My Miscarriage Story

When I first started trying to get pregnant with baby #1, I had no idea how common miscarriage was. My mum had a miscarriage before she got pregnant with me and I remember telling people about that when I was younger. I shared this news with wide eyes and anticipation of a heartfelt reaction. 

I thought miscarriage was a rare occurrence and deserved the deepest of sympathies. 

Don’t get me wrong, I know now that it does deserve the deepest of sympathies. But I also know that unfortunately, it’s not a rare occurrence. 

I realized this as I began trying for our first baby. We were extremely lucky with him. I told my husband it took 6-12 months for an average couple to get pregnant. Well, it took us 1 month and everything was smooth from there. 

But around the same time, I began to learn how common miscarriages were, and how different they were for everyone. I heard from friends and I read stories in my pregnancy group.

I always envisioned a miscarriage to be like something in a movie. Waking up in the middle of the night to blood-covered sheets, going to the doctors to be told the baby was lost, and then snuggling under a blanket on the couch until the ordeal was over. For some people, it is like this. But for many, it isn’t.

My miscarriage wasn’t the way I had imagined at all. 

I want to share my story because there are so few of these stories out there. So when it happened to me, I had no idea what to expect. 

Mine isn’t a story of bleeding, crying, and gradually moving on. 

It’s a story of disappointment, followed by hope, followed by waiting, followed by tears, followed by a procedure, and then a journey into self-care and gratitude before moving on to a successful and healthy pregnancy.

So...if you’re interested and ready, here’s my story…

December 2020

This was our second month of trying for our second child. At this point, our first, Henry, was 18 months old. Our original plan was to wait until he turned 2, but I got a little impatient and persuaded my husband, Tom, to start in November. 

We got “pregnant” by December. I got a faint line on a pregnancy test for about 4 days, but it quickly started to fade. 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with common pregnancy/miscarriage phrases - this was deemed a “chemical pregnancy”. It means that sperm met egg and things started to happen but the embryo was never able to fully implant into the uterus and start growing.

So the body rejected it. 

I was okay. Honestly. 

The biggest bummer about it was that we had ended up telling our family, solely because it was right around Christmas and we had rented a house together on Cape Cod. If they noticed that I, as a Brit and lover of alcohol, especially around holidays, was not drinking, they would instantly know what was up.

So, within days of telling them the exciting news,  we had to tell them that I was no longer pregnant. No fun. But I’m a big believer in “everything happens for a reason”, so we quite quickly moved on.

Suffice to say I enjoyed more than my fair share of delicious alcoholic beverages over Christmas and New Year. 

January 2020

We started trying again the next month and BOOM. Pregnant again! 

Wow. That’s some good material we both have, apparently.

This is all a little fuzzy for me now, for a variety of reasons but we’ll get into why later. 

I remember that my first faint line was SUPER early this time. I’m pretty sure I started testing on 8dpo (days past ovulation) and saw something very, very faint then. 

It got darker and darker every day, not like last month. This was it, I was actually pregnant. 

I went to a local private facility for an ultrasound when I was just over a month pregnant. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t done that. They couldn’t see or hear a heartbeat. But it was okay, sometimes that is still too early. 

I was able to go back for free a week later. She said she saw something, but honestly, I didn’t believe it in my gut at the time. However, I decided to trust the professional, so we went ahead and told a few close family members that we were pregnant. 

For the next month, I was exhausted and constantly nauseous. This was very different from my first pregnancy. With Henry, I had been tired and needed a nap when I got home from work, but I was only nauseous at 4 pm and it went away after I ate a few crackers. 

At the time I just thought it was a different type of pregnancy, but now I’m wondering if the huge difference was a warning sign.

When Things Started to go Sour

At 9 weeks I went for my first official appointment - exciting! 

She asked all the usual questions, and at the end, wheeled in her little rusty old ultrasound machine. This isn’t like the big ones with a flat-screen tv on the wall in front of you that gives you a really clear image. It reminded me of when your high school teacher in the ’90s rolled in the 500lb videotape set. Archaic. 

So when she brought the image up and there was a black hole of a gestational sac there but it looked like there was nothing in it, I thought “meh, it’s just the stupid old machine”. 

The midwife said that we should schedule an immediate “real” ultrasound to check. 

When she said “everything will probably be ok” in a timid, unsure voice, that’s when the alarm bells began to ring. 

So after an evening of biting my fingernails, crying to my mum on Facetime, and already mentally accepting what I believed to be true, I drove to the ultrasound the next morning. 

