. Most of them just mentioned miscarriage in passing, which is a shame if it is so common.
“During my next pregnancy, I worried about miscarrying again. I did have a bleeding episode and I thought it was happening all over again, but mercifully the bleeding stopped. As the weeks went on, I allowed myself to be more hopeful. We now have a lovely baby boy.
“I do feel you are never out of the woods with babies and children, though – we have been through worrying about miscarriage, I have worried about his safety through the birth, about cot death, about accidents in the car… no doubt I’ll still be worrying about his safety as he grows.
There are no guarantees, and this is sometimes hard to accept in our modern world – I think you have to be alive to the risks and do what you can to safeguard your child.”
