First pregnancy MMC - any hope?

[InMyPrime]

Hi all,

Found out yesterday that my pregnancy ended at about 8 weeks. I was 11 weeks and due for my 12 week scan on August 18th but had some brown mucus and bleeding so got an earlier scan and it wasn't good news.

This was my first pregnancy so I have no other children. It took us quite a while to conceive as I have a long cycle (35+ days) and we were on our 6th 'go' at trying to conceive so it took us about 9 months before getting a positive result. I was over the moon when I found out I was pregnant at the end of June but am now worried that I'll never have a normal pregnancy and have children. So many of the MMC stories I've heard /read from support groups are from people who already have a child or children so I'm wondering if anyone has any hope for me or stories of people who also had MMC for their first pregnancy or multiple MMCs before having a healthy child? Just need to feel that I'm not a complete freak of nature and that there are other women who have gone on to have healthy children despite having an MMC on their first attempt.

Thanks to anyone who has any positive stories or advice... am still a bit shellshocked and neither DH nor I know a lot about pregnancy or MMC implications or how unusual we are...

[Muser]

Hi. So sorry you're going through this. Hope I can give you a bit of hope. My first pregnancy was a miscarriage, second was an ectopic. I'm now 11 weeks pregnant (12 on Monday) and everything seems to be going ok. Scan at 8 weeks showed baby with heartbeat and no signs of things going wrong.

I know other women as well who've had a miscarriage and gone on to have healthy pregnancies. My aunt had I think 2 or 3 and then went on to have a healthy baby.

Miscarriage is sadly very, very common. All probabilities are that you will go on to have a healthy baby in future. Best of luck.

[MyPrettyFloralBonnet]

YES!!

I was in almost exactly the same position as you, in fact I could have written your post - the long cycle of 35+, 1st pregnancy etc. but I'm sat with DS asleep on my knee, conceived 9mths after mc. What you have to keep in mind is that mc in 1st pregnancy is very common. Easier said than done I know because it is so easy to give up hope - I did at one point.

However if the hospital have said there's no underlying problems then just concentrate on feeling better and stay positive.

Good luck

[InMyPrime]

Thanks to both of you. I'm glad to hear you both had some happy outcomes eventually despite what happened. I'm trying to hope there'll be a light at the end of the tunnel for me too eventually. Feeling the worst of it at the moment as I still haven't had the medical side of it sorted out. I'm hoping to do that in the next few days and then can start handling the rest of it.

I know mc is common but no matter how many times you read the statistics, it doesn't seem real until it happens. I don't know how common mmc is in first pregnancy. I just feel like pregnancy is ruined forever for me now. I suppose that'll just continue until / if I have a pregnancy that ends well.

Thanks again for the good stories....

[MyPrettyFloralBonnet]

I remember I just felt like I was in limbo until I went into hospital, normal life stopped. And I can vividly remember thinking that none of this was real when we first found out at the scan (the discharge started the night before we were due to have the 12 wk scan).
Every doctor I spoke to said it is exremely common for the first pregnancy to mc, but none of that is any consilation when it's still so raw, as my dp has just said you come away from the scan feeling like your whole world has ended.
And I know sometimes people saying 'it's ok it happened to me but it all turned out fine in the end' is the last thing you want to hear because what I wanted was someone to give me a cast-iron guarantee that I would have a healthy child in the end - but of course that's impossible.
Just concentrate on getting the medical side out of the way, and then on dealing with it emotionally. Ask your doctor how common it is for 1st pregnancies to mc, because the statistics are shockingly high.
You are not a freak of a nature, you've been very unlucky, but the odds are very much in your favour for a happy outcome. If you ever need to speak to someone who was in very similar cirumstances feel free to send me a message, I would have found it easier to speak to someone not in RL.
BTW I don't know if this will give you more hope but I was 34 when I mc and I am also disabled (nothing that would cause fertility problems) but I still have a healthy, nearly 4mth old ds, so there is always hope.

