Feelings after a missed miscarriage

[philbee]

I was meant to be 12+1 today. Started bleeding a bit this morning, went to A&E, scan shows empty sac about size of 8-9 weeks gestation. So either it was a blighted ovum or it developed a bit and then stopped and was reabsorbed. :(

I still have a big tummy and only a little bleeding. I've been convinced I could feel movements in there for a week and told family etc. that. I feel like a massive fraud, and gutted for the disappointment. It's as if I was never pg in the first place. Just hoping to hear whether others also felt like this and whether anything helped with those feelings.

[NorthLondonDoulas]

Oh philbee i am so so sorry for your loss! My fisrt ever pregnancy was a missed miscarriage too... i was 16weeks and went for an ultrasound and they didnt say anything to me about the baby having passed away, they just commented that there was no way i was 16weeks and for me to go back in another 2 weeks for another scan. I was quite young at the time, it was my first ever pregnancy and i went to see my mum at work who was the manager of a doctors surgery. One of her Gp's rang the hospital to find out what was going on and it was her (not the hospital) that informed me that they thought the baby had died! I returned for the scan 2 weeks later and the fetus was even smaller than the last time and they confirmed that the baby had probably passed away a few weeks ago and that it was a missed miscarriage.

I too felt like you did so please dont feel alone - you are most definitly not a fraud! So please dont ever think that! It is such an awful experience for anyone and it is important that you get all of your feelings and emotions out in what ever way suits you best - it will naturally be very emotionalluy painful for a while and the best thing it to is turn to those close to you for support and a shoulder to cry on! I took some peace from the fact that if it happened it was most probably natures way of letting me know that it may not have been a healthy baby or pregnancy. I fell pregnant quite soon after my loss and i was nervous the whole way through my pregnancy that the same thing would happen again but it didnt and i now have x4 beautiful little girls.

So please remember as hurtful as it is right now that you have hope in the future for a beautiful family and it probably happened for a reason. I really feel for you and my thoughts are with you and your family.x

[YBR]

((hugs)) and sympathy.
I've had 2 MMCs and the first was a complete shock - no bleeding, still had MS etc but just found out at the scan. A sac with just debris in it size abt 8 weeks.
It was a confusing and traumatic time. please don't feel alone - so may of us have been through MCs.

Be aware that there is a grief process to facing MC, and it is complicated by not really knowing what happened. It will take time so give yourself space and time to grieve and begin to cope and let people support you (there's lots of support on the miscarriage board).

Later you and your family may decide to name the child you lost (which my husband and I found helpful) and or to plant a tree/sponsor a child/whatever as an act of rememberance. Something like this is best decided later when the emotions are less raw.

[philbee]

Thank you all, your replies have really comforted me. I didn't realise there was a miscarriage board, thank you ybr.

I was planning to just go on with planned stuff, but it sounds like that would be a bad idea from what you say northlondon and supersunny. Maybe just do small things for a while. They have said to stay near the hospital, but there is no bleeding any more, although i had quite sharp pains in the night, so perhaps it will move on a bit. If not i think ill have to get the pills or the erpc next week.

We do have a daughter already, nearly three now, who is also a big comfort, and I think at least if we never manage to have another child at least we have her. I can't imagine what it would be like to go through this with your first pregnancy, absolutely horrendous.

My DH was away on a weekend break with his friend but is back now, so things seem a bit more normal. It's just horrible waking up and thinking that yesterday when i woke up i was pregnant with a little baby, and now i know there's nothing in there, and perhaps there's never been. I know what you mean about naming the child, ybr, but tbh I don't feel like there is anything to name, it's just an empty sac. I was making a blanket for the baby, and i thought as i did it that if i miscarried it would be something to mark them with, but it never occurred to me that there might not be any baby at all. I don't know what to do with it now.

[PinkFondantFancy]

philbee I am so sorry for your loss. I agree with the others, the miscarriage boards were a huge source of support to me after my miscarriage last year. Has the hospital given you any advice on what the next steps are and what to expect? Be gentle and kind to yourself, you need to give yourself some space to grieve for this baby. Just because when they scanned there was no baby, it doesn't mean that you weren't pregnant with a baby IYSWIM-your body knew you were pregnant and you're not just grieving for a physical body, you're grieving for all the hopes and dreams and plans for that baby too. The fact the sadly the sac was empty doesn't invalidate that grief.

