An account of one woman’s miscarriage

THE TEST
An Account Of One
Woman’s Miscarriage

By Sarah Jacob

It was an experience that changed my perspective on life; on death; and everything in between that. It was, in the grand scheme of worldly disasters, not that tragic. And yet, it is an experience that has made me realize the fleetingness of all things, both material and conceptual. It was one of loss and yet more than that; of sadness; of fear; of hope; of despair; of all the stuff a really good book or film is made of. It was a test in all kinds of faith. Faith in my body. Faith in the medical world. Faith in my partner. Faith in myself. And faith in some kind of obscure power other than my own.

It was a miscarriage.

Miscarriages are a dime a dozen. Most, I have since discovered, happen without the bearer even realizing that she was pregnant. In fact, according to statistics, over 20% end in one. It’s surprising we don’t hear of more of them, but then they are normally rather secret when they occur. It is the mystique of miscarriages. Because even today, there is a silent, unspoken stigma about a woman not being able to have a baby. Even if that nagging thought is only in your head.

But this miscarriage was quite different which is why I am writing about it. I have had two others, so I am an expert you see and those were boring by comparison. My first was when I was only nineteen. It was a complete accident and thankfully completely ended itself with a lump of tissue that evacuated my body one sunny summer morning. A D&C (A painless procedure where a suction sucks the fetus out of you followed by a manual scraping of the lining of your uterus to be certain nothing is left) ensured it was evicted like a bad tenant, and life went on as normal. My second one was when I was 40. It was kind of planned, in that my partner and I decided to let the eagle land if it wanted to. It did, but took flight at 8.5 weeks. Upon discovery, the gynecologist whisked me in for a D&C two days later, and a day after the surgery, I was back at work, bright eyed and bushy tailed as if I had had a really long, gorgeous sleep.

Three months after my first miscarriage, in fact as soon as it was safe to get pregnant again, we stopped all precaution and voila, there I was with a positive reading on the pregnancy test. I felt healthy. I felt strong. I felt elated. I stopped the glass of wine I love with my dinner. I went on prenatals and felt pretty damn happy even though, at forty one, a little more anxious perhaps than if I had been twenty five. Nevertheless I was excited. We both saw the heartbeat at 6.5 weeks and stuck the picture on the fridge.   At nine weeks or so, my symptoms subsided and I was concerned, but waited until the eleventh week for my next appointment before finding out that once again the baby had no heartbeat. I had made a decision to go to the midwifery for childbirth. I wanted to have the baby naturally if possible and loved the casualness and warmth of the midwifery as opposed to the gynecologist’s office.   I decided, based on the fact that it hadn’t been even a year since my last D&C and also with the midwife’s encouragement, to eliminate the fetus naturally, to just wait and let nature take its course. I waited for two weeks after the appointment before spotting appeared. I was glad that this was obviously going to happen soon and thought, based on the midwife’s description, that it was going to be like ‘a heavy period with lots of cramping’. Well, I know what a heavy period is like and having experienced the miscarriage when I was in my teens, I thought I knew what to expect. The spotting continued for another ten days. I decided to go to an acupuncturist to help with the elimination. Two days later I passed a huge piece of round tissue and lots of blood in the space of about ten seconds. I went back to light bleeding. Was this it? I had another acupuncture session. 2 days later in the middle of the night I woke up cramping and bleeding. I was bleeding so much that I thought maybe I was hemorrhaging. It was like no period I had ever had. I sat on the toilet as blood just poured out of my body, followed by huge clots, some the size of a small tangerine. Was it a hemorrhage? Was it normal? After two hours or so, the pains stopped and the bleeding died down. I slept, exhausted. Was this it? I searched my inner wisdom and scanned my body with my mind. Was this it? Was this it? Yes. No. Maybe. The next day I took the day off work and after talking to a friend just cried like a child. I cried for the baby. I cried for the pain. I cried for my partner. I cried for the fear. I cried for every healthy day I had taken for granted. I cried because I felt like it.

The following day I went back to work and scheduled an ultra sound which showed the uterus lining was still thick. I didn’t want to miss more work and I still wanted to have a natural miscarriage, so I asked that the gynecologist call me to advise me on what to do and if in his professional opinion I could watch and wait safely. I missed his call. I tried to call back. He missed my call. I went for acupuncture. 2 days later I was having lunch with a colleague and I started cramping. We got up to leave and I felt something extremely huge leave my body. I rushed to the toilet of the restaurant and changed my pad while blood and clots just fell out of my body. I went back to the office and sent my partner a text that it had started again and I was fine and that I was excited that this ‘must be it’.   But the bleeding and passing of these huge clots just kept on coming until eventually I thought I was going to pass out. I felt myself get dizzy and I ran into the office of a coworker who called an ambulance as I lay on the floor bleeding profusely. I was whisked off on a stretcher. IV placed in my vein. Paramedics asking me for my details; name, address, phone number etc. Rushed into the emergency ward and whisked into a private room where I was monitored for my vital signs, which seemed to be fine, even though I was still bleeding. “Vaginal bleeding looks horrific”, said the nurse who was very bubbly and attempted to clean me up a bit, “but it always looks worse than it is” It did offer some relief. I lay there going through contractions every few minutes. After a few hours they whisked me in for an ultra sound to declare I had passed everything. My uterus was clear. Yeehah. I was right. My body would do it. Nature did her job. Although absolutely drained, I felt elated when going home. I didn’t have to undergo the surgery. I was right after all!

The next day I visited the gynecologist that was on duty who said that I had passed the fetus completely, gave me a quick internal and told me to see him in two weeks. The bleeding, he said, would last a week. I went home with my partner (who was there through every minute of this) and celebrated my little feat of nature versus science. I took my antibiotics (even though before these miscarriages I had not had any traditional medicine in years) and waited for the bleeding to stop. One week. Two weeks. Three weeks. I passed a huge piece of tissue. I called the gynecologist. “Is this normal?”. “Yes.” “Oh. Okay then.” Hung up the phone and scanned the internet for other women’s natural miscarriage experiences. None of them lasted more than ten days of bleeding after the main ‘event’.   I went to work and when at the end of the day there was a huge coating of what looked more like brown mud in my pad than blood, I just cried. I felt so run down and so out of control. I called the midwife who said that she thought I should have another ultra sound to ensure that all the tissue was out, so the next day, I went into the gynecologist to request an ultrasound which showed that there were ‘still products of conception’ left in my uterus. She scheduled me immediately for an emergency D&C that day.

That was four days ago. It has been over six weeks since I found out that the fetus had no heartbeat, a relatively short amount of time in the grand scheme of things, and yet the waiting for closure has seemed like an eternity. My experience isn’t indicative of your experience, should you ever have a miscarriage. It is not a stance against having a natural miscarriage, as many women do without any issues. And it is not advocating the D&C, which has been my saving grace. It is purely an account of my experience that forced me to look at who I was in the face of adversity and completely re-evaluate my perspective on things.