My baby died at 19 weeks gestation- Im a mess

[jkb]

Here is my complete story. I origionally posted on the pregnancy topic- but thats is not the place for my post now.

First post:
I am 18+4 and have a doppler & have been finding the heartbeat within seconds since i was about 12 weeks. I have been having problems & so i always doppler twice a day (I have a huge clot in my womb which has caused 2 massive bleeds- last one at 16 weeks). The heart was fine this morning- now this even- despite me trying for over 1 hour- NOTHING- i am very skilled at using a doppler as was shown by a previous midwife. Could my baby have died- i cant sleep now- i dont know what to do :-(


Second post:
my midwife came this morning and couldnt find heartbeat either. She sent me into hospital for a scan & the worst has happened. My baby has died. Seems it was perfect size & everything- but died sometime yesterday. I am totally devestated & so very scared as have to go in Thirsday to be induced & give birth. I feel like I am losing my mind & cant quite get my head around this.


Today's post:
I am a complete mess- i dont know hw I am going to get through this- it scares me that I will never feel anything but this again.
My beautiful little angel Matthew was born Thursday at 2pm weighing 170g & 15.5cm crown to rump. He was perfect- fully formed- even had finger nails.

Its the worst thing I have ever had to deal with & im scared i wont cope. I held him for 5 hours, i touched & kissed every little part of him & took so many pictures. Saying goodbye was hardest thing ever- I want him so bad.
I havent stopped crying for days, I am trying to stay strong for my other chidren, but I just cant....what the hell am i going to do

Yesterday I had something hanging out of me.... i went back & i have some plancenta retained! they managed to get some of the retained bits out from my cervix- but said they can see more up inside & too dangerous to do a D & C or go up in my womb as I have just given birth & my womb can be easily damanged as will be very fragile? I am on 2 strong antibiotics & they hope I will pass the bits.....but they didnt seem to know what else to do?
but what if I dont?? my husband is so worried im going to be left infertile or need a D & C which could cause my future problems with a pregnancy? Im a complete mess- physically & mentally

[Lesbeadiva]

I am so very sorry for your loss I am at a loss for words, but my thoughts are with you

[thobblywighs]

I am so sorry to read about your loss. I totally understand how you are feeling at the moment. The same thing happened to me 8 years ago at 17 weeks, right down to the retained placenta which they tried to remove manually and then left to pass naturally. However, they did do a D & C a few weeks later as a scan showed that there were some bits left and like you, I was terrified that I would be left infertile. I have gone on to have 2 children since then. Have they given you an appointment for a scan in the next week or so?
I was a total mess in the weeks and months that followed but it did, very slowly, get easier to deal with and eventually I found that a day would go by without me remembering and then a few days and so on. You will start to feel better but it will take time and tears. I am sure that someone will be along so with wiser words than mine but I will be thinking of you.

[Babyh200]

JKB
Hi, I saw your original post and was thinking of you on Thursday.....I'm so very very sorry you lost your son. I understand exactly how your feeling....I lost my beautiful boy on July 4th at 38+4 just 5 days before my planned c-section. I know it doesn't seem like it now but things will get better I promise. Those early days of grief are incredibly hard, there are lots of lovely ladies on the Rainbow babies thread who have supported me through these incredibly tough times. Sadly they have all been through similar experiences and will hold your hand too. Please come and join in the thread.....there is nothing that you are thinking or feeling that we haven't already thought.
For now just deal with one day at a time. For me nothing could be worse than leaving my baby behind in the hospital, even the funeral. But each person is different.
Thinking of you and your little angel Matthew x

[pebspop]

I had an op to remove the placenta after giving birth at 20 weeks.

12 months (and a 8 wk mc) later i had a hysteroscopy which found some placenta still left behind from a year earlier. it was removed and i am now 19 weeks pg.

try not to worry too much about the placenta thing i am sure it was all get sorted. the last thing you want is for them to do a d&c too early and cause some damage.

the post morten report showed my placenta was full of blood clots and that is what caused the mmc. i am now taking blood thinners everyday and this is the first pg i have had where the baby is measuring correctly at the scans. it's my fourth pg and i am hoping this is the one.

try to be kind to yourself over the coming weeks. i hope you get comfort from your children and dh.

