Pregnancy Loss

Dealing with a miscarriage can be devastating. While many may pass off a miscarriage as a pregnancy that "just wasn't meant to be", these words rarely help to relieve your grief. Although a miscarriage can be an isolating experience, it doesn't have to be. Women who are or who have previously dealt with a miscarriage are often a great resource to those currently suffering from a pregnancy loss. Share your words with us and share your support with other women.

It is best to avoid using stimulants during pregnancy. Amphetamines and dextroamphetamines are powerful drugs and when taken during pregnancy, they can cause miscarriage, early labor or birth defects. You may want to ask other women if they have had personal experience with this.


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little bleeding after miscarriage


Hi. I was 8 weeks pregnant when the doctor decided to do a D&C. He claimed it was a blighted ovum and said it was very common. I had all signs and symptoms for 8 weeks pregnant and with each sonogram was very hopeful to see a yolk sac and fetal pole.

Due to the fact that neither ever appeared the Dr. suggested a D&C. The hospital was a nightmare of an experience and I have chosen to find a Dr. affiliated with a different hospital for the "next" time. Hoping there will be a successful pregnancy someday.

The day of the D&C I bled a little bit; enough to fill a panty-liner. I really haven't bled since. Only spotting if even.... I'm so nervous. Everyone seems to have experienced bleeding for a few days.

I never bled before the D&C and now I feel I didn't bleed after!


Alice






Is there hope?

I lost my first baby when I was 15 weeks pregnant on 1, July 2006, I lost my 2nd baby on 21st September 2006 when I was 7 weeks pregnant and I lost my 3rd pregnancy on 4th February 2007 when I was again 7 weeks pregnant. I tell my husband I am living my nightmare at the moment.

I took a week off work whilst I was miscarrying for the 2nd two miscarriages. I was absolutely devastated but part of me felt I had to keep going with life. I pretended to the outside world I was fine, partly, I think, because I got the feeling from them that it's no big deal. Well, 2 weeks ago whilst in work as a primary school teacher I broke down and have since handed in my notice. I need to grieve for my 3 losses and get emotionally strong for the future. What annoys me, is the fact I feel I have to justify to people why I feel so lousy and sad all the time, I just wish they would acknowledge how awful the last 9 months have been.

I have started seeing a counselor so I pray she will help me and I am allowing myself just to feel. I no longer pretend everything is fine when it isn't and I am looking out for myself and my marriage.

Waiting, it is the waiting for tests to be done that is the very frustrating thing. I was told after the first two losses that things only start to happen after you miscarry a third time so when I unfortunately miscarried for the third time I thought well at least things will start to happen in terms of finding out if there is anything wrong. How wrong was I, and when they postponed my tests for a further month it was like a blow to my head.

Time is of no big deal to the doctors here, they don't understand how when things are being done e.g. investigations I feel more in control therefore I feel stronger emotionally. So at the moment I am playing a waiting game and if they postpone me again well then I am going to have to change doctors or do something to get things moving along.

I am trying to stay positive and I have hope now that we will have our own baby, which a week ago I wouldn't have been able to say. I think I'm right to give myself time to heal and to feel. I pray that things will turn out right but that doesn't lessen the pain and desperation of the here and now.

I pray for all of you who are in the same boat, I pray you have a loving supportive partner and family to help you through this long and difficult time. I hope that one day in the not so distant future we will all be holding our own babies.


Nicky






I Just Feel Empty

It was March 28th 2007. When I got up that morning I went about my normal routine of getting my son ready to go to daycare. I went to the bathroom to take care of business and when I wiped I saw the faintest spotting that you could imagine but it was spotting none the less. I knew then and there that something wasn't right.

I took my son to daycare and after I dropped him off I went to the bathroom to see how things were going and I was bleeding heavier then before. I figured I would go home have something to eat and put my feet up that things might taper off and that would be it! I picked up some pads on the way home.

At home I made myself something to eat and was relaxing when the cramps started a lot different then the cramps I had experienced before. I knew I had to go and see a doctor as soon as possible as I was still waiting for my first prenatal visit.

My best friend Tanya came with me to the doctor’s office as my boyfriend worked out of town during the week. The doctor said that it didn't look too promising and that he felt that I was at high risk for a spontaneous abortion. He sent me for blood tests and an ultrasound. The ultrasound wasn't until a couple of weeks later, which wouldn’t do me, much good.

I called my boyfriend who came and got me as soon as he heard what was going on. We decided to head down to Orangeville so that he could take care of me and still get some work accomplished. The moment that he hugged me I started sobbing; this wasn't fair why was this happening to us?

