So I spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday with the medical miscarriage drugs causing contractions and pains. I walking, swaying, trying to get something to happen. But apart from all the pain, there was zero bleeding at all.
On Saturday morning, desperate for some advice, we went back to the fertility clinic. I waited, dozing in the lobby with all the happy, excited couples passing in and out. After three hours, someone came to tell me that there was nothing to do except wait for 72 hours and that something should come out in that time.
Nothing did. I went to my appointment on Monday expecting a solution. First, they scanned me and made me look at the dead embryo on the same screen where I had thought I would see it’s heartbeat last Thursday.... as they explained to me that it had degraded a little. Degraded. My baby has degraded. What did that mean? Why did they want to show that to me? I wanted to run.
Then they told me to try again with the pills and this time come back after a week. No explanation of why this time would work que last time did nothing.
I broke down and demanded a D&C.
‘Oh, we don’t do those here. Have you got insurance? Then we can’t help you. You have to use the health service.’
They wrote me a form and sent me to the wrong hospital. When I got there, the receptionist sent me to a completely different hospital who told me to get a referral letter from my GP and come back. They couldn’t deal with private patients. If I had been pregnant from sex, they would have helped me. Private fertility treatment which failed apparently was my problem.
By this point, I was on the verge of a complete meltdown. I was sobbing and couldn’t breathe. I just wanted someone to help me. Some little bit of compassion from someone. The reception at the hospital smiled a little at my tears and desperation.
My GP was amazing. He saw me without an appointment. He got me the letter. Sorted out all the paperwork and prescribed something to help with the panic and the crying (until that medical runaround and total abandonment of the system I had been coping really well with the situation.) Now I think I am going to need considerable time to get over this
By mid evening, finally at the right hospital with the right paperwork and calming medication, I was seen, all tests run and booked in for a D&C. In the scan at the hospital, the doctor turned the screen away so I didn’t have to see it. He asked if I wanted to, and understood when I didn’t. I realized how cruel it had been before, to force me to see that.
My experience of fertility clinics is now that when you are helping their figures by getting pregnant quickly, you are their favorite star patient, but as soon as you have ‘failed’ in their eyes, they just want you out of the building with zero information, to become someone else’s problem as fast as possible. They’ve had your money and you are just useless trash to them now. I don’t know how I’m going to set foot in another fertility clinic with any hope or trust even again.