Miscarriage: A Personal Account

As I sit down to write this, there is a picture of family life before me that I thought I would never see. We are all in the kitchen, my husband is preparing our evening meal and sitting in his high chair is our beautiful son who is making a number of happy and some not so happy sounds. It is sometimes hard to take in, that such sweet joy can finally come after so much sorrow.

I first became pregnant in 1998. About ten weeks into the pregnancy I started spotting a little. I had read that some bleeding was very common and did not mean the end of the pregnancy. Trying to hold on to this thought was virtually impossible as I was so scared. We were away from home at the time and went through a very fraught and anxious last day before coming home. A trip to the hospital brought the unwanted news that the baby could not possibly be 10 weeks - it must be much younger and I must have mixed up my dates. I felt sure I was clear on the dates but hoped that I had somehow got it all wrong.

Two weeks of waiting and a number of scans later I was told there was an empty sac (or possibly more than one) in my womb, with no embryo in sight. Professional opinion was that this was so early a loss that there could never have been a genetically viable baby and that nature had not allowed the pregnancy to proceed much past conception. I had a D&C straight away and went home that evening feeling numb and dazed. I don't think it struck me that I had actually lost a baby - after all it seemed from the scan that there had never been a viable baby and I had never really 'felt' pregnant in the first place.

In the days that followed I grew to feel such a failure, having let down my husband and my family who could have enjoyed a child or grandchild if I had been able to carry him/her properly - if my body had functioned the way it was supposed to. Then there was the huge embarrassment I felt on returning to work where I had shared news of the pregnancy with colleagues. Most people did not acknowledge the loss at all which suited me just fine at that time. All my sadness was concentrated on myself, how I fell short, how I did not perform. It was a very deep kind of feeling sorry for myself. I can't really say there was much grief for the baby I had lost as I did not feel able to make any connection with him/her past the image of a baby in my mind. I took great comfort in the fact that the baby had probably never developed a heartbeat. How much worse it would have been I thought if I had been able to see a picture of the baby on a scan.

In the months that followed my husband and I tried to conceive again, but without success. I was diagnosed as having polycystic ovaries and went through cycle-monitoring to see if I was ovulating. Thankfully I was and on a Friday evening in March 1999 I saw those amazing two blue lines on a pregnancy test. I was alone when I did the test, but refused to believe it until my husband told me how many lines he could see. In the days that followed, I 'felt' pregnant - I was extremely tired and nauseous but these were very welcome feelings as I told myself things would be different this time. We were very cautious in telling others our news and in our hearts. We had a number of early scans which were all good and then a 12 week scan which showed us a lovely, little, very active baby. Our doctor reassured us that once past this hurdle it was highly unlikely that anything would go wrong with the pregnancy. I then started to be more confident about it. I told myself I was actually pregnant and began to share the revelation with others too.

However, at 14 weeks I developed some unidentified viral illness which made me feverish, gave me a very upset tummy and left me extremely weak. The illness seemed to last a very long time and I couldn't pick up my strength. My doctor told me not to worry about the baby as it was highly unlikely that he/she could be damaged by the illness. At 16 weeks I visited my GP for a blood test and asked him to see if he could listen to the baby's heartbeat. He tried but could only hear mine but told me it was not uncommon for his little machine to fail to pick it up.

He sent me straight to the hospital where I had a scan. I lay on the bed waiting to hear that magical heartbeat and to be told that everything was all right. There was silence from the sonographer. She then told me that she wanted a colleague to look at the screen before she could tell me anything. Two people peered at the screen and had a quiet discussion and told me they both agreed that they could not detect a heartbeat and that my baby had died.

I cannot adequately describe the immense pain and desperation of that moment. Those words will echo in my ears for the rest of my life. I was given the choice of going home to wait for a spontaneous labour which could take days or even weeks to start, or of having my baby removed. There was much discussion about whether I would have to go through an induced labour or whether an evacuation was possible at 16 weeks. I was considered borderline and offered an evacuation which I took. My husband and I went home that evening to try to somehow digest the terrible turn of events. It was so strange to think I was carrying a dead person in my body. All I could think of was the little baby on the scan screen waving his arms and kicking his legs.

The next morning we returned to the hospital to have our baby removed. I felt I wanted him to stay inside me because if he did, he was still with us; on the other hand I wanted him taken out as quickly as possible. We had managed to do a little bit of reading about the choices that parents have about their baby's body when death occurs later on in pregnancy. We had decided we would like to see our baby if possible. When it was explained to us that the baby would be very much damaged by the operation we then decided we would not see him and would rather retain the perfect image of his whole little body. We then asked what would happen to the body and were told that parts would be sent to a genetics laboratory to try to ascertain whether there was any genetic abnormality which had caused the death.

Once I came back to the ward I had such a sense of ending - it was all true and it was so final. There was no baby anymore. He had been ripped out of me and left the most gaping empty hole. There followed weeks of an immense and heavy grief. This was so different to the first time - I had actually lost a baby I had made connection with and had started imagining as part of our family in a very real way. The pain was compounded by the fact that, having been told our baby's body would be available for burial or cremation, we were then told the body had simply been disposed of by the hospital. To be told this was merely an error was insulting and cruel. There seemed to be no respect whatsoever for our hopes as his parents and for his life. The hospital have subsequently issued clearer guidelines which they told us would be followed in future cases. This was at least something positive and we felt good that maybe our experience would save others feeling the same indignity. In any event, a multitude of tests were performed which did not reveal any clear reason for our baby's death. Nor was it ever established whether there was any connection between the death and my illness.

We learned that our baby was a boy and in time the fact that we did not have a body to bury became less important. We still had his short life to celebrate and all the joy and excitement he had brought us. We named him Oliver Erol and held a quiet service or remembrance and thanksgiving for him at the chapel in the hospital. We planted a very special rose bush in a tub in our garden surrounded by little daffodil bulbs. The roses and bright yellow flowers have grown and come up time and time again, full of life and hope. All these steps were very important for us, a way to formalise our grief and give it some direction.

It seemed the outside world had almost refused to acknowledge our lost little life and our broken dreams or parenthood. With time we realised this did not mean we had to do the same and could find ways of mourning that helped us move forward. I was Oliver's mother, however briefly and nothing would change that. There were periods of intense anger with friends and even family members who failed, no doubt through awkwardness or embarrassment, even to mention our loss. It was almost as if they were saying we weren't entitled to that support because our baby did not make it. Most helpful were those who were very direct about it and were not afraid to talk of our baby and our feelings.

At the start of the new millennium, having spent wintry days beaming with pride at our healthy rose bush, it was the most amazing surprise to discover that I was pregnant again. I had a very smooth pregnancy the only ups and downs came with my intense anxiety. It was a wonderful, fraught, almost unreal nine months. Those months ended with the birth of our son Alexander Hakan Eveleigh on 13th October 2000. Even now I have trouble believing he is safely with us but as I hear his screams, laughs and shouts, I know he is very real.

It is such a privilege to be able to write in this way and to have so much to celebrate and thank God for. For us it came after much pain which, although sweetened by Alexander's presence, will never be forgotten. I spent many months reading accounts like this one in The Miscarriage Association newsletters and dreaming of the day I might be able to write in similar terms.

For any of you suffering the crippling pain of losing a baby I wish you strength, courage and hope. The mystery of life seems so overwhelming and such a lottery at times. Allow yourselves to grieve fully and to go through all the feelings that follow a loss. There are no rules and everything you feel is all right, whatever others may say or fail to say. I am so blessed now but will never forget my other babies - they have their part in my life which will never be diminished.

Alev Eveleigh