[Ellie092]

:( I couldn't just read and run!

My heart goes out to you no one deserve to lose a baby, your story has touched me I wish I could come and give you a hug.

You're a very strong women and even though I don't really understand what your going through in not going to say I understand what your going through because I don't but I will say this

May you're beautiful angle baby rest in peace, you will both meet again one day!

I'm so sorry for your loss I've never had a story touch my heart like this :( big hig

Xxxxxxxxxx

[RileyLeeHargreaves2012]

What a horrible story, I really feel for you:-(.

I lost my baby boy at 23 weeks we called him Riley-Lee.. he was our little monster, I still feel numb, I had two d&cs within 3 months after. Found out i was pregnant again July, It felt so hard to connect to the new baby we nicknames squidley, I miscarried August 16th at 7 weeks when i started to feel really excites. Im now waiting a year or two to heal properly!

Riley was 28cm and 1.1 pound :-).

Take time off if you need too, or a weekend away Were doing that every year around the time he was born sleeping... it really helps! If you need support just ask us.

Take every day at a time and stay strong. Xxxxxx

[Nuttyprofessor]

I am so sorry. please don't worry it you have a D and C there is no reason why it should cause any problem.

I remember how I felt when it happened to me, it is 12 years ago now. It really is only time that helps, one day at a time.

Thinking of you

[jkb]

Thank you all so much for your support. I hope I do feel less pain over time- but cannot see that right now. I am driving myself crazy at WHY- its really driving me round the bend. I have spent hours & hours on Google -which is silly i know- but its like i have become obsessed. xx

[CaptainHoratioWragge]

I'm so sorry for your loss.

I have had three now, and lost our son at 20 weeks PG which was the most heartbreaking thing that has ever happened to me.

For the practical bit first- I think having bits of Placenta retained after a loss at this stage is very common. I had an erpc for a retained placenta followed by another erpc after a check 6 weeks later revealed that it hadn't all come out.

For my recent MC I had another erpc and they estimated the chance of needing a second one at 1 in 20. I am desperate to be a mum so i specifically asked them what the chances of a erpc causing damage leading to a loss of fertility were. They said in only 1 in 1000 cases they accidentally tear the womb and would therefore go in and repair the damage whilst I was still in theatre, and that even in these 1 in 1000 circumstances long term damage is almost unheard of as it would heal.

So even if you have to have another erpc you will be OK and you will be able to conceive afterwards.

I know this does not hurt with the emotional pain one little bit, but I found it enormously helpful to feel informed about what was happening to me- it gave me a small feeling of control when everything else was so out of my control.

As to googling causes etc I did this too. Everyone told me not to, but I carried on. Again I think you have to deal with things in the only way you can and it might not be for everybody.

[CaptainHoratioWragge]

sorry, it should read 'I know this does not help with the emotional pain....'

[phlebas]

I am so, so sorry.

A very similar thing happened to me in 2008. I lost a little boy (my third child) at 17 weeks. I also 'found' that he had died after not being able to find his heartbeat with my doppler. I've had lots of pregnancies & am a medic; I knew he had died when I couldn't find it then had to go through the process of getting checked, & referred and scanned & then finally induced.

I had surgery for a retained placenta after he was born which added to the trauma but didn't lead to any long term issues (it was actually my third ERPC). I conceived my next child (dd2) less than 6 weeks after Tobias was born & then my 4th when dd2 was 15 months old.

Have they taken bloods etc to investigate your loss? A mid-trimester loss should be investigated - clotting, antibodies/infection etc. It turned out that I have a clotting disorder which required treating in pregnancy. Obsessively searching for answers is quite a normal part of grieving, you aren't going mad & you will learn how to live with his loss :(

Again, I'm so sorry; it is such a hard thing to go through :(

[jkb]

Can I ask what clotting disorder you had Phlebas?
I ask this because this is my hunch of what the problem was with me. I had 2 huge bleeds at 12 weeks & again at 16 weeks- but they assured me it was not near the baby. baby was fully grown for dates too when he died & so whatever made him pass away on that monday was sudden (as he measured perfect for dates??) x

[jkb]

Thank u Captain H- and so sorry to hear about all your losses :-(
have you got any other children?