[banana87]

Yes!!!

I had a mmc, then waited two cycles, and went on to concieve DD on my third cycle. She is 22 months old now :) There is hope, dont fret.

[nickstermum]

Hey inmyprime,

So so sorry to hear you have MC on your first.

I have just this week suffered an MC at 12 week scan, although i dont qualify to comment on your thread, as i already am lucky enough to have a DS aged 2.5 I wanted to comment as i too struggled to conceive this time due to a long cycle 35+ to 40 days. Am glad to find someone else who has a long cycle.

I have been torturing myself wondering if that had anything to do with MC.. but who the hell knows!?

I know people who have gone onto have healthy babies after their first MC so i hope that reassures you?!
Gives me hope that other people out there have long cycles... and its not just me!

[batteryhen]

Hello :)

My friend had a MMC at 12 weeks - and is currently in hopsital giving birth to her first baby :) -she got pregnant 2 months after her MMC, so yes - there is lots of hope to be had xx

[Eaglebird]

So sorry to hear of your loss. I know how awful it is.

My 1st preg ended in mmc. Found out at 12 week scan that baby had stopped developing about 8 weeks.
4 months later I was pg again, and I was 38 years old.
DS is now 2 and a half, and snoring in his cot :)

Please don't give up hope x

[Velvetcu]

Sorry you are here - I know how you are feeling. I found out in May that at 11 weeks I had MMC'd too. From what I have heard it isnt all that unusual but, as you say, you dont hear about mc until you have one.

Keep talking to everyone on here - the ladies have really been the only thing getting me through the past few months. Ask whatever you need to and remember that there is no such thing as a "normal" mc and everybody has different symptoms and different ways of dealing with it.

[kalo12]

i had a mmc as first preg. felt exactly same as you but you must think positively, its the only way. i went on to have a gorgeous boy that took 7 months later to conceive

[ShadeofViolet]

Sorry to hear of your loss :(

I had a MMC before my 1st pregnancy too, and 2 before my second pregnancy as the other ladies have said there is lots of hope :)

[Strawberrycornetto]

I had a mmc with my first pregnancy. I have long and irregular cycles. I fell pregnant immediately afterwards and went on to have a normal pregnancy and a healthy dd. I then had a normal pregnancy with my DS too.

I felt the same as you - so worried it was the start of a long road but it wasn't. Good luck and I am so sorry about your mmc. There are lots of people who know how painful it is.

[SchnitzelVonKrumm]

I'm so sorry for your loss but please don't despair.

I had MC my first pregnancy at 13 weeks but was told things had probably ended earlier, then had a missed MC picked up by scan at 10 weeks with pregnancy number 2. Had to have EPRC with both.

Three months after MMC no.2, I was pregnant with DD1, now 6, followed by DD2 (4) and DS (10 months) - all very easy pregnancies and all conceived without problems despite my long cycles and advancing age.

If it helps at all, I know loads of people who miscarried their first pregnancy and then went on to have children- it's really not unusual, although you only tend to find that out once it's happened to you.

If you want some more information, I recommend Professor Lesley Regan's book on miscarriage - I was referred to her recurrent miscarriage clinic at St Mary's but was already pregnant with DD1 by the time my appointment came up.

[excitedmummy2be]

I totally understand how you're feeling. I had a MMC last year at 9 weeks. Baby had died at about 7 weeks. Me and DH were devastated. This was our first pregnancy and we had fallen quickly. I had an ERPC and as soon as I had recovered, we tried again... For 11 months. 11 long and painful months of fearing I would never be pregnant again. I'm now 29 weeks pregnant and all is going really well. My MC will always be a huge part of our life but we have moved on now. I think it took us longer to conceive second time round as I was stressed and my body needed time to heal itself. Only people who have suffered a mc can understand the pain... But there is definately hope. I used to hate it when people told me to relax.. I couldn't.. But I do believe that my anxiety delayed conception second time round. Try and allow yourself some time to heal and take some comfort in the fact that you can get pregnant.... Many women lose their first LO but they remain forever in your heart. Good luck.

