"Spending 10.5 hours in A&E whilst having a Miscarriage"

Last week, when I was 10 weeks pregnant, I suddenly started bleeding at work. I spoke to 111 and was advised to go to the nearest A&E to be checked and scanned.

I got myself to St Thomas’ Hospital in London and checked into the A&E department at 5pm to be scanned. I waited for a little while and then had some blood taken and a nurse had a feel of my tummy before sending me back to the waiting room to wait to be scanned. I was very worried about my bleeding and desperate to be scanned so I could know as quickly as possibly whether there was a heartbeat and it was just benign bleeding or whether I was losing my baby. As the hours passed, I became incredibly hungry but was too worried to leave the A&E waiting room to get food in case I got called up and missed my chance to be seen, so I kept waiting without any food. My husband eventually managed to get a babysitter at home in Kingston and get the train to Waterloo to bring me food and sit with me.

After 6 hours (at 11pm) my husband had to go home again so the babysitter could leave. During this time I asked the receptionists when I might be seen and they said that they were trying to get me a bed but they were all full, and that the gynaecologist was currently very busy.

After 6.5 hours I finally got a bed. I tried to doze a little bit and could hear other patients on the ward being seen and updated by doctors/ nurses. Nobody came to see me in my bay for a further 4 hours. Finally, at 3:30am, after a total of 10.5 hours in A&E, the gynaecologist came to see me. She did a brief physical exam before telling me I couldn’t be scanned because it was out of hours, and I’d have to be booked in for a scan in a couple of days’ time. At this point I was in disbelief - I’d waited 10.5 hours specifically on the promise of a scan only to be told I couldn’t be scanned out of hours. I was desperate to know if the pregnancy was ok.

I had to get a taxi home to Kingston from Waterloo at 3:30am whilst still bleeding with no clarify on what was going on with my pregnancy.

The next day I managed to get booked in for a scan at St Thomas’ (after initially being told they had nothing for 2 days), and it was confirmed I’d had a miscarriage and the pregnancy had stopped developing at 6 weeks. I was completely devastated, and in a state of shock. I’d had a scan a few weeks earlier which had shown a heartbeat and normal growth.

This whole experience was very distressing. Sitting in A&E for that long was horrible, and I only endured it because I was so desperate to be scanned and had been told I would be.