Miscarriage Redux.

Well, it's still boring, although on the positive side, AF did arrive in full technicolour glory and I now await my second FET in about 2 weeks. I have pushed to transfer 2 blasties this time. It was not the monumental struggle I was expecting, although I had Buckley's chance with my first fresh and frozen transfers. I guess with my excellent response, they figured I'd be OK. I even recall with irony the nurse who gushed that I'd get my whole family out of my five, day 5, Grade 1 blasts. Well, sucks to you, nursey, don't be giving me such false hope at my age.

I also caught up with the Melbourne Childless Slappers again last week and much merriment was had. Truly, the only people I want to discuss my secret Infertility business with now is other Infertiles. Look! No ass-vice! No insensitive, ignorant comments! Joy!

Because I don't have much of note to add, I'm going to post a journal entry I wrote just after my first miscarriage/D+C in July 2005, all those years ago. I think I had grand plans of sending it to a women's mag, but for the life of me couldn't fathom how I would market something so depressing. No-one really wants to know, right?

I will add that the pain has indeed been magnified with subsequent losses and some of the stuff in the first paragraph is no longer true.



What does a miscarriage REALLY feel like??


No one really tells you. You expect fear, pain, overwhelming sadness. You hope you’ll survive and recover. You can’t imagine and you hope that you never have to. You hear about women who cry for months, can’t remain in contact with pregnant friends. The ones who create little ‘memory-boxes’ with ultrasound pictures, prayers and gold rings. Who even named their foetuses and now call them angels. I thought I’d be one of those devastated women. I wasn’t.

ML-1001. ML-1001. The inscription on the huge, overhead lighting monoliths in the theatre. Trying hard to squint my eyes to suppress the tears, concentrating on anything but what was about to happen. Why was I crying? Was I grieving for the finality of the procedure I had been avoiding for over a week? Did it mean that my baby would finally, even though two ultrasounds had already shown the reality, no longer exist? No. I was just scared.

This story begins about fifteen months ago. At the age of 34, cluckiness made its better-late-than-never presence felt. I blame my brother for spawning the cutest little boy ever. So, we decided to try for a child. In my naïve state, I thought that the act of trying instantly qualified one for pregnancy. Month after month I wondered what was wrong. I had no gynaecological problems. I was as healthy as the proverbial horse. All I needed was the right partner, who had finally appeared 18 months earlier, after over a decade of the wrong partners. Ok, it’s baby time!

Only it wasn’t. A year passed. Friends and acquaintances with one tube, damaged ovaries/tubes, polycystic ovaries, just about every goddamn form of abnormal ovary or tube going, miraculously fell pregnant all too quickly. We talked uneasily about fertility testing. TTC (Trying to Conceive for the uninitiated) chat rooms suggested that many older women were turning to pharmaceutical help with ovulating. But no, we would do things the natural way. (i.e.: no doctors, thanks!) Then, as much as it pains me to admit it, the well meaning but irritating cliché of “stop thinking about it and it will happen”, came true. We had moved to the other side of the country and both had just started new jobs and had really important things to worry about.

Happy, happy, joy, joy! I kept the little stick as proof and did a little happy dance of disbelief. I took another one a week later and kept that too. More proof! I started getting zombie-like symptoms. Crushing fatigue, KFC cravings, waves of nausea. A few weeks of hell, really, but at least I was pregnant! I could deal with it, even when a colleague told me I smelled of spew, hey, I don’t care! I’m pregnant! I wasn’t really enjoying it, but the end result would be worth every uncomfortable moment.

Fast forward to week 8. (You count weeks religiously when you’re pregnant; every week is a step closer to that magical and safe land known as ‘Trimester 2’) Woke up, felt damn good, symptoms pretty much gone. I know my body and I know when something’s wrong. So I did what every intelligent, curious, modern woman does, yep, I googled. “Pregnancy symptoms stopped”…..well, either the baby had died at week 8 or I was one of the lucky ones. Friends and family and even the GP assured me that I was one of the lucky ones, but I knew better. I’ve never really been that lucky.

Fast forward to week 10. Spotting at work on Monday. Back to my old friend, google. Apparently 25% of pregnant women spot. Of those, half go on to miscarry, not betting odds, that’s for sure. Clean undies on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, phew! Spotting and cramping on Friday. “Be good, class, I don’t feel well today”. Kept running out of class, shaking, to check if there was any more. “I’m sure it’s nothing”, reassured my eternally optimistic partner. I knew better.

Next morning, Week 11, slight bleeding. Went to hospital. Sympathetic nurse who looked sad when I said I had period-like cramping and bleeding. She knew too. The ultrasound showed an empty sac, which had stopped growing at 8 weeks. (I knew it!) Nothing at all on the screen, no baby, nothing. Which made it so much easier to cope, in a bizarre, inexplicable way. You can’t attach if you’ve never seen your baby. I felt OK, calm and collected. I didn’t want a curette; I trusted my own body to sort itself out. Wasn’t my body the only one who had known something was wrong 3 weeks ago? I took Monday off to rest, then went back to school Tuesday.

“Wow, I’ve had a great miscarriage, no pain, no buckets of blood”, I repeated, over and over. Was I in denial and just avoiding the overwhelming, visceral pain, which would, doubtlessly, strike at any time? I’m sure colleagues were just waiting for the hysteria to strike, if the kid-glove treatment was any guide.

A week later, back at hospital for the check-up. Still mildly cramping and bleeding, my normally healthy body was letting me down. The empty sac was still there with some other bits and pieces, mocking me it seemed. I booked in for the curette and rang my partner who was working up north. We had no friends or family in this city, so he rushed home the next day.

Wednesday, back to hospital. This resilient, little, black duck was shit-scared. Never been in hospital a day in my life, if you don’t include for half an hour, 2 years ago, to get a broken leg plastered. Lots of waiting around, going from waiting rooms to change rooms to pre-op, then finally to the theatre. Finally, it was all too much and the silent tears flowed. “It’s alright to cry, it’s very emotional losing a baby”, the theatre nurse empathised. “It’s not that, I’m just scared,” I wept.

You can google miscarriage as long as you want, but you’ll never get the real story. For me, this was a strange, unreal, fifteen-month journey, which ended with nothingness. Not sadness, not hysteria, not even much pain.

Every woman is different. This was what my first miscarriage really felt like.