Can someone please explain something to me? Quite graphic.

[TheBreastmilksOnMe]

This question may be a bit graphic for some of you so I'm just warning you in advance.

A few months ago I had a missed-miscarriage at 9 weeks. I went to the hospital for a scan and it showed that the enbryo had 'died' at 5 weeks 6 days and it was still in my womb.

I didn't want it manually removed, I couldn't bare the thought of something so precious to me being 'scraped' out so I waited for it to pass naturally and when it did a couple of days later I was able to pi place it in a box and bury it.

Before I buried it I had a good look at it and it looked like a hunched over prawn, about the size of a large strawberry, you could quite clearly make out a head and paddles for the hands and a dark mass in the middle which I imagine would have been the bowels? It also was partially covered by skin which I imagine was the sac?

Antway, what puzzles me is that in all of the pregnancy books I have read it says that at this stage the 'embryo' is only a few millimeters in length, no bigger than a grain of rice. How was it that the enbryo that I miscarried much larger than this even though it was dated at 5+6 on the scan? Are these books incorrect or was the scan wrong, or something else?

I'm just very curious really can anyone help?

I really don't know. I inagine the scan was wromg ang the embryo/ fetus was older than the scan said, but then I thought that the early scans were reaqlly accurate???

Sorry for your loss xxx

I mc at 6 weeks (which I am fairly sure was the correct date) and the only obvious part I passed was the size of a kidney bean .

I don't know. I had an early scan with dd at 7 weeks and she was 11mm long. Much, much smaller than a large strawberry. And there is very little variation in size before 12 weeks.

Well yes Meglet, I was expecting a small kidney bean thing and everytime I went to the loo I went over a small sieve so that I could catch it as I wanted to bury it myself so when something audibly 'plopped' into the loo and I scooped it out it was as I described. Much bigger than expected. I'm very puzzled.

could it have been some of the yolk sac. When the sonographer showed us our baby at 6 weeks i pointed to something that looked like it would be the head and she said that was the yolk sack above the head??? not sure though. sorry for your loss xx

I think they measure crown to rump length to determine fetal age. The real question is why do you want to know? Don't want to be insensitive but is there something else worrying you? When I got pregnant after a late miscarriage my midwife said I should have contacted her if I had questions as they are trained to counsell and inform in this situation. So you could phone yours if you need these questions answered. I know I became obsessed with the details and the reasons buying every book on the subject but I am not sure it helped. Hope you feel better soon.

If it was DEFINITELY all the foetus, and not a yolk sac attached to it, then yes you were probably a bit further on. At my 9 week scan, you could make out the start of hands and feet, so I'd guess you were 9 weeks max, in which case the foetus would have been 3cm max.

I'm so sorry - I lost one at 9 weeks too.

Thankyou all for being sympathetic it means a lot and sorry for everyone who has also experienced a miscarriage.

Lynli- I want to know because I am curious and measurment wise things don't make sense. As it happens I am mearly 6 weeks pregnant again and when I go and see the midwife in a fortnights time I am going to ask her. I just thought I might be able to find out a bit sooner from hearing other peoples experinces.

vmcd28- that's what I thought but why would the scan date 5+6? I'm sorry for your loss too.

Good luck with this pg. I don't know why the scan measured it as less than six weeks, given that it would have been much smaller. There's no way it would have had arm and leg buds either if it was early. The sonographer should have noticed that too.
Please let us know what the midwife says. It all sounds like a bit of a mix up of some sort, though