Phlebas- yes they did lots of bloods on me & baby is going for full post mortem. I now have the agonising wait . I cant help think my bog bleeds had something to do with it...but as i hadent bleed for 3 weeks and didnt bleed when he passed away I am confused.
I also cant get out of my head that maybe I was carrying twins & perhaps i lost one at 12 weeks & it caused damage of some sort to placenta...but again- im sure I will neve rknow this but am driving myself crazy.

[jkb]

That should read BIG BLEEDS- not bog!

[CaptainHoratioWragge]

Hi, No, I don't have any other children, unfortunately.

I found lesley regans book 'miscarriage- what every woman needs to know' really helpful whilst waiting for my PM results as I felt like it helped me to prepare for whatever they would find/not find...

[pebspop]

i would second getting the lesley regan book. it's really good and was my bible through the long wait for results.

i found i got some comfort from reading the book as you find out what could have gone wrong and how they can prevent it in future.

they say around 50% of mc's will not have a reason for happening and the book reassures you about this situation as well.

i remember that wait for results and i panicked about a different reason it could be every week. i used to write down all the things that it could be and how they could be fixed in future to help me. i got counselling from work which lasted until after i got my results. that really helped me.

[literaryone]

Dear jkb, I'm so so so very sorry to read your sad story. Please know that my thoughts are with you and your husband as you go through the next few months.

My son (first pregnancy) was stillborn* at 19 weeks, on 2 September, nearly three months ago. I had no pregnancy problems, apart from severe vomiting that let up only a couple of weeks before the birth, and all parameters were normal just a couple of days before the birth. I just started to have contractions in the night (concentrated in the lower back so that I didn't realize what was happening and thought it was a pinched nerve that could be dealt with in the morning) and after 8 hours of those, the water broke at 6 am. No heartbeat could be found after that. I gave birth naturally, as I was fully dilated when I reached the hospital. No D&C was done (for some of the same reasons your doctors gave) and I bled for around ten days afterwards. After the birth, a large number of tests were run but none of them showed anything out of the ordinary. There have been no answers at all. The upshot is that I went home the day after the birth, with nothing physically wrong except extreme shock and grief, and consumed by the question "why."

I am thinking back to those first couple of weeks after the birth and the only thing I can say is, make sure that people you love you are around, whether physically or on the phone or through the internet. You need that love right now. The crying jags will continue for a while yet. You will feel very, very sad, very, very angry, and very, very cheated and bitter for quite a long time. Please take all the support you can possibly get. My husband has been a rock for the greater part, though he is on a different grief timeline than I am; hold on to your partner and understand that he will feel differently from you but he is also feeling grief, just in his own way. Some of my friends have been wonderful. I found a good counsellor too. And it was very important to talk to my doctors (sadly, the doctors who looked after me for the first trimester were not around when this happened, as I was on a visit to my parents in another city).

The best advice my doctor gave me was that I had to concentrate on looking after myself first and not think about future pregnancies. Daily exercise, healthy eating, and anything that would help me control or vent out my emotions. This is still helping. Going back to something as close to my pre-pregnancy routine as possible was also very helpful. It hurt horribly to do the same things again, given that life was suddenly so different, but it did make things more manageable and gave my life some much-needed structure.

I also obsessively read material on the internet in the hope of finding an answer. Perhaps the constructive way to do this is to allow yourself to do it for a limited amount of time each day or for a limited amount of time once every few days. It's a form of trying to understand and rationalize what happened. I have still not found any answers and have had to step away from the computer to avoid being wrung out by stories of people who had repeated losses at that stage. It's hard. No question about that. We put a lot of faith in medicine and science and tend to take pregnancy and birth for granted nowadays. But there are still risks involved, that's what we've learned.