[Goodluckbear]

So sorry to hear about your mmc

I know there are no platitudes that help, and please do stick around for some support here, but I just wanted to add in my own story (and the other stories I collected at the time....)

I had a mmc for my first pregnancy at new year just gone, mmc at 10 weeks but had stopped developing at 7 weeks. I never knew it could be so utterly awful, I cried for what seemed like forever. I got pregnant two cycles afterwards - and am now 22 weeks and it is all going really well.

At the time I had only told a few people I was pregnant, but immediately came back the following stories:

• one friend said she mmc for her first too, she then had two girls and is currently pregnant with her third
  
• my boss' wife mc her first, then had one boy, then two mc, then another two boys
  
• my friend had one boy, then mc, then another boy
  
• my husband's friend had mc, then one baby, and is due another
  

At the time the only example I had where it wasn't working was my good friend who mmc a year before me and had not got pregnant since. But she is now 13 weeks pregnant and the scans are all good - so I don't have any personal experience where it hasn't worked out (although I know it sadly can happen).

So, I know right now it's of little consolation, but unfortunately mmc is really, really common in first pregnancies, as well as later ones. I believe it is 1 in 7 or 1 in 6 of confirmed pregnancies.

Big hugs to you xxxx

[Buckler]

i'm so sorry for your loss. I had two mmc last year and now have a gorgeous dd of 3 weeks, she is my first child. Good luck for the future look after yourself over the next few months. xx

[InMyPrime]

Thanks so much for all your messages of support. I've been offline for the last while but didn't want to leave the thread as you were all so kind to write back to me when I was still shellshocked from the news.

As an update, I had a natural MC not long after I posted on here. The bleeding started properly on Sunday, lots of bleeding on Monday, eventually started to feel very faint and cold with heart palpitations on Monday evening and so my husband called an ambulance as I was starting to pass out. They rushed me to hospital and the pain was just searing, more intense than any pain I've ever had. It was so bad that I really thought I was going to die in the ambulance with the bleeding and this searing pain like I'd never had before that was coming in waves, getting worse every minute. Nothing worked with the pain, not the co-codamol prescribed by my GP or ibuprofen or even the gas & air in the ambulance. Eventually they saw me in the gynae ward and got me on a drip to stabilise me and gave me an injection for pain relief (no idea what but it worked) and eventually around 10pm that evening I passed the pregnancy tissue. After that they kept me in overnight and scanned me the next day (got to sit in a waiting room with pregnant women and some young babies, which had me in floods of tears of course...) and I was given the all-clear, which was a relief as I was worried about having to have the D&C procedure on top of everything else. Since then, it's been about a week and I'm over the physical side now, but the mental side will take time. Just last night I had another nightmare about the MC I had except in the nightmare I was 5 months into the pregnancy so it was worse. I probably shouldn't be posting the details in case some poor innocent from the TTC threads strays over here and is scared senseless... but somehow it helps to write it all down with people who understand what it's like...

It was a really awful feeling to think that something I had such hope for was just some horrible mistake that caused me so much pain. On the other hand, the pain was so bad it was sort of therapeutic because it made me glad to be alive and healthy with the chance to try again when I'm ready. At the moment I can't even think of trying as I'm scared stiff of having another MMC or MC or something worse, like a stillbirth. Maybe that feeling will fade in time but at the moment I'm just glad to be alive myself. It's helping me to view this now as an illness I had, like a cyst or stomach infection, that needed to come out or else it would harm me. In that sense the mourning for the baby is gone. Maybe at a later stage, I'll feel ready to grieve properly but for now I'm too numb.

