@zebrapig @southerncrossconservative @Lemonvalley - thanks all for your posts. It's really been a lifeline reading other women's experiences on here.
Just in case anyone else comes across this thread looking for advice/experiences at this incredibly crap time in life, I thought I should update with how things have gone for me.
In the end, nature did take its course (well, to be confirmed via a scan this coming Wednesday to check everything has passed). I had finally resolved to just give the natural management ONE more week and had rebooked my MVA appointment for Friday 15 March. The midwife told me that was a little longer than they would prefer given possible risk of infection rising over time, but she was okay to do it.
From about a week and a half ago, I'd started to have very light spotting each day - usually only for an hour or two each day. Then last week this increased to fairly steady spotting, light brown in colour, all day every day. I also started to get mild period cramps, but these would come and go.
Then Thursday evening last week, the cramps really started to kick up a notch. I'd been working from home and was just finishing up work around 5.30pm and the cramps started coming on me. Later that night I had more painful period cramps but managed to get to sleep with some paracetamol. Woke up at 2am with much more intense pain which I would definitely describe as contractions - waves of pain that had shorter and shorter gaps in between them. I couldn't stay in bed any longer and just had to walk around my flat, going to the toilet every so often, between 2-5am or so. I passed lots of small clots during this time but not much blood, which I thought was odd.
From 5am, things eased up and I went back to bed. I had some leave from work booked on Friday (was originally supposed to be going to a friend's hen do!) so could just stay in bed all day which was a godsend. I was tired and having moderate/strong period cramps all day - really hard to get comfortable but certainly bearable with just paracetamol. Again, not much bleeding - I was just continuing to pass small clots when I went to the toilet but nothing really in between; I barely had to change my pad all day. I called the EPAU and spoke to a midwife who told me bleeding can be really variable and that it was possible, given my pregnancy loss had happened almost 4 weeks previously, that my body had actually started to break things down and so most of the tissue might come away as clots rather than as liquid blood. I found that quite a comforting thought. I think I would have found heavy bleeding much scarier than the pain itself.
Then suddenly that evening at about 7.30pm I started to get the most severe pain I had experienced in my life - strong contractions - nothing like I've ever experienced before. I was crawling around on the floor at one point and couldn't stand up straight, I was doubled over any time I tried to stand. My husband had to help me to and from the bathroom. I took a couple of co-codamol and don't know how much they helped but I guess it would have been worse without.
This level of pain went on for just short of an hour, I was barely passing anything - just droplets of blood and small clots - and then suddenly I passed a large mass. I hope this isn't TMI but I think it helps to know what to expect - it was partly red and partly skin coloured, about the length of my palm but oval-shaped. The pain stopped instantly.
Since Friday, I've been more or less pain-free. Oddly enough, I have no symptoms during the day but each evening around 5pm or so I get period like cramps again - it's as though my body deals with this situation in the evening only, as my cramps and the miscarriage itself took place over two evenings. I've now got fairly steady blood flow like a heavy period - I actually soaked through my pad yesterday evening when I went out for a walk which I wasn't expecting, so the blood is definitely heavier than it would be with a normal period.
I feel like it is 'over', hopefully. The EPAU will see me on Wednesday this week to scan me and check that it's been a complete miscarriage so fingers crossed. My MVA is still booked for Friday as a back up as the EPAU don't want to cancel that until they're sure I don't have any remaining tissue.
Hope this helps someone - and thanks to everyone on this thread who offered their experience and advice, I so appreciated it when I was struggling, and reading mumsnet has helped me prepare mentally for what to expect.
For context - my pregnancy loss was diagnosed at a private 7 week scan, the baby stopped growing at 6 weeks. It took until 10 weeks for me to miscarry and during that time the EPAU said they thought my gestational sac and other tissue was continuing to grow a little, despite the baby having stopped developing.
Hope anyone reading this who is going through this awful experience gets through it okay, and that we all get our rainbow babies that we're hoping for.