What people don't tell you about miscarriage and its aftermath
My experience with miscarriage
Did you know? One in five women experience a miscarriage.
I think the doctor meant to comfort me with this statistic as she explained I just had a miscarriage at 10 weeks.
I started the day with increasing abdominal pain but having never been pregnant before, nor miscarried before, I thought this painful sensation in my abdomen was the desire to pass motion. It truly felt indistinguishable from passing motion, except when I sat on the toilet several times that morning, nothing came out. I thought I had food poisoning and curled up in fetal position on the bed while I persuaded my husband to take over my church duties that day. I grabbed my laptop to play games, but as having my abdomen spasm itself in knots was not conducive to playing games, I napped.
The bleeding began when I woke about two hours later. Sitting up, there was a gush of blood akin to the beginning of my period. I didn’t feel alarmed; I experienced spotting, some blood mixed with mucus, throughout my pregnancy. THIS blood looked fresh and red, though. I texted my husband and suggested we go to the hospital once he’s home; there was bleeding and now that I was fully conscious, the desire to pass motion came back, relentlessly. This is something that ought to get checked.
Throughout the ride to the hospital, the pain in my abdomen intensified. I shifted the front seat’s backrest down and turned myself slightly ever so often to bear with the pain. In the car with my husband, as I chatted and even giggled through the pain, I thought of the last time I was a “passenger princess” when my mum drove me to the clinic with the front seat in the same position. I had appendicitis then, and this pain feels worse than appendicitis. I have decently high pain tolerance; post appendix surgery I barely needed painkillers and could run a 5km one month after, but now there were moments I would grimace and groan softly in pain. When we reached the hospital, I could barely sit still; I had to stand every once in a while or the urge to poop will take over me, and this time I could feel a little more trickling of blood.
When it was my turn to see the doctor, I finally realised that something was badly wrong through the way the scan went. I lay there with my feet in stirrups - the doctor first scanned my abdomen, her eyebrows furrowed with concern above the mask as she looked at the ultasound imaging screen. Then the doctor said, I’ll do a transvaginal ultrasound to get a closer look. She used a speculum and she said, there’s quite a bit of blood, so I’ll help you clean it. The doctor was professional the whole time, making reassuring sounds like, I just need to clean a bit more, sorry, I know it’s painful. Later I realised she must have done a suction aspiration on me, cleaning out the blood and the remains of the fetus that had already detached from the uterine wall.
When the doctor said the cleaning was complete, I felt the pain in my abdomen diminish significantly. However, when I got off the examination chair, I could see so much blood caught on the absorbent underpad beneath me. I knew then that I have miscarried.
Then the doctor sat me down with my husband and explained I just had a complete miscarriage. Who knew that there are multiple types of miscarriages? In my case, the body decided the fetus was not viable and started to eject the fetus on its own. In some cases, the fetus stopped growing, and a medical procedure needs to be done to take it out. I had since learned about a chemical miscarriage, where the embryo implants, but the positive pregnancy test is soon followed by a negative result and bleeding around the fifth week.
The doctor also emphasised that miscarriage is usually not the woman’s fault and would usually happen in the first trimester. It could be chromosomal abnormalities, or as I later found on Dr Google, a blighted ovum where an embryo implants, but the embryo didn’t develop. It could be a maternal health condition like autoimmune diseases or thyroid disease, uterine abnormalities and hormonal infections. I already had an inkling that things are not looking good a few weeks back, as the ultrasound lab technician who scanned me during my seventh week said the fetus was small and had a slow fetal heartbeat.
However, a “complete” miscarriage doesn’t end with the fetus coming out; I continued cramping and bleeding for at least a week after. The abdominal pain which I now recognise as contractions stopped, but some other abdominal pain continued. I had to take painkillers to ease the pain. It was bad enough that once the painkillers wore off, I’ll be wakened by the pain. A large wound remained where the fetus detached from the uterine wall and took some time to heal. I was only at 10 weeks when I miscarried, and it seems that a miscarriage at an even later week will take even longer to heal. A successful pregnancy will also result in an even bigger wound, so I understand now why in Asian cultures, mothers spend a month recuperating.
It’s possible to get an infection as one heals. In between, I had more abdominal pain after two pain-free weeks, and a scan revealed liquid in the uterus. A mere 8.8mm and I was doubled in pain. Broad-spectrum antibiotics largely solved the infection, but antibiotics also wiped out the good bacteria in my gut and triggered a bad bout of diarrhea and really bad cramps.
But finally, five weeks post miscarriage, my period came again. With that, this episode of pregnancy and miscarriage has officially come to its end.
On the one hand, it’s a comfort to know I could do nothing to prevent the miscarriage.
On the other, it’s not a comfort to know I could do nothing to prevent the miscarriage.
Some call it nature, evolution’s way of ensuring the survival of the fittest. Some call it God’s mysterious plan and testing.
I wish I didn’t have to experience it.
Nonetheless, when my husband and I try for kids again, we will be going in with our eyes wide open, fully aware of the possibility of a miscarriage and what that entails. This time, I will guard my heart and hold my breath a little more, until the baby is safely delivered.