My 2nd Miscarriage
It is devastating that my very next post is about a 2nd miscarriage about 4 months after my first miscarriage. I’m writing this partly to record what happened, and partly again to process it.
About a month and a half after my 1st miscarriage I had my period and a few weeks after this we started trying again. I immediately got pregnant that month. We both weren’t ecstatic from the fear of a repeat, however there were glimmers of hope that it would be different, and that I would have to very very unlucky for it to happen a 2nd time.
Ten and a half weeks in I started to bleed a little, my heart sank as I knew that it was a miscarriage. I began to cry out of fear. My symptoms so far had been exactly the same as the first and I had a little nagging voice that was telling me I didn’t feel fully pregnant. Each time I had brushed this off as paranoia and decided to just wait it out before really feeling anything in particular.
Unfortunately my bleeding continued so we went to A&E who booked us into EGU the next day. There we found out that the exact same thing had happened; a blighted ovum which appeared to never have grown beyond 5 weeks in size with no yolk, sac or embryo. As I explained this to the midwife she agreed that it was likely that I would probably go on to miscarry. I couldn’t help but break down a little. At the time it wasn’t that I felt that I had lost a baby as an embryo hadn’t even formed, I was scared because we could be at the start of a long and painful journey.
My bleeding increased slowly, and a few days later my body finally miscarried the placenta. As I miscarried over the bathtub and I kept the tissue mass that came out of me. This tissue looked very similar to the last one I miscarried. We later decided that we would take the the tissue for testing back at EGU the next morning and kept it in a little container in the fridge. It hadn’t been advised to us that we could do this by any medical person, but my mum’s friend had mentioned it and I had read about it and knew it was possible. The nurses at EGU were very sympathetic and seemed to know what to do with it.
I had 100% rationalised my first miscarriage. I knew so many people that had miscarried first time I was not scared, in fact I took it positively that we could at least conceive. My 2nd miscarriage has shocked me, the similarities of both miscarriages makes me feel there may be an underlying cause. But not personally knowing anyone who’s had two miscarriages, has made me feel more alone.
I don’t believe I am anywhere near having dealt with the situation we find ourselves in. A situation that leads to numerous questions but no answers. A situation where there may not be a solution. A situation where I feel like I may be at the beginning of a long and difficult road where the destination may never be quite what I had envisioned or one we want but must accept. When close friends and family are unable to come up with anything really to say, it reiterates that there really isn’t anything much I can do right now apart from try again when the time is right and get various medical tests, however there is nothing I can do right this second.
Most days I feel absolutely fine, not really delving into the sadness and currently unsolvable problem. There has been only two days so far where I have allowed the sadness to fully wash over me and my husband has been my rock. I’m partly glad for those days where I am sad, as I get anxious that I may be burying my emotions. I know that I need to feel sad in order to move onto the next stage but I don’t naturally allow it as my brain seems to able to rationalise sad thoughts and convert it into actions rather than allow the sadness to come through. I flit between logically thinking about the situation, working out the next actions to take, and not bothering to think about it at all, and rarely does the sadness seem to overwhelm me. I suppose I have to accept feeling what I feel and if I do need to feel sad it will come.
I feel like I’m being melodramatic sometimes, I have read that is more likely than not that I will go on to have a successful pregnancy. I’ve read that many women have two miscarriages in a row, and I know friends of friends who have experienced recurrent miscarriages but then go on to have successful pregnancies. However I’ve also seen a statistic that only 1% of women have 2 miscarriages in a row, and this scares the hell out of me as well as angering me, my brain is shouting the question WHY ME?
Added pressures are the fact that 9 out of 10 of my husband’s friends have all given birth to babies, which makes us feel that we are falling behind. They are all moving on to enjoying the next stages of life and my husband in particular would like to share those experiences with them, as he has done through all previous milestones.
All of these thoughts are feelings are swirling around in my head, and yet I cannot fully vent my anger and sadness right now, all I can do is write about it and hope that at some point they flood out of me.
