My Experience with Miscarriage: The Day My Dream Died

I have suffered a miscarriage. It seems so final to see it in print. Yesterday, I woke up pregnant and now I am not and I have nothing to show for it. Don't get me wrong, this won't be a pity party. I need to come to terms with what happened to me, but in doing so I want to show people the other side of miscarriage.

Most people are familiar with the term miscarriage. It refers to a pregnancy that ends before the fetus is able to live outside the uterus. Miscarriage occurs most often in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, but can also occur later. Some doctors estimate that 50 to 60 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage,although by the time the woman knows she is pregnant, the number falls to 15 to 20 per cent. Doctors say that almost every woman in her childbearing years will experience a miscarriage, whether she knows it or not.

Facts and statistics aside, no one ever thinks that a miscarriage will happen to them. With the advent of technology that allows a woman to know she is pregnant the day before she misses her period, a positive home pregnancy test seems like a guarantee that you will have a baby eight months later.

I was 4 and a half weeks pregnant when I found out. Morning sickness hit hard and fast,and lasted all day and all night. I thought it was early to be so sick but I took it as a good sign. There are facts to suggest that morning sickness lowers your chance of miscarriage. For a week I enjoyed various early pregnancy symptoms and practically shouted from the rooftops that I was expecting. I felt lucky, as my sister in-law has been trying without success to get pregnant. Then I started to spot. It was very light, just a little pink now and then. I had spotted lightly with my son, so I knew that this could be normal. I wasn't cramping and I still felt pregnant. By that afternoon the spotting was a little heavier, so I called a nurse. She told me to go get checked out at the walk in clinic that evening. I went in and the doctor diagnosed me with a UTI and said he wasn't concerned about the spotting as it was probably normal and if not, there wasn't anything he could do to prevent a miscarriage anyway. He told me to go to the ER if it got worse or didn't stop in a day or so. The next day, I analyzed every ache and pain, every twinge. Was that a cramp? Did I still feel nauseous? Did my boobs still hurt? The spotting stopped for most of that day and I thought I was in the clear. The next morning, I was lightly bleeding and it was red, a bad sign. I called my husband home from work, so he could take me to the ER.

The ER doctor told me again that as long as I wasn't bleeding heavily there was little cause for concern, but he ordered an ultrasound anyway. Afterward, we waited for the doctor. He told me he had good news and bad news, I told him he was a jackass for telling me that! He went on to tell us that the good news was that I did not have an ectopic pregnancy. The bad news, he said, was that the baby had implanted too low, and that I had a 50% chance of miscarriage. He said that this was very common and they see it a lot...blah blah blah. This man had just told me that my baby was likely to die and now he wouldn't shut up! Finally he told me that the baby had measured smaller than it should have. He wanted a repeat ultrasound performed in 7 days to see if the baby was growing. I thought I could never wait an entire week to find out if I was going to miscarry! As it turned out, I didn't have to.

The following morning I began to bleed in earnest. Still no cramps, but I just knew. I hadn't been sick that morning and something just felt...different. Around noon I started to cramp. Just lightly, no worse than a period. I cried and cried. I called an aunt who has experienced many miscarriages and she gently told me what to expect. I went to bed and the cramps got worse. They were bad, but not as horrible as I had expected. About 45 minutes to an hour later they started to stop. I went to the bathroom, and there it was. My baby, the products of conception, fetal tissue, whatever they call it, I actually saw it. Now what? Do I flush it? Bury it? What? What was I supposed to do with this? It should have been a child and it looked like raw liver. So I flushed the remains of my child and went and bawled in my husbands arms. Immediately, I felt lighter, emptier both physically and emotionally. I was no longer pregnant.

And now for the "other" side of miscarriage. Many women choose to memorialize their babies, by planting a tree or creating a scholarship etc. I have no desire to do anything of the sort. I don't want to name this baby, plant a tree, buy a statue, anything. Because really, deep down it does not feel like I lost a child. I have a son, and this is nothing like the pain of losing him would be. I feel more like I lost a wonderful dream, a hope or the promise of a child. I don't want to behave as though I lost a son or daughter, because that is not how I feel. Yet, I feel that is what is expected. I should be grieving and mourning my loss as others do. I don't deny that I am very sad, a little disillusioned even. I feel a little jaded, like pregnancy is not what it is cracked up to be. I feel physical and emotional pain, as this is still very new, yet I do not feel like "mourning" as others may. Am I normal? Is there something wrong with me? I don't know. Perhaps I am still in shock and I am numb. Still, that is how I feel, even how I expected to feel.

For now I feel the best thing to do is try again. There are studies to suggest that the three cycles following miscarriage are somewhat more fertile than usual. That must be Natures way of apologizing for a terrible mistake. So once I get a doctors okay to try again, I think that is what we will do. Of course, a part of me will never be the same as before my miscarriage and I believe that I have lost a sort of innocence, a feeling that things like this only happen to other people. I will never feel as invincible as I did. Perhaps that is a sort of gift from my baby, a new maturity, a new protection.