How do I know when I have passed the foetal sac during miscarriage?

[Monkeybrain10]

Sorry if it is tmi, but many people mention the sac and when the baby passed etc but all I know is that I had many days of ridiculously heavy bleeding and passed numerous large clots (at least one was literally a large handful) and many smaller. They all looked like red clots. I was 9 and half weeks and still bleeding (more like period) now which is 3 weeks later.
I am curious about the sac thing as I feel a little bit stupid for not knowing which bit was our baby :-(
Big love and hugs to anyone out there who has or is having mc.

Hi Monkey , so sorry to hear you're going through this.
People's experience seems to vary a lot, but I'll share mine if it helps.
I miscarried at 11 weeks last year,it started with bleeding which got heavier over a few days.
I was scanned at the EPU and was told the baby had gone but sac was still there. I opted to miscarry naturally and a few days later started with very intense pains(more like early labour pains than the "period" pains the GP had euphemistically told me to expect). When I then passed the sac it was surprisingly big and quite solid tissue. After this the pains subsided though bleeding continued for a while and I had two further scans before I was told the mc was complete.
We waited a cycle, tried again and I conceived, only to lose this one at 6 weeks. This was painful but what I passed was clots and blood and nothing discernible as pregnancy tissue really.Bleeding finished within a week and we didn't wait to try again.
I got pregnant and early scans showed a heart beat and growth but at 10 weeks we found out the baby had died a few days before. I waited to miscarry naturally and I started bleeding when I would have been 12 weeks. Within a few days of this heavy bleeding the intense pains started again followed by a similar large solid sac. Bleeding tailed off after this .
I've since had another miscarriage which was very early(5.5 wks) but involved some severe pains which literally made me feel like my knees were buckling and led to passing some stringy pinky brown prenancy tissue,different to the blood clots.
Three weeks seems a long time for you to be bleeding, have the EPU booked you to go back for a check up scan?
Pregnancy loss is just heart breaking ,look after yourself

Hi Irishmammy, thanks for your msg and I am so sorry to hear of your losses - totally heartbreaking :-(

I'm still going to EPU weekly for hcg tests but no mention of another scan - maybe I'll ask them on my next visit. When u mentioned u passed tissue - what do u mean by this? What colour was it? This is where I'm a bit confused I think because other people have mentioned this whereas pretty much everything I passed, large and small has been dark blood red so just looked like clots. How is tissue or the baby or the sac different to this? I couldn't find any info on the forums to explain it yet people make references to these things a lot.
Thanks so much for your reply and thinking of u and your losses.

Hi Monkey. I'm sorry you find yourself here asking these questions. I've just had my fourth miscarriage at 8-10 weeks and this is the first time I've identified the sac. I only found it this time because I was so desperate to get it tested that I used a sieve to catch everything. Sac measured about 6cm x 3 cm and was red- grey material and solid. The baby had only been measuring 6 weeks, 5mm and was not obvious. my pattern has been that pain and bleeding get worse and start passing huge clots with labour-ish type pains then it all settles down to period proportions once that sac has passed. I know baby was alive 2 days before I miscarried, I assume if it took longer to start bleeding the tissue would degenerate and perhaps be partly reabsorbed. Anyway, don't feel stupid, I've normally lost it down the toilet indistinguishable from other huge clots.
Three weeks does sound a long time to be bleeding. Is your HCG zero yet? I would think if it's dropping there isn't a problem but make sure they are keeping an eye on you one way or the other.

Thanks bakingtins, i appreciate the info as whilst there's tons of discussion I've found less of the gruesome truth so I guess I'm trying to find out what's "normal". It really helps reading other people's experiences.

Re HCG I started at over 5000, the next week was 3000, the next 1000 and have next blood test in 2 days- hopefully I'll stop bleeding and it'll keep coming down but at this rate it feels like it'll take forever!! At least it's going down though. Any advice always welcome...thanks so much.

Hi Monkey. Hope you're feeling a bit better. If it helps, I didn't know what I was seeing either. I had medical management in hospital at 12 weeks and had to give everything I passed to the nurse in cardboard bedpans (nice). The blood was so dark that I couldn't really determine what was a blood clot/tissue/sac etc. The nurse was obviously poking around looking for it though as she said she thought I'd passed it. The stuff I passed two weeks later (miscarriage was incomplete) was bright red and in huge pieces that was obviously more 'womb lining' than placental tissue. I wouldn't feel silly about not being sure - the whole thing is horrific anyway and having to look at it all coming out of you is a bit like looking at a car crash - half of you wants to look and the other half doesn't!

Thanks st4rfish, it helps to know i'm not being totally stupid in not knowing! :-) I'm sorry to hear of your loss too. U are right about the wanting to look thing - I'll be honest, I was just astonished at the quantities - the human body really is fantastic and fascinating so i keep reminding myself that it knows what it's doing more than i do (even if seems cruel).

monkey so sorry to hear what you're going through. I have had 2 natural MCs, in both cases the sac broke up - I got tissue and stuff which looked like the skin of a sac amongst the clots, but nothing definite. Scans afterwards and blood tests showed everything had passed though. So it really does vary.

If in doubt your EPU can scan/test - they should offer follow up anyway.

Monkey I'm sorry you're going through this. I'm on my phone so I'm going to be brief. I passed an obvious sac after 5 days of bleeding. It looked just like a pickled onion it's the only way to describe it. I was 7 weeks pregnant and it was the size of a large pickled onion, and was white and gelatinous. Nothing like all the other clots I passed.

