"Sad time made a little easier"

I was thrilled to discover I was pregnant on the 6th November so devastated when I started to bleed 3 weeks later. I was advised to contact the Early Pregnancy Unit and from there to monitor my bleeding as I couldn't get an appointment for 5 days.

I attended EPU and was seen fairly swiftly at EPU, however, that is just an assessment, I had had to traipse around the hospital (with a full bladder) to go for a scan. Unfortunately the scan was not what we were hoping and so it was back to EPU.

I needed to attend EPU again 48 hours later for further blood tests, then again a few days later to see a consultant.

This was my only real negative experience and after discovering that I had in fact miscarried, I was offered a tablet to move things along and popped into a side room. I sat in that side room for over an hour with no one talking to me, letting me know what was happening. I was eventually seen and told that as I was not travelling by car, I could not have the tablet after all.

I found this part experience of the experience to be the worst, however, in no way do I blame the staff, they are simply under resourced. All of the staff I encountered were brilliant and supportive, but simply don't have the facilities or the staff to meet everyone's needs.

My only suggestion is that in my case, I would have found it helpful if there had been some sort of support pack with details of miscarriage support groups, details about what to expect to happen as things progress etc. I was given the opportunity to ask questions of the staff, but to be honest, I was so emotionally wrapped up in the news that I had lost my baby, I had no idea what questions to ask. I also appreciate that no everyone will want or need a support pack, it was just my personal experience that I would have preferred to have something rather than Dr Google (which terrified me with all the miscarriage horror stories, very few blogs or forums that give a realistic idea rather than worst case scenarios).

All this said, I consider myself to have been very lucky to have been seen by the EPU. Miscarriage affects 1 in 4 pregnancies and many women are unable to get an EPU appointment due to lack of funding/resources and are dealt with by A&E, whom I am sure also do a fantastic job, but are also incredibly stretched and probably unable to provide the emotional support that is needed at this time.

So thank you to everyone that saw me over those horrible couple of weeks and in the nicest possible way, I hope I don't need use of your services again in the future.