Threatened miscarriage and working

[anxiouswaiting]

I am almost 10 weeks pregnant, over the weekend I had a massive bleed with huge clots, I was sure my baby had died and had a stressful 6 hour wait in a+e to see a gynae doc to check my baby.

Next day I went to the pregnancy assessment unit for a more detailed scan, baby looks ok but still a lot of blood in there waiting to come out. Told it could take a couple of weeks to empty.

I am so happy baby is ok but I am still getting pain, still bleeding and I am terrified my baby will still die. My next scan is in 3 weeks.

I am off work till tomorrow and should ne returning next week. I really don't want to, emotionally I am a mess, physically I bleed and have pain one minute and the next it is ok.

I feel so lucky that my baby is still there becauaae with the amount of blood I lost I thought there was no hope so I feel like I should be getting on with life as I am a lucky one, but I really want to ask my GP for more time off work but feel like a faud doing so when my baby is ok.

Has anyone else struggled with similar? Am I just being silly and should go back to work or is how I am feeling normal?

Your baby may be okay - but you are clearly stressed so you need to be signed off sick until this stressful period is over and you are less anxious.

You need to rest and if you're in pain you shouldn't be there. You and baby come first at the moment. Speak to your dr x

My dr refused to sign me off when I had something similar at 20 weeks with first pregnancy as he said there was no clear evidence that rest would prevent anything. I ended up being hospitalised from 24 weeks and baby came at 27 weeks.

I hope your dr has more common sense and empathy!

The question is whether you feel that work would be a welcome distraction or whether the stress and anxiety you are quite rightly feeling is going to prevent you functioning and you wind up even worse emotionally. Physically, the die is cast and you can only wait to see what happens, which is awful, but inescapable. As previous posters have said, you and your baby come first. You can self cert for a week, perhaps see how you feel then? Things may have settled down. All the best. I've been there and it's awful xx

Stay at home and be kind to yourself. You are quite right to stay off work for a while. .

Your baby may well be fine (thank goodness!) but you've had one heck of a shock and it's taking it's toll mentally and physically. If it were me, I would self cert for a week and then see how you feel after that

Same situation here except my big bleed was at 17 weeks. My GP signed me off for 2 weeks in the first instance (I’d already had 6 days off by that point). I am probably going to ask for more when that runs out. The baby is fine and kicking but it took 2 weeks to fully stop bleeding and psychologically I have been an anxious wreck. My job is quite physically active in a busy environment.

Get yourself signed off xx

I think it sounds very much like you had a subchorionic hemorrhage (this is basically a blood clot that builds up next to baby and is eventually passed or reabsorbed). It's not necessarily a risk to baby (though sometimes the really big ones can be). It's a very good sign that you had some bleeding already though and baby looks fine. Likely all will continue to be fine.

But personally I would take off work. It will help to rest and stay off your feet and I think there is no reason to be stressing about the what ifs. If you need a distraction, is there any way you can work from home?

I did have a missed miscarriage earlier in the year. It was a definite miscarriage, not what you are describing, baby had died and there was no heartbeat but I wasn't bleeding and there was no sign of when the miscarriage would occur. I took about a month off total. 3 of those weeks I was waiting for the miscarriage to happen (it never did, so I had a d&c) and then an extra week to recover from the operation. Not all of that time was sick leave, some was, maybe about 10 days of it I worked from home (I do this regularly anyway several days a week), a couple days were holidays as it was over Easter and my office was closed anyway. It was the absolute best decision for me and I'm glad I had that time. As you right now have a healthy baby who is doing perfectly well, I think take the time and take care of yourself so you are doing everything you can to make sure the outcome is a happy one.

(Also, if it's reassuring, I have had heavy bleeding in both of my healthy pregnancies. With my daughter, it only lasted an afternoon but was like gushing out, and I'm now 20 weeks pregnant and from about 7-9 weeks I had 2 weeks of spotting and bleeding, including 3 days of heavy bleeding. But all is fine and I've never had any more. Sometimes it's just one of those things.)