The ride to Orangeville an hour and a half away was almost unbearable as the cramps got worse and worse. About eight that night I passed a bunch of major clots and I felt numb! I was so sad but for some reason I was totally unable to express it until I went to go to bed and it hit me that I had just lost my baby.

My body had gone from warm, safe, nurturing environment for my baby to a swift and effective disposal unit and I was so angry at myself, at my boyfriend, but more than anything I wanted my baby back and that was when I started crying and I didn't think I was ever going to be able to stop. I now do believe that you can die from a broken heart because it hurts that bad.

There are still days since it has been a little under a month since my miscarriage that I can't stomach looking at babies and when I do I am so enraged that mine never even had a chance. I know I still have a lot of healing to do emotionally and mentally. I know that it is something that I will never forget but day by day I sure do hope it gets a little easier to deal with.


Leigh






our tiny, ephemeral light

These are the most painful words I've ever written. Early Thursday morning, in the depths of the night, we lost our baby at fourteen weeks. We may never know why this happened.

We do not yet know if the baby was a boy or a girl, and though it is nameless and unknown to us, we will always love and mourn for our lost baby. We are going to plant a tree tomorrow in memory of our first child to help us grieve and remember the love we felt for our baby, though we only felt its light in our lives for a short time.

Justin and I know that we will heal soon, but like all deep wounds, there will be scars, constant reminders of our pain. We are a very close and strong couple and love each other intensely. We will recover, and plan to try again to have a baby when we are healed emotionally and physically. We know it won't replace the child we've lost, but it will bring us a chance to share our joy and love with another soul. In the meantime, we plan on nurturing our own relationship and preparing for the next pregnancy physically and spiritually.

If you want to know what happened, read on, but please be advised what follows is both graphic and difficult, painful, to read. Some of it may be inaccurate, or a bit jumbled, because I was in shock throughout the experience. I am writing this to record my experience, because it helps me, and because it may ease someone else's pain if they have experienced such a tragedy. There are no answers to this question in the words that follow, merely the experience of the greatest pain we've ever felt, the pain of losing our child before we ever became a mother and father.

For much of last week, I felt moderate cramping, but I was assured from previous doctor's visits and pregnancy books that this was merely my uterus stretching; though at times the cramps seemed surprisingly intense, they had from the beginning, but my baby, now four inches long, was, after all, growing rapidly. I felt a bit tired and unpleasant on Wednesday as I was out shopping, but I assumed this was the normal pregnancy discomfort I had become accustomed to.

Then on Wednesday night while I slept, I began experiencing contractions in my sleep. I would wake, disoriented, and think I had dreamed them. But at eight a.m. I experienced a cramp so strong it awoke me; I rushed to the bathroom and saw bloody mucous that I knew meant my baby would probably not make it.

We rushed to the Claremore Indian Hospital--I was shaking with fear and desperation, the silent ride seemed long and invasive--and were admitted immediately; the doctors hooked me up to an I.V. to give me morphine and hopefully stop the contractions. A pelvic exam confirmed that my cervix was closed, though a little blood was present, from where it was unclear, and through the monitor of an ultrasound we saw our baby's perfect little body, its heart beating, suspended upside down in my womb.

The ultrasound tech told us it looked like a fourteen and a half week baby, very healthy in size. I felt relieved, but my contractions continued and I was admitted to the hospital for observation. The obstetrician mentioned that possibly a UTI was causing the contractions, that they would continue to try and stop them and administer antibiotics.

As the nurse wheeled me to my room, we passed several rooms with three beds, two occupied and one vacant; I pled silently that I would not be a third occupant in one of them. When I was slipped into a silent, private corner spot, I sighed gratefully. Justin had gone home to get me some clothing, books, and personal articles, and the wait for his return felt eternal. I talked to my baby--I can't remember what I said. Maybe it was, "Please be okay." I don't know.

I settled into my hospital room somewhat reassured; I changed into my pajama pants and favorite Star Wars shirt, almost certain I would be going home tomorrow. I held my barely swollen belly protectively, my belly that Justin had placed his hand on protectively, inquisitively, so many times, that I had watched firm and push outward until my pants stopped fitting a week ago, that I'd been anxious to see grow with my child snuggled safely within, a testament to the love my husband and I had nurtured all these years.

I called some friends and asked them to come visit me because I was bored and lonely; there is no cable t.v. in the world of IHS. But by the time Odessa and Chloe arrived to keep me company, I had become increasingly aware that the contractions were becoming more intense and more frequent; just after they left the pain was so severe I had been switched from morphine to demerol to finally nubane. But the pain was gripping, seizing, I couldn't breathe; it cut right through the medication--it felt as if my pelvis was ripping apart, it was a burning, searing, from the very outer edges of my hip bones down to my bowels--and I knew with each pain that I was going to lose our baby. But the baby was fine, I told myself, imagining its perfect form securely in my womb. The physical pain was nothing compared to the psychic pain that each contraction brought. I was screaming; Justin was perfect, solid, held my hand helplessly as my nails ripped into his calloused skin with each pain.

