Hello all
Regular user, name changed.
This is going to be long so if you reach the end, thank you so much.
I have children already, still being treated for PPD 13 months on from my youngest being born. Contraception failed, found out I was pregnant. Due to mental health, lack of space in our home and finances, we made the difficult decision to abort.
I booked in for a surgical abortion due to personally not wanting to take the tablets and see/experience what comes away whilst awake. I travelled almost 2 hours to the clinic. Now some of you may have read about my experience there. I’ll make it a shorter version for new readers: I was given a tablet under my tongue to encourage cervix to dilate. Around 3 hours later I suddenly realised that I’d felt a huge gush of blood, I’d leaked through a maternity pad, my trousers, the seat and onto the floor in the waiting room which was also full of men waiting for vasectomies, I then was rushed into a side room and rescanned and pregnancy was still there, I was stood half naked whilst they tried to mop up blood etc then a sheet was wrapped around me and I had to walk back through the waiting room to the operating room.
Now bear in mind, this was an ultrasound guided surgical abortion.
I’m in a bit of a dazed/sad/traumatised state so forgive me for getting timelines potentially wrong but I spent the next few days bleeding very heavily and passing clots. I went to A&E after feeling really unwell all day and passing a clot the size of a kiwi. I was scanned and my womb was filled with blood. They let me go home after some monitoring and said a dr didn’t have time to see me and I’d probably bleed out the rest.
Long story short, I ended up back in hospital again due to losing lots of blood and clots. They admitted me and I was scanned. Now they could see a large amount of tissue, blood, free fluid leaking into my pelvic area and clots.
After 2 nights in hospital on oramorph for the pain, I had an ERPC. Whilst in the operating theatre, it should have took 10-20 minutes and I was in there for 1.5 hours. They had left parts of the baby still inside of me, tissue was embedded into my womb lining and once they had done an ultrasound guided suction, they called another one/gynae surgeon in to scrub in and help do a D&C instead, cutting away at my womb lining to remove the tissue. I bled heavily and had to have manual compression on my stomach to stem the bleeding which has resulted in quite extensive bruising.
Luckily, I did not need a blood transfusion. I am now out of hospital with 7 days of blood thinning injections and 10 days of antibiotics.
I am deeply traumatised. The surgeon said they would have had to be blind to miss what they removed from my womb. My only comfort now is that I signed for babies remains to be cremated and spread at our local crematorium woods which had a “garden of angels” for babies and where my previous miscarriages were scattered too, so I have somewhere I can go and take some flowers and try and dull some of my grief.
I was feeling sad and guilty anyway but was also very strong in my belief that my children here matter the most in this situation and I need to address my MH/OCD etc before we even considered having anymore (we were settled with 2 and DH booked in for vasectomy next week).
Do I complain to the abortion clinic? One part of me wants to make sure the chances of this happening to another woman are slim, the other part of me wants to just move on but I am plagued by nightmares, horrible nightmare of me giving birth to babies with no limbs and midwives screaming that it’s my fault and other dreams along those lines. I wake up in a cold sweat and have been given sleeping tablets to try and get some proper rest.
What would you do?
YANBU - complain
YABU - do not complain