[philbee]

pinkfondantfancy - yes, they said i could wait and see if it progressed naturally, or have the pills/pessaries but that they didn't always work, or have the erpc, but that there were risks. At the time I was just in shock and had been in hospitals all morning (was at my parents, so we went to their local a&e but after a long wait a fairly unsympathetic doctor told me i needed a scan but they wouldn't do it that day and I'd have to wait until Monday, so we drove for an hour to my booked in hospital, and had to go through a&e again but they were very nice to me at the epc there and managed to fit me in at the end of their scanning clinic) so i just wanted to get out really and to try to understand what was going on. So i said I'd wait and see what happened naturally. But now I'm thinking i need to get it done quickly as I look after DD most of the week so i can't be in lots of pain and not able to do things with her (other people will help out, but can't for weeks and weeks). I've posted on the miscarriage board for advice about what to do.

[yoey]

Oh philbee. I really feel so much for you. I also mc last year & as you and the other posters on this thread have described the feelings that I also felt, I won't write it all out again, but I have tears in my eyes thinking about your blanket & wanted to reply about that... I had laid out all the clothes for the new baby which were saved from my other DCs, by week 8 I had started to buy cotton wool and maternity pads! After the mc I considers giving the while lot of clothes inc maternity stuff to charity but I couldn't face that the mc may mean no last child, so I bundled everything into bin bags and stuffed them in a cupboard. Please don't do anything to dispose of your blanket. It's hard now, but eventually you may want to remind yourself of the loving feelings you felt for your baby (even if it never became a "baby"), or at a later time you could donate it to someone else, or have a cleansing bonfire, I dunno, whatever. But it's too soon to do anything with the blanket. I felt that I wouldn't manage to have another baby (I'm old and I blamed that for the mc) but 6 weeks later I was pregnant and now I'm holding my 8 week old baby. I didn't get the bin bags out until much much later and like the mother above I fretted all through the pregnancy! Sorry I've wittered on, I just don't want you to worry about the blanket!

[philbee]

yoey - thank you. I wasn't going to throw it away. I didn't know whether to make it into a small blanket, with the bits I'd already crocheted, or whether to leave the bits and make them into a bigger blanket if we get pg again. But the second seems wrong, as a different baby should have their own blanket. I will leave it for now and then maybe in a while i'll make a small blanket and DD can use it for her soft toys. I don't like the idea of it being put away somewhere.

I was looking at slings and all sorts online, and had bought some maternity clothes off eBay. When i got back from hospital yesterday they'd left a red card for me to go and collect the parcel :(. I guess I'll collect it and not open it or something.

It's all those little things, isn't it? Yesterday the nurse was explaining the risks of erpc and perforation of the uterus and how it wasn't as bad as it sounded because people had c-sections which was a bigger cut, and she said how some women had one baby by c-section and then healed up and then another big baby by c-section and I thought, that that's what i was meant to have, a nice big baby like DD was, and instead i'm sitting here deciding how to get rid of the bits that never turned into my baby.

[yoey]

Yes a lovely new blanket for your dd's dolls. Then this baby-experience is part of your family as it really is but without a morbid memorial. The eBay stuff can remain in packets. I want to tell you to have the d&c because I let it go on without pills or anything (I was 11wks) & i ended up being admitted be ambulance with haemorrhage and had a further admission a week later for more transfusions. I'd let it go naturally because I too have a little dd to care for but it ended up by my dh having to take all his annual holiday allowance in 1 go to care for me and dd. But I'm not sure that this is a normal experience of mc. Everyone seems to have a different experience really. Go with how things are from day to day. Hope for the best for you and am sure the mc board will provide lots of what-to-do advice.

[georgethecat]

Hi Philbee, just want to say that I'm sorry what happened to you xxx It happened to me earlier this year and it is horrible but the support on mums net is second to none, it got me through what is a dark time. It also makes you realise that it happens to a lot of people and people go on to have success! I think talking about the feelings that you have with someone who gets it rather than someone who can just sympathise is key. Feeling like a fraud - yup, like you should have known it wasn't growing. Also feeling a bit like a tainted woman ("~) Just to let you know I had a D&C it was painless quick with a super speedy recovery - good to know in case you go for the op. I hope you have lots of support around you xxx

[philbee]

Thank you george, you are righti do feel a bit tainted. I was staying at my parents and they had guests the next day so my mum was very anxious to get the bedclothes washed (there wasn't anything on them, I'd just slept in the bed), but i really felt (wrongly, I know) that she was washing away something terrible related to me, as if I'd soiled the bed by sleeping in it while this was happening. And i feel worried about telling friends who are pg in case they feel too horrified to talk to me again. Its all irrational, I know.

Supersunny - thats good to know, thanks. DH and i have talked about it and i think i'll call on Monday and ask for the ERPC. At least then I'll know when it will happen, and we can plan some fun stuff for a few weeks after and the rest of the summer, and i will know when i'll need support from parents etc. It does seem odd though, my instinct is just to stay home and hunker down, but enough people (including my MIL who had an mc with no. 2 at about the same stage as mine) have said go for the surgery to make it seem like it will be the best option.