Thanks for all your messages.
Well, it finally happened on Saturday morning. My waters must have broken while I slept and when I woke up at 5.30am it started in a pretty full on way. By 10am I had finally passed the sac and placenta, which we have kept as we want to have the tissues tested (sorry if that's TMI). I was 12 weeks and 2 days so much further along than any of my previous miscarriages and it was a very different experience. The pain was fine but I have had a baby so perhaps that makes it easier. The one thing I would say if you are miscarrying at a similar stage is that there is a lot of blood. I easily lost as much as I did giving birth which was about a pint although obviously difficult to be very precise. Everything came out in big gushes every 10 to 15 minutes. As it was so early in the morning, I kept lying down between trips to the bathroom.
Thank god I was at home and my husband was there! He took our four year old daughter round to a neighbours so she wouldn't have to see anything as it would have been hard to keep her inquisitiveness at bay. Towards the end of the heavy bleeding, I did call the emergency contact the EPAU had given me as I was starting to get concerned about the bleeding, and feeling a bit shaky and dizzy. It didn't help that I had only had 4 hours sleep and had drunk quite a bit of champagne at a girls night out the night before, and obviously not used to alcohol anymore after 3 months off.....The nurse was very reassuring and explained heavy blood loss was normal at this stage of pregnancy. She said I could come in, or I could wait for an hour and see if the bleeding settled. I decided to wait, and I am glad I did. I then passed the last bits of placenta, and the bleeding did start to settle down after that.
I am really glad I decided to wait and let it happen naturally. It took 2 weeks and 5 days from the first scan I had at 9 weeks plus 6 which showed the baby hadn't developed. I think it was easier to bear it because I knew there would be no baby coming out. It has been positive for me to let my body complete the process naturally. After three MCs in the last year, my confidence in my body's ability to get things right has been seriously knocked but at least I have managed to avoid a knock out and operation which was something I really didn't want. Fingers crossed that it completes without further incident and I can move on to tests for recurrent miscarriage.
One thing I have this time which I also had after having my daughter but not with the other MCs is night sweats. I understand this is one of the ways your body deals with dumping the high level of hormones which a pregnancy brings. I had forgotten what they were like. Hopefully they will disappear with time like all the other symptoms.
My thoughts are with all of you out there going through this or waiting for it to happen. I have found MN and other forums really useful as I wanted to know what other people's experiences have been like, and that has made the whole process much less frightening for me.