Hi all, I found it really useful reading other people’s experiences of missed miscarriage and the various management options so I thought I’d share a detailed account of mine in case it helps anyone else.
For background: I found out I was having a MMC at 7 weeks, which was confirmed at a follow up scan 11 days later. After doing a lot of research I was ready to request surgical management but the EPU doctor gave me a very realistic overview of the risks, so we decided to go for conservative management to start with. After 2 weeks nothing happened and my follow up scan showed the sac was still high in my uterus, so I decided to opt for medical management, which I took at home yesterday.
To get prepared, I cleared my work calendar, wrote a mini handover and let my team know what was happening and that I’d be off for the rest of the week. Yesterday morning I got up and showered as usual, put on comfy clothes, put plenty of pads in my bathrooms and laid an extra blanket down on my bedsheets just in case.
I took the misoprostal vaginally at 9.15am and then laid on my bed and had breakfast and coffee and took 2 ibuprofen. About an hour later I started getting bad period pain type cramps which were as bad but no worse than the worst period pains I’ve had before. A hot water bottle helped a lot. At 11.15am I took a codeine and there was no change until about 1pm. At that time I started getting more intense cramps every couple of minutes which I assume is when my uterus started contracting. It was extremely painful but I was able to breathe through it. At 2pm I had my first gush of blood and then passed what felt like one round clot. Intense cramps continued and about 30 mins - 1 hour later I had another gush of blood and passed a lot more clots. I pushed twice and each time a significant amount came out. After that I immediately felt hot and light headed. I laid down and the feeling passed in about 15 mins. I took another codeine at 3.15pm. The cramps continued for another hour or so and then I had another lighter gush of blood and passed a much smaller clot. After that I fell asleep on and off until about 7pm and when I woke up I had no more pain and the bleeding was just like a normal period.
I slept well last night with no significant bleeding. Today I’ve had bleeding on and off but nothing too heavy and passed a few smaller clots. I’ve only had very light cramps occasionally over the day but no need for pain relief. I’ve been quite tired and have napped on and off but luckily I’ve had no other side effects.
I have a telephone appt with the EPU tomorrow to check on my progress. I really hope that this is the worst of it over and I can move on, but part of me is worried that it was all too easy and maybe it didn’t all pass because the intense part only lasted a short amount of time. Or maybe I’m just lucky and it worked exactly as it should have. There’s nothing I can do now but wait and hope for the best!
I hope my account was useful for anyone thinking about going down the medical management route - in my experience it was nowhere near as bad as some of the stories I’ve read and if I do unfortunately ever have a MMC again I would definitely choose this option.