The technician was all business. I couldn’t see much more than I had seen at the 6-week ultrasound. A tiny blob and a circle inside a black hole. Not what you’d expect to see at this stage of pregnancy. 

She finished up and said, “okay your doctor will call you later”. I took a deep breath and spoke up - “can’t you tell me anything?”

“No, sorry, it’s against policy.” 

Great. 

Cue more crying in the car to mum and sister. 

The doctor called me a few painful hours later and said that the baby was only measuring 5-6 weeks. Not 9. 

I was expecting it but it was still horrible to hear. 

The worst part? She said I needed to wait 11 DAYS and go for another ultrasound to check nothing was progressing, and then decide what to do from there.

11 DAYS!!!?? Are you kidding me???

I was in a bad, bad place mentally at this point. I knew in my head that it was over. But my heart still grasped to the tiny impossible hope that something would change.

Maybe it was just a slow-growing baby?

Maybe they got it wrong? 

Maybe it was hiding at the back of my uterus where they couldn’t see?

The Result

It was the slowest 11 days of my life. I had a beer or two during that time. I tried to distract myself. I took time off work and binge-watched The Great British Baking Show. I ate all the British comfort food. Tom and I booked a little weekend getaway for after the 11 days so that either way, we could escape from it all. He came with me to the next ultrasound. He couldn’t come inside coz - COVID. But I needed him there for the aftermath. 

I barely even looked at the screen. I looked at the ceiling and thought about all the lovely cocktails I was going to drink on our little trip. 

The technician was much nicer. It seemed like she knew the situation and she was much warmer toward me. But I didn’t ask her anything. I already knew the answer from what I glimpsed. 

This time we had an appointment right after so I didn’t have to sit waiting for the call. The midwife walked in and looked at me sympathetically. 

“I’m so sorry Melanie but it was as you’d expected. It hasn’t grown anymore.” 

At this point, I just desperately wanted to know my options and how quickly we could get all of this over with. 

What I had is called a “missed miscarriage”. It means the embryo stopped growing but my body hadn’t acknowledged the loss yet. I hadn’t had any bleeding. 

My options were to wait for it to happen naturally, take medication to force the miscarriage to happen, or opt for a D&C. I’ll let you Google the last one, but let me tell you, the description is not pleasant. However, I did opt for it. 

Mentally, I could not wait for it to happen on its own and I had heard mixed stories about the success of the medication. I just wanted this over with once and for all.

I wanted to move on. 

Moving Forward

So the following week, I went for the D&C. The nurses were incredible. I was relieved to be there and to be doing something about it. I was happy not to be sitting at home, waiting. It was painless, quick, and it was finally over. 

Tom and I took our trip and we had an amazing weekend. We came back and I felt refreshed and renewed.

That Monday morning, I started waking up at 4:30 am to do pilates, write in a gratitude journal, and work on the copywriting course that got me to where I am now with my business. 

I felt like a new person. All of this was behind me. 

I decided to spend a few months working on myself. I wanted to start my business. I wanted to lose the pounds I’d put on from being pregnant for two months. I wanted to forget about ovulation kits, pregnancy tests, and midwives for a while. 

I wasn’t sure when we would start trying again. Tom said he would do whatever I wanted. 

He was amazing through the whole thing, by the way. 

My friends were amazing, my family was amazing. 

Before you have a miscarriage yourself (and if you’re reading this and you never have, I hope beyond all hope that you never do), you really have no idea how it feels. 

As I said, in my mind,  miscarriage was one huge incident of bleeding, and then it was over. 

I didn’t know it could drag on so long, with so many ups and downs, so much uncertainty, glimmers of hope followed by craters of disappointment and depression. 

It’s really, really hard. No matter if it happens at 5, 9, or 15 weeks. 

I think it’s the hardest thing a woman ever has to go through, and if you’ve been through it too, know that I feel your pain and I understand, and I hope some of this resonated with you. 

It isn’t spoken about enough. Women go through this horrendous thing and because it’s so common, people hear the word miscarriage and timidly say they’re sorry without ever really understanding. 

I wish I had understood more about all the various ways it can happen because I was in no way mentally prepared for the way it happened to me.

Every woman and partner’s journey with it is different but I know for sure that if you’ve been through it, you will never ever forget it. 

It’s part of your path, it changes you and ultimately it brings you to the next place. And that place, despite the pain you’ve been through, is where you are truly meant to be.

“Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” — Walter Anderson