"I miscarried at 12 weeks of a donor egg IVF pregnancy"

I miscarried at 12 weeks of a donor egg IVF pregnancy. I had been threatening to miscarry from the start with spotting and scans measuring small for dates. My IVF clinic was abroad and the doctors I had access to in the UK didn't seem to understand the immune issues I was being treated for. In retrospect I think the pregnancy could have been saved if I could have received treatment from someone who understood about these issues. However from the start it was treated as an inevitability, in the lap of the gods, with no converted effort to save it and no advice apart from that which my IVF clinic could offer remotely.

I went for a late booking in appointment at 10 weeks, and asked to see the consultant and have a scan as I was concerned given the earlier scan results. This wasn't granted, and I was booked in for a routine scan some weeks away. I was admitted to A&E with bleeding the night before the scan was due. The scan the following morning showed the baby had died. I was given the option of an operation or awaiting the miscarriage. I think I asked to have the operation if the miscarriage hadn't happened naturally within a few days, and ended up miscarrying at home 4 days later.

I was only really aware of what might happen during a miscarriage because of a Mumsnet thread on the practicalities of miscarriage. The information from the hospital was quite sanitised. One piece of advice from a nurse confused me, as she said to come to hospital if I haemorrhaged, with the blood running like a tap. I lost so much blood I fainted twice on the bathroom floor, but since it was coming out in clots not like a tap, I didn't think this counted. In retrospect, I should probably have gone in, and was anaemic for months afterwards.

Most people who were involved were kind. The junior doctor who admitted me was fantastic. I was usually seen in a private room in the EPU. Low points were a nurse in the EPU asking me why I was crying, was it because I didn't like having blood tests, and I had to say I was crying because my baby has died. My GP, when I called him to ask whether I could have a medically managed miscarriage (which wasn't offered at the hospital) saying brusquely that most people just go for the scrape. Scraping my previous baby seemed unimaginably cruel. And about a month after the miscarriage, I received the paperwork for the urgent consultants appointment I had requested at my booking in appointment in an effort to save my pregnancy for a months time away.