Tag: suspected miscarriage

Brave Mum to be Tesa, shares her miscarriage scare at 8 weeks. Read on to hear her story.

Week: 29

Baby is the size of a: Butternut Squash

First of all just wanted to say how much of a huge fan I am of your journal! I use it each week without fail and love it. Unfortunately it arrived the week of my suspected miscarriage and I did not want to journal anything as the whole thing was quite terrifying. 

Firstly, I do understand how lucky I am to have not miscarried and can understand how this can be triggering to people that have but at the same time think this is something not talked about enough in pregnancy. We are taught bleeding is bad and it mostly is very bad.

I was early in week 9 (which we thought was week 11 at the time but was put back at my scan) of my pregnancy and I came home from work for lunch. When I sat down, I felt this gush of liquid down there. This is my first pregnancy and I just thought that was strange. I went to the bathroom and there was blood, a large amount of blood all in one clump/clot. The blood kept coming so I called my midwife who is fantastic. We were having one of those random summer days that hit 35 degrees and she started with ‘8 have had a few of these phone calls today’ – not very reassuring. She told me to put in maturity pads and if I was changing more than one an hour, I needed to call her back a bad go to ED. The bleeding by this point had slowed down but my heart ache and worry hadn’t. Unfortunately, she could not do much so early on once the bleeding slowed down.

The next day she saw me in clinic. It was too risky to do the heartbeat and she probably would have found it anyway and in South Canterbury they have this thing about not over scanning people (I am unsure what this is like in other districts). She sent me for bloods 2 days in a row to see if my HCG was still rising. Waiting for these results was horrific I was trying to work as people did not know I was pregnant and not stress as can harm the baby. My levels were rising but not like they should have been at the thought 11 weeks. This left a blank whole and 10 days until my already scheduled scan. The midwife made the call to just wait as our ultrasound place is crazy busy.

When we went for the scan everything was thankfully and luckily ok, but this was 14 days after I bled and the way that physically and mentally wears on your body was something I don’t wish on anyone. Since talking to more people about this a lot of women can have this and a friend of my mums who was a midwife quite a few years ago said this use to be quite common and it was considered a final clean out from left over blood which usually comes out each period. I wish I had discussed this more when it happened but because I was before the 12 weeks it was my first baby and a surprise, I kept quiet and grieved with my fiancé and mum. Luckily my story was one of the lucky ones, but it doesn’t make those 14 days any less real. You get a glimpse at what people really go through and how heartbreakingly awful it is.

My whole first trimester I was horrifically ill with sickness and vomiting each day. This stopped about 16 weeks and since then I have had the odd day of vomiting. In my 12 and 20 weeks scan they have monitored my pregnancy closer to make sure there is no slight tear or anything which may have been where the blood come from. At this point they cannot locate anything.

I have been so anxious now and I feel that gush of liquid more than I would like to admit. Every time I feel my baby move around these days I smile because I came so close to not getting that feeling and I know how lucky I am to be only 11ish weeks off meeting out little one.

I know just knowing one person’s story may have made those 14 days slightly more bearable because now I know my symptoms weren’t a miscarriage but when you are in the early stages and no one knows you don’t know what is normal and what isn’t. Your midwife can tell you it’s fine and not enough blood but sometimes knowing someone else has been there may make people understand more. I now know I did not lose enough blood but when you are going through it you think you must have why else would you be bleeding..

If after reading this you’d be happy to share your own experience of pregnancy, please email me at hello@shesaidyes.co.nz to send you one of the pages (or you can send a photo of your own pregnancy journal)