Good luck and my sympathies -- no, my empathy. I KNOW what this feels like. As time passes, it will feel less raw, but you have to do your best to just pass that time.

Please inbox me if you'd like to talk more.

[literaryone]

Sorry, the asterisk for stillborn is because while I know 19 weeks is technically a miscarriage, my experience was one of giving birth. So it feels right to call it a stillbirth. You may feel differently and whatever you feel is right for you.

[stmalo]

literary one - I agree with you on 19 weeks, it must have been awful.
I miscarried my 1st at 14.5 weeks, I went into mini labour for 4 hours, my waters broke, and I gave birth 2 hours later, all be it to a tiny baby but absolutely this was not the same as the miscarriage I've just had. When I got to A&E the first time and told them my waters broke, they looked at my like I was stupid and asked if I was sure hadn't just wet myself! I couldn't beleive the attitude, they finally beleived me when I delivered the Baby in the A&E toilets - nightmare time.

[jkb]

literaryone - Thank you so much for your lovely & supportive message xxxx
I am so so sorry to hear you too have suffered the same loss :-(
Do you have any other children?
Can I ask if you plan to try for another baby.... it will never replace our angels..but......
I too agree with the stillborn description... my baby was so developed & I gave birth to him... I know that miscarriages are so terribly sad....but giving birth to your baby is on a different level- something that i dearly hope I neve rhave to do again.
Did you have a post mortem done?
I am awaiting the results of mine. My little ones ashes came back today after his funeral... i have them in a memory bear to hold and cuddle tightly xxx

[jkb]

stmalo - i am so sorry to hear about your loss- so sorry to hear you gave birth in the a & e toilets :-( how awful for u...amd how terribly they treated you!!! xxxxxxx

[literaryone]

jkb, thank you for your sympathy. I'm glad my message gave you some support and wish with all my heart that I could do more.

I have no other children, this was my first baby. Not to downplay the suffering of those who may have lost their second or third child in the second trimester, but I feel that with all the grief of the loss, since this was a first pregnancy, I also am struggling with the fear that it might be hard to conceive a second time or that there could be more losses and I might never have a baby that is biologically our own. You might have the same fears, you will need to work through them as I am trying to here.

We do want to try again. I felt consumed by that wish in the initial weeks after the loss, maybe because the pregnancy hormones were messing with my brain and my body and mind were trying to adjust to the fact that the baby was no longer there. It was very hard. My doctors asked me to wait six months before TTC again partly so that the menstrual cycle could go back to some sort of regularity, partly to let my body recover in general and regain strength, partly to allow for emotional healing. It's a very confusing mix of emotions now I do want a child but there's also some strange need to physically bear that child and a feeling of not being whole, of being ripped apart. So there is hope but also fear.

I want to get a handle on these emotions to some extent and am hoping things keep getting more under control in the next few months, as I've been told that if I get pregnant again, I will be given a cervical cerclage at the end of the first trimester and then put on house or bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy. That will also be tough to deal with, so my doctor said that I need to work on coping emotionally -- she suggested meditation or counselling.

We never had a post mortem done and didn't even think of it. Apparently it's not a common practice in these cases in my country; I only realized that could have been done after going online and reading about other people's experiences in other countries. That means that one source of possible answers wasn't even available to us. We had to make the hospital bend the rules to release my baby's little body (they don't typically release a body before 24 weeks) and then got permission from our local church to bury him in my family grave -- so he's sleeping with my grandparents and two great-grandmothers. I don't even know how all of that was worked out, it was done in the few hours after I gave birth, when I'd been sedated and was kept under observation. Visiting the grave was so hard, it felt like I'd been buried in there. But sometimes I feel comforted that because I begged and pleaded with the doctor while in the labour room, we got to give our baby that human dignity in death.

I hope all of this isn't more overwhelming for you. Please know that your pain and fear and confusion are shared by me. And that time will pass and you will feel better even if you don't feel "fixed."

xoxox