Hi @user6078472, I wanted to reply to you as last week I spent a lot of time looking on forums for experiences of medical management.
I found out I'd had a missed miscarriage a couple of weeks ago at 8 weeks and that the heartbeat/growth had stopped at 7 wks 2 days. Initially I chose expectant management to see if it would happen naturally, but after nearly two weeks of waiting I got in touch with the EPAU last Thursday and said I wanted the medical management.
I'd read so many stories of people having horrible experiences and was quite scared about taking the pills. But my experience was a lot lot better than I had expected and read about. I wanted to share with you to reassure you that not everyone has a really awful time with it.
I took the first mifepristone pill this Monday, I had a few cramps on and off, but not much happened, a tiny bit of brown spotting but very minimal. Then I went in on Wednesday for the misoprostol. Taking the second lot of tablets I actually found was one of the more emotional parts of the whole experience, it just had a strange finality to it even though I knew there was no hope that the pregnancy was viable.
I took the tablets at 11:30am on Wednesday morning and started to get some cramps on the way home (so probably within 30 mins of taking the tablets). These were slightly more intense than my normal period pains, but definitely bearable.
When I got home nothing much happened for a while apart from intermittent cramping, so I had some lunch (I think the anti nausea meds made me starving!) then at around 2pm I felt some bleeding start. There was some more cramping and back pain with this, but not a huge amount of blood. I went to the loo to check a couple more times to check and there was blood in the toilet, but not a huge amount more on the pad.
I decided to go for a walk with my husband, which I knew would take about 45 mins. While out on the walk the cramps got more intense, a kind of radiating/pulsing pain every 5 mins or so. I felt like they were painful enough to stop and take a deep breath, but I hadn't taken any extra painkillers (on top of the ibuprofen suppository they give you at the clinic). I could feel that there was a bit more blood coming out every now and then.
At around 3:30pm when we got back from the walk I felt a bit more blood come out as we got out the car, so I went straight to the loo when we got inside to check. There was blood, but it was totally manageable and hadn't filled the pad. This was when I felt something 'fall out' into into the toilet, it wasn't painful at all. I got it out of the toilet (sorry, TMI), as I wanted to know what it was and it was some sort of clot/tissue around 4 inches. I didn't look at it again, just wrapped it in some paper in case I needed to show it to the hospital.
I then sat on the sofa expecting that to be the start of things escalating... I had quite painful lower back pain for about 1.5hrs so took 2 paracetamol. After an hour or so more the cramping and back pain were very minimal and the bleeding had reduced a lot. This was the point I started to worry that the misoprostal had stopped working. The EPAU were closed by that point, so I hoped for something more to start happening again and carried on my evening / went to bed.
I was hoping that the bleeding would escalate again in the night, as I had read in the experience of others, but I actually slept really well and woke up yesterday morning with some cramping and bleeding, but nothing very intense.
As I hadn't had much more bleeding and wanted to speak to the EPAU I knew I needed to look at what had come out yesterday. I braced myself and had a closer look and could see it was what I think they would describe as the 'full pregnancy' with fluid filled sac etc (didn't want to add too much detail on exactly what this looked like in case it's a trigger for anyone, but let me know if you need to know).
I called the EPAU and described what I had seen and explained I was worried that the tablets had stopped working as the bleeding had really slowed down the previous afternoon. The nurse said that although my experience was not the standard, some women just don't bleed a huge amount and it all happens quite quickly. She said what I had described 'passing' was what she would want to hear and that it was normal that the bleeding / cramping would tail off a bit after that. She said that the cramping and bleeding would continue for a while as my uterus shrinks back down and to call them if I had any heavy bleeding/ palm sized clots as that wouldn't be expected after this point.
I carried on having some bleeding and cramping at a normal period level yesterday (and this morning) and it seems like (fingers crossed!) it's all over...
I've actually found it quite hard to get my head around as it's been nothing like what I expected, but I am grateful to seem to have had the easier end of the experience.
Hope you're doing ok and let me know if you have any questions on anything. Happy to help in anyway I can. x