There was no real consideration that after 41 years I did indeed know my body and when something was going very wrong.

The night I got engaged was the night I started to miscarry. I was 41 and 8 weeks pregnant with our first baby.

There are many things I’ve still got to process from the experience but one that still really stands out is the “one size fits all” guidance that health professionals seem to follow when dealing with loss in the first trimester.

While everyone I met or spoke to during my experience were compassionate and kind to both me and my partner, the initial advice I sought (i.e., what did I do? should I go to A&E?) was very much led by a specific criteria that required me to have bled a certain amount or feel a particular pain. There was no real consideration that after 41 years I did indeed know my body and when something was going very wrong. Instead I felt like my women’s intuition was translated into medical hysteria.

Although I told the 111 operator I knew I was having a miscarriage, because I could not categorically