The night nurse in these hours, Wil, a flaming, petite, mulleted native bedecked with turquoise, was my angel. He checked on me constantly, insisted to the doctor that I was in a state of serious distress, advocated for more medication, treated me like a woman losing a baby (no one else did). The doctor came down and confirmed that I was in labor and it could not be stopped; my body was trying to expel the baby. "Why?" I silently begged. This wasn't real. The room swirled around me in a medicated nightmare. I wretched and vomited; my body was completely beyond my control. The doctors left me alone to labor, but Wil continued to check on me.

Justin left the room for the moment, maybe to get a snack; I can't remember. I rocked back and forth on the bed trying to breathe through the pain, then suddenly I felt a burst of warm fluid explode from within me; my pants and underwear were covered in what felt like urine. I inhaled in shock, I stood; I dropped my pants; I screamed a gasp, a horrid expression of what I knew was inevitable. I began to cry hysterically. I waddled penguin-like to the toilet with my pants hanging slightly above my knees, and stood over the toilet trying to figure out what to do, staring at them in disbelief and horror, the bathroom door wide open.

A male nurse or doctor walked in the hospital room door without knocking, saw me hovering pants-down in the toilet room and embarassed, said, "Oh" or "Excuse me" or something of that sort and started to back out of the room--I yelled some almost certainly barely coherent variation of, "Help me, please, my water just broke!" As the words "This isn't happening" echoed through me mind over and over again. And yet, I knew from the sight of the waters that losing my child was inevitable, and hoped it would happen quickly to end my agony.

I stripped my pants off and hobbled naked below my Star Wars shirt back to the bed, where the nurse laid down a pad to soak up the blood that had begun to flow from within me. At this point I began rapidly slipping into a serious state of confusion. There were faces around me, mostly unfamiliar, cold and clinical, in the dark room, telling me that my body needed to push out my child and they would give me Pitocin to aid this. I was crying, my heart was exploding through my tear ducts, the physical pain was relentless but the psychic pain was toxic; I felt as if I were dying.

The doctors kept asking me why I was crying, was I in pain? I couldn't answer. Maybe I answered, I don't know. Why was I crying? My body was killing my child. But my child was alive...I kept picturing the monitor, looking to my helpless husband, was I making this worse for him? The doctors seemed so clinical and cold, I felt so exposed, lying legs spread in the blood that now seemed to flow ceaselessly. I was hysterical; Wil convinced the doctors to give me more nubane to calm me and again they left me to relax; I drifted alone for a while in a narcotic-induced half-sleep, drifting in and out of consciousness.

I awoke to feel something warm and large pass from my body and knew instinctively it was my child; I reached to touch it, paralyzed with fear, then leaned over and called for the nurse. "I think I just passed my baby," I sobbed. Justin, who had been snoring softly on the chair next to me, awoke suddenly and exclaimed, "What?"

"Don't look, honey," I told him. "Please don't look."

I felt it with my hand, afraid to see my child lying there on the bed. I felt the cord attached to something within me, began to pull it, hoping to be able to stand up or move and free myself from the position I was in where I felt my baby laying against my thigh. Then I saw it, I was pulling on its leg, its tiny foot. Its perfect foot. Horrified, I laid back, sobbing, distraught. I didn't look again.

It seemed many minutes passed before the nurse and doctors arrived in my room; I was laying on my side trying not to crush my child. The moments that followed were a blur. "Do you want to see the baby?" they asked me. "No," I replied in shock, later wishing I had but knowing I couldn't take it. The doctors cut the umbilical cord and moved the baby away from me in a dish of some kind. The next hour or so was a blur of agony as the doctors put their hands inside of me, trying to remove the placenta, assessing what remained within my womb--"Push!" the told me--the wrong words months too early; I screamed in pain; I could no longer differentiate between physical and emotional agony.

More nubane was generously given and I began to succumb to a mental numbness. Eventually, the doctors declared that they would have to perform surgery in the morning to empty my womb. I felt humiliation, distress, at the sheer exposure of lying there naked from the waist down, covered in blood. Justin was strong and seemed unaffected by my physical appearance, more concerned with my safety and mental state and likely silently racked with his own anguish.