Thanks again for all your messages of hope - it has really helped to know that I'm not alone. As you said, it's only when you go through an MC that you hear the reality of how common it is. Last March my mother told me that my cousin (who is the same age as me) and his wife had their first daughter and I was a bit jealous as we were TTC at the time and I remember thinking how easy it seemed to be for others. When I told my mother that we'd lost the baby, she said that my cousin and his wife had actually lost two babies before they had their healthy daughter. I felt terrible for ever having been jealous but also glad to hear that it worked out well for them in the end. I just hope it will work out well for us some day too.

[PinkFondantFancy]

Thanks for posting back again - I've been following the thread as I had a MC on my first pg so it's been really heartening to hear everyone's positive stories. I'm so sorry your MC was so horrible, but I'm glad you're feeling physically much better now. It is terrible that you had to wait for a scan with pg women, I think that is so cruel. I had a similar experience with the scan, but I also felt a sorry for the other women because I was sobbing and clearly distressed, and I think it was upsetting for the others that were there hoping for better news... Come and join the ttc after mc threads when you're ready, they are very friendly and supportive over there.

[nickstermum]

prime Im so sorry you had such a hideous natural MC experience. I too had a natural one, just coming to the end of it now but i was very, very lucky in comparison.. you are right, the emotional side seems more raw now the physical side has gone... have found myself sobbing all evening

I really want to TTC asap, DH is reticent yet, but i think its the only way i will try to recover from it. I, like you, terrified something nastier will happen... but if we dont try...........

take care, stay strong

[NormalityBites]

I 'tried' for 17 months, fell pregnant then had a MMC for my first pregnancy. I conceived again mere weeks later - apparently your fertility sometimes peaks after a MC. I carried my second pregnancy to term and had a lovely baby girl.

You have my thoughts, and my hope

[bosch]

Sorry to hear of your mc Prime

I had a m/c with my first pg and went on to have two normal pg - they are 8 and 7. I then had some investigations for unusual periods and when I got pg again had an early scan which confirmed everything ok - sadly I mc a few days later. I got pg again and he's nearly 4.

For me, the first mc (perhaps because we'd only just started ttc) was not a hard thing to deal with. Was very uneventful, although once it had properly got underway, I needed drugs (pethidine or ? injection in thigh) to deal with pain. But emotionally, i just took on board the message that many first pg end in mc and thats 'normal'.

The second mc, after two normal pg, floored me emotionally, and I found a lot of help in the MN book on pg (it has a chapter on mc) as well as support from MN. I went through a whole range of emotions from feeling like I couldn't trust my body (both were missed mc), to being afraid of being pg again (whole pg with ds3 was v traumatic as I was constantly checking my knickers for signs of blood etc), to feeling like i must have done something wrong (went christmas shopping when I knew I had started to m/c...could I have prevented m/c by lying down for 7 months?).

For some reason, some pg just aren't meant to progress. I can never work out if that's a comfort or not, but if it wasn't meant to be, that has no bearing on your next pg. Like Normalitybites, I got pg v quickly after both my mc.

Sending you love and prayers that you don't give up hope.

[InMyPrime]

Thanks, everyone. I'm trying to keep my spirits up. I just got Lesley Regan's 'Miscarriage: What Every Woman Needs to Know' delivered by Amazon today so I'll be reading that over the next few days. When the MMC first happened, I thought that I would forget about TTC and just get a dog. Even within a week though things are looking brighter so I hope within a month or two, I'll be ready to think about TTC again... it's a long road though. Definitely not where I thought I'd be a year ago. Back then I was innocent enough to think I could aim for a certain birth date and was starting early hoping for an October 2010 baby, thinking I wouldn't be too upset if it was Sept 2010 instead...

Makes me laugh now when I think how naive I was...

[solo]

I'm sorry for your loss OP and I hope you are feeling reasonably Ok.

It took me 12 years to experience becoming pg the first time which resulted in a MMC. I was devasatated. It had been a miracle conception anyway as I'd been told I'd never conceive naturally and was about to start IVF. It took another two years to become pg again and I got my Ds who is now 12 and following another mc (and possibly a very early one prior to that) I got my Dd 3.8.