Once I passed that the bleeding slowed down.

Nobody talks about this stuff, I was totally unprepared for what I saw.

Thanks sqizita and vix - i appreciate u telling me how it was. It seems it can be so different for everybody, but hopefully by sharing it might help someone else to not feel so alone and confused.. people on mumsnet were so supportive and helpful when i was right in the height of mc which we are so grateful for. ..and they still are! Huge thanks again.

hello, I am sorry for everyone's losses, so heartbreaking

I have had two mc's. The first one was 6wks, so mainly blood loss only

The second was at 9 wks, and I did see part of the sac. I went to the loo, wiped and there was a piece of what looked and felt like a deflated, bloody, wrinkly but very tough balloon. I do understand it might be easy to miss though if you have passed some large clots.

All the best x

I miscarried at 7 weeks. Apart from bright red bleed, I passed a grey sac that was unmistakable. It was only about the size of a marble but I knew what that was instantly. From the size I guessed that the baby stopped growing quite soon after conception.

Hi Monkey, I am so sorry your going through all this.
I miscarried at 10 weeks but baby stopped growing at 6, my first pregnancy. I went through several periods of heavy bleeding( more like gushing, it was like someone left the tap on!)
I had really heavy bleed while in the EPU and they thought i had passed everything but found I hadn't passed the sac in a scan 10 days later. I decided to opt for the ERPC as I just wanted to get it over with but I had to wait over a week. That week I had at least three more periods of heavy bleeding sometime they lasted 10 minutes and one night 4 hours! and like you I wasn't sure what the sac looked like and I really wanted to know. I think more than anything I didn't want to go through the ERPC if I didn't have to so I wanted to know if it had passed. I spoke to a nurse at the EPU and she said that clotts look like raw liver and tissue is more gray. She also offered me a scan an hour before my scheduled ERPC. It really put my mind at rest that I didn't have to look for the sac as the third scan had shown that baby was gone and it was just the sac left. As it turned out I didn't manage to pass the sac on my own and had to have the ERPC anyway last monday. It's strange as they have never talked about my HCG levels and seemed to have relied more on scans. I have just been told to take a pregnancy test 3 weeks after the day they did the ERPC. Just 2 weeks to go. I hope this is some help. Hugs.

Thanks everyone. All the best to u all

Thanks everyone. All the best to u all

I just went through this on Monday. I miscarried at exactly 10 weeks but the baby had died at around 7 weeks. For me the sac was unmistakable as it was grey/beige while everything else that came out was red. The sac was about the size of a large grape and was partially open, the embryo was about the size of my pinky fingernail and although it was outside the sac it was still attached by a tiny chord. I had sharp pains and heavy bleeding for about an hour before passing the sac and then a minute or so later I passed a large amount of red tissue, the consistency of the flesh of a plum and almost the size of my fist, I suspect this was the placenta though I suppose it could have been lining as well. After that the pain and bleeding got significantly less.

I spotted for exactly 3 weeks before the actual miscarriage happened and now, 3 days later I'm still bleeding like a light to medium period.

Thanks everyone for sharing. I have just got out of hospital after a second bout of horrendously heavy bleeding and passing masses of large clots again..just like it was 4 weeks ago. They pulled out what appears to have been the gestational sac...it has been hanging around far too long! On my 4th lot of antibiotics and hopefully on the road to recovery. It explains why I never saw anything other than blood and clots tho. Thanks again for the support.

Monkeybrain, I hope you are over the worst of it now physically, and now just take the time you need to heal emotionally.

Thanks vix :-)

You've probably already went and had gotten everything taken care of, but I just had my first miscarriage and I too didn't really know what to expect. I knew it was going to be painful and bloody, but I didn't realize how painful. For me, it was almost worse than a c-section. It all happened pretty quickly though. I started spotting on Wednesday, light cramping on thursday with some more bleeding, on friday i had the same thing then on Saturday I had crazy labor type cramping. I didn't know what to take so, I didn't take anything until I called my ob-gyn who was on call that day and she told me 4 motrin. As soon as I took the pain pills I felt much better. But, the pain felt like labor pains and my cervix felt like it was throbbing. I passed blood, and clots. Then on Sunday I woke up with intense cramping and I passed lots of clots/tissue and finally I passed the yolk sac ( I was technially 10 weeks, but I was measuring 6 weeks 1 day and had been measuring that for 3 weeks via ultrasound. It never became a baby, always stayed a yolk sac). The yolk sac for me was about 2.5 inches long, oval shaped, and bloody. I didn't really get a big look at it. Because I was just so relieved that it came out that I took a look and then I flushed it down the toilet. And as soon as it passed, the cramps went away and only light bleeding. I go in on Tuesday to make sure everything is out.

For me, it was just a HUGE relief to get it out of me. I had already detatched myself from it because I knew for 3 weeks that I was going to miscarry. I still cried because it has an emotional time, but I also felt such a relief for passing it too.

I just realized that it was June 2013, not June 2014. oh well.

Hi orangesumr, yes my post was a year ago but hopefully your comments may help someone else. Pleased to report i got pregnant again and currently have a 1 week old in my arms :-)

Congratulations Monkey. Very pleased for you xxx

How lovely! Congratulations Monkey.

Congratulations monkey

Aw Monkey That has just set me off crying! Opened up this thread to post my experience and delighted to read the happy ending. Sorry to everyone going through this. May you get your happy endings too.