Eventually someone cleaned me up a bit so I could use the bathroom, and there on the bathroom sink I saw my child, tiny and perfect. It was beautiful. My heart felt as if it would explode from within me. As the doctors were leaving, I heard them saying it looked like a sixteen week baby. How could this happen? There seemed to be nothing wrong with my child. It had been alive and healthy just hours before. My body expelled it for no known reason. I begged the doctors to give me an explanation, but they had none. They treated me as if they were casting me for a broken leg, tidied me up and left me to grieve in silent darkness as I stared for hours out the hospital window to a view of nothing in particular.

They took me into surgery the next morning, again asking me not to cry; how could I not cry? Even as the Versed crept warmly into my veins and I looked to my husband's beautiful face, I felt I would stop breathing from grief. In a few seconds it seemed I was awake once more, wheeled on a gurney to my room, past Justin's parents, my beautiful in-laws, and my cousin Heather, faces full of love and heartache for me. Hot, giant tears flowed ceaselessly from my uncontrollable body. I don't remember what they said; I don't know how long we were there after that. My brother and Jenny brought me flowers, and moments later the doctor came in to speak with us.

Again I felt as if I were being casted for a broken limb. Maybe they see this all the time, too often, I told myself. She rather clinically told us to refrain from intercourse for a month, to wait to conceive again for three months. She gave me other minor instructions; she told me to continue taking prenatal vitamins and start taking folic acid for my next pregnancy. She instructed me that with my next pregnancy I should avoid intercourse for the first five months, and throughout the pregnancy restrict my activity to only light activity and work. She gave no explanation of why this happened except for the possibility of the urinary tract infection I never knew I had, which may have polluted the amniotic sac and caused me to go into labor far to early. She told me there was nothing I could have done to stop it, that these things just happen. We will learn more when we return in a couple of weeks.

"What about my grief? What about the way we feel?" I begged.

She sent in a grief counselor, a gentle, older man of very little use to us in our state of sorrow. He talked about the stages of grief and gave us his card.

And now I am left with an emptiness unlike anything I've ever known. I know it will heal, but like all wounds, there will be a deep scar.

We loved you so much, and yet we'll never know you. For a short time, you filled our lives with your light and that is all we have together. But we will always love you.

I called the hospital to see if I could receive counseling; the doctor asked me if I had a minister. I told her I was Buddhist; she whispered back and forth an undignified conversation with someone else for a moment in which I distinctly heard "Buddhist? What?" more than once; she advised me to talk to my mother. I told her this was my first child and it was dead and I needed to speak with a therapist, someone familiar with the pain of losing a child; she told me apologetically that I was no longer covered under IHS since I am no longer pregnant, but good luck to me, and condolences.

I called a pregnancy loss support group; the well-intended older woman I spoke with told me that my baby is with Jesus and I will see him or her again soon. I thought I would break the phone. I wish I believed that; I wish I could wrap my grief up in simplicity, in blind faith, and not face the reality of my pain. I cannot.

Yet I am so grateful for the friends that have brought us food, wine, and love the past two days. They are helping us stay anchored.

Tomorrow we will plant that tree, and perhaps it will help us to heal a little.


Kristi






Just as I'd begun to stop worrying

The day after we got a positive pregnancy test, I left on a business trip and upon a bumpy landing immediately experienced heavy spotting. Panicked I went to the local Wal-Mart and got another pack of pregnancy tests all which showed I was still pregnant.

I was out of town for a week and called into the doctor who asked me to continue to monitor the bleeding and come in immediately when I returned. During my appointment, my husband and I were so elated to see the baby and hear the heartbeat.

However, the explained bleeding continued each week and each week I had an ultrasound which showed the baby growing right on track.

Around 15 weeks I experienced a huge flooding gush at a restaurant - raced to the emergency room to find that baby was still there dancing away. They finally saw a huge clot and said maybe it was bleeding out.

I continued to bleed and each week baby's growth was confirmed and we learned it was a little girl we named Sara Evelyn.

At exactly eighteen weeks I was lying in bed and experienced a sharp pain. I relaxed until the pain subsided. When I stood up a huge gush of brown watery liquid flooded down my legs. By the time we called the hospital, I had another gush. When we went to the emergency they found my membranes had ruptured and there was no fluid around the baby though her heart beat strongly.

The doctors frightened us with talk of infected uterus, lost fertility and eventual death of our baby due to no lung or muscle development. We consented to induce labor, which she did not survive.

They say the blood clot disintegrated the membranes and was probably due to a defect in the placenta.

Now two weeks later we're looking forward to trying again but anxious to do everything we can, not to let this happen again. But it seems so out of our control. I'm afraid the doctors will just tell us to try again and not run any tests since we only had one miscarriage. I don't want to risk another baby's life on chance.

We will stay in prayer. It's in His hands ultimately.

Thanks for reading about our experience.


Shawn







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