Never give up hope. All the best and good luck.

[Lynli]

I am so sorry for your loss.

If everyone posts here that has had a MC or MMC and then gone on to have a successful pregnancy then this will be a very long thread.

So there are many stories of hope, and sadly thousands of women that have been in your situation.

I have, been in your situation. Now have 3 DCs.

A neighbours DD had an MCC at 10 wks this was 20 months ago and since then she had two baby boys, separate pregnancies


The best of luck to you.

[VCbyeto1211]

I was never a superstitious person which is why I didn't realize that I had booked my 10W scan on Friday May 13th. Went in as jolly as usual, actually ran a little cuz I was late for my appointment, didn't really think anything would happen cuz I had always been quite lucky in my life. Besides I just went through over 15 years of severe menstrual pain (the pain that would force me to lie down during periods) caused by Endometriosis and I just had an OP to remove it six months before this pregnancy. In my mind everything was prepared, i am 31 which is considered to be young now for 1st pregnancy, didn't smoke, stopped alcohol for 6 months already, exercise regularly, had ideal body weight, eating well, in a nutshell I was healthy as a bull. plus we just had US at 8w scan and saw clearly a strong heartbeat, I was so excited I even made my husband took a video of it.

When I got the bad news that the baby had died at 9W, just 1w before my scan, I could literally feel my eyes wide open and after staying still for about 10 seconds I started crying right there without my panties on... Felt kinda silly now thinking back but I managed to somehow pulled myself back together and went home. Unfortunately the weekend was a long weekend so I had to wait till Tuesday morning to have the ERPC. Nurses from the operation doc called me immediately after I left, my Gyn had already arranged everything for me so I was booked at 10am on Tuesday.

It was definitely awkward to have to carry the baby around for another 3,5 long days knowing that it had already died inside me. I actually had nightmares the first night and cried myself awake. Next morning I was doing houseworks, watching people through my winder as they were buying Saturday morning bread and coffee, taking out trash and i just started crying again. I had this weird feeling that everything is still moving like a swiss watch but my world seemed to have wheeled to a full stop. I felt so sorry and I actually said sorry to my belly cuz I felt I wasn't providing a good home for it and could not carry it to graduation. Also felt sad and scary like i had a iced cold stone still tucked in my belly. And then there is anger, avoiding all my preggy friends' social media posts cuz I was angry that God chose me to have this, why me. Then there is more guilt cuz I realized the sadness of this loss had turned me into an evil person and I started blaming myself again for having angry thoughts about other ppl's pregnancies.

The third day I decided to open my internet and try to get to the bottom of it. Although after everything i read(kinda a read all you can get kinda person), there is no why and how this happened and I may never know why I had it but I found the process of reading other ppl's stories and all the statistics quite healing for me. I know now in my logical mind that there is chromosome defects and the baby would never make it full term, and so far all the science will tell me I didn't do anything wrong that it was completely random. Throughout human evolution history the loss of baby and enduring of miscarriage is very real, surprisingly common but it was never really discussed about. Statistically almost every women went through at least one miscarriage in their lifetime and still went on to having healthy babies after all. So I guess this is just part of becoming a woman.

By the way I would really recommend doing the D&C instead of waiting for it to pass naturally. Last thing we need is another physical and emotional pain to experience the process that the body rejects and started expelling it. My OP was quite smooth, I was sensitive to the narcosis had some pain there but it was fixed immediately. I actually asked to stay awake before the OP and asked for a confirmation of the final US. The doc told me as it is, it made it to 9W, I said ok, now give me the narcosis, and just closed my eyes. 15MIN later the whole thing was over, but it took me almost 1and half hour to fully wake up. I kinda felt sad that as women they had to do this work everyday and they were so nice to me, so I actually joked and made the nurse giggle a little before i left.