"Missed miscarriage experience"

I had a missed miscarriage earlier this year which was identified during a 12 week scan at RAH.

It has taken me a while to process what happened.

I had no signs of a miscarriage and unfortunately the sonographer confirmed there was no heartbeat and the baby was measuring at 6 weeks. We were then taken through to the EPU where we were given leaflets on options for medical management and were advised that we would have to wait 7 days for another scan to confirm the loss of the pregnancy.

The midwifes in the EPU were great but I couldn’t help but feel that I was just a statistic. I was advised that after the 7 days, if my body did not pass naturally, and the second scan confirmed the loss,  then I would be offered medical management. 

Those 7 days were simply awful. My body done nothing.

7 days later we went back and the sonographer confirmed what had been expected the week before.

We were then taken back to the EPU where a doctor from Gynacology advised that I would have to wait another 10 days for medical management as there was no space in the ward. I could not believe this, I was so upset. I had spent the past 7 days trying to survive until the second scan and then to be told I’d have to wait for another 10 days was simply heartbreaking. The doctor cried with me. She also felt useless. 

Another 10 days- how is this allowed? This all happened on a Thursday.

By the next day, the Friday night, I started to get severe blood clotting. I think the shock of what had happened had finally passed through my body. They tell you to expect a “heavy period”. This was nothing like this. 

I phoned triage who were great and called me up to the hospital on the Saturday evening. I was checked by a lovely junior doctor who managed to get me an appointment in the gynaecology ward the following day- the Sunday. On the Saturday evening, I was convinced I had passed the pregnancy.

I attended the Gynacology ward on the Sunday only to have the unfortunate news that the majority of the pregnancy had not passed. The doctor was lovely. I was given two options- medical management or vacuum. Given my body had started to pass naturally, I believed it just needed a final push with medical management. I was wrong- it stopped my bleeding all together. I was admitted to the Gynacology ward on the Sunday. I was in a room of 4 beds alone - how could there initially not have been any availability for another 10 days? 

There was a lot of information to process and several pills to take, so much so that during the process I called a nurse to ask what happened next. They were rude and abrupt, telling me I’d already been told. I was in the hospital, in a shared ward, alone. I feel I could have been shown more compassion and when I look back on this hospital experience this sticks in my mind. 

A different nurse took over at night and was there to hold my hand when I had a last minute manual extraction of the pregnancy. This process was traumatising. I can’t thank them enough for taking care of me.

The following day when I was discharged, I was left with minimal advice. I didn’t even know what the procedure I ended up getting was called - I was given a letter upon leaving the hospital stating that products of conception were removed by manual extraction and have been sent for testing, and that results would be sent. Nobody told me what any of this meant. For the weeks that followed, I would come home from work expecting to have a letter saying there was something wrong with the baby.

Overall, I’ve been left feeling traumatised from this experience and with help from a miscarriage counsellor, it has taken me a while to understand what happened.  I felt abandoned by the EPU. To be told that there was 0 beds on a Thursday, only three days later to go into an empty ward. This is very misleading and quite simply not fair on women who are in this situation. I left the hospital with a note with no idea what it meant. 

I feel the NHS needs to do better on its management of miscarriage.