Hi, I am just sharing some insight in to my story of an empty gestational sac and would like to hear others’ thoughts and experiences. Sorry if it is a little disorganised and long, if anyone even stumbles upon this post. And I am sorry if anything I wrote seems insensitive for this thread.
I am a healthy 26 year old female, I have no health complications, eat well and have had no experience with a miscarriage or experienced any complications during my two previous full term pregnancies. This my first experience of such news and have been intrigued to learn more about it.
I gave birth exactly a year and 2 days ago, I have been exclusively breastfeeding every hour through every day for 4 years (including my first born), this means that my periods are not regular and it is not abnormal for me to go a few months without periods, and I will admit used as a natural contraceptive method, as I fell pregnant with my second when I started to wean my first off the breast about 3 yrs old. This time around I conceived quite quickly in comparison. My last exclusive period was on the 17th of September 2024, I had a positive pregnancy test on the 3rd of January— this year.
The midwife said it could take up to 2 weeks for me to receive a first scan appointment; based on this I opted for my first “private” scan to give me an idea of how many weeks I could be— fearing that I could have been around 3 months and perhaps miraculously skipped the worst of the pregnancy symptoms without realising.
I was seen for my private scan on 10th January, the lady gave me a trans abdominal ultra sound and she found an empty gestational sac, no embryo or yolk sac seen, measuring 16mm.
She gave me no insight in to how many weeks this could be, and wrote up a medical report for me to show to my GP or EPU unit if I was to incur any bleeding in the next coming days.
Quite coincidentally when I returned home, I did notice a little brown discharge in my underwear— I had not seen any of this before hand. I started to get a little confused and opted to call my local EPU, they asked me to come in.
The Dr I saw took a look at my sonography images and ruled out an ectopic pregnancy just by looking at the sonography images, I feel confident in his analysis, although he did say that the gestational sac was empty and he would expect to see something based on the information I had given about myself, and he called it a potential failed pregnancy and explained what that meant.
He said that they will take my bloods to give more insight into my hcg levels etc, and will then repeat those bloods in the next 48 hours and give me a scan.
I was supposed to go back in on Monday but that is when I was experiencing more than just spotting brown discharge, the sanitary towel was slightly soiled with some more brownish heavy discharge and some little bits of what I presume was the tissue passing (miss carriage). I just accepted that it was probably a failed pregnancy and didn’t want to waste everyone’s time with going for extra testing and waiting around when I could have just accepted it for what it was and dealt with it without a big fuss, they said they would still need to do further testing and asked me to come back in on Wednesday.
I stopped passing brown blood by Wednesday morning, which means I really only passed this fluid for 3 days, the two last days were a lot milder.
I have never experienced any implantation bleeding with my last pregnancies, or even spotting in that case, which is why I think it is clear that something is a little wrong. But everyone has had different experiences with bleeding and still carried successfully. But the empty gestational sac is very telling already… or could it just be that I am too early?
During my appointment yesterday, they did a transvaginal scan and said that the gestational sac was still empty, but it was measuring 15mm. I am not sure if the first sonographer miscalculated the measurements (16mm) as it was late in the evening and she was rushing to get through her last appointments that were piling up outside the door in the cold (for some odd reason we all had to wait out in the car park, it was around 8pm lol… very odd) and she did also tell me that she didn’t have enough time to give me transvaginal scan during my paid appointment. She also did scare me in to believing I was having an ectopic pregnancy. But she was very accurate on the empty gestational sac.
I have also seen that during a failed pregnancy it can be normal for the gestational sac to shrink in size? Based on an internet search. But I have not seen enough to confirm if this is true. Has anyone experienced or heard of this?
They took a repeat bloods yesterday and called me this morning and told me that my numbers have risen, they said my HCG levels were already high but they are still rising. I can not remember the numbers. I have seen that this is also common in women with failed pregnancies, “hCG levels rising” .. but she did say after experiencing the bleeding etc— they would have expected to see a drop.
I asked based on all the information they have, are they able to give me an estimate of how many weeks I would have worked out to be? And she said that they are unsure and unable to tell me.
I am not sure if they are just giving me limited information until they are able to definitively rule the diagnosis, because upon reading others’ stories online they are always able to share an estimate of how many weeks their drs told them.
I am also seeing other people with a 15mm gestational sac say they were examined to be around 5-6 weeks, but Google search brings up 8-9 weeks. Has anyone been measured at 15mm gestational sac and know how many weeks they were at that exact measurement?
As my periods have not been regular it is a little more difficult to determine how many weeks I could be, but due to not being sexually active in the past few months with my partner, I have been able to pin and remember which dates we actually did have intercourse. My most recent dates of intercourse are 1st January, and the 16th of December. I am quite confident conception was more likely to be around the dates of 16th December. I took a clear blue test on the 3rd January that showed 3+
This would place me at being 6 weeks and 3 days today, at the most. But without adding the extra 2 weeks that drs do— it would calculate 4 weeks, I have never really understood the extra two weeks added.
My boobs are just a little sore, I am spontaneously napping throughout the day, I am nauseous, emotional, and have food aversions. The only thing I have not yet experienced is the full force of morning sickness— I am not yet throwing up into the toilet, I just have very nauseous stomach, almost as though it is teasing. I am also reading pregnancy symptoms are also common during failed pregnancies? How long will this last?
With both previous pregnancies I started to experience the full force of morning sickness around weeks 7-8.
I am slightly experiencing sharp pains down my vaginal area on random occasions and perhaps a little cramping in the abdominal area on occasions. Nothing persistent yet. Nothing that has blown me out the window or needed a painkiller for.
They have asked me to return in a week for another scan, I am assuming to see if anything has started growing in the sac yet.
Does anyone here have any similar experiences or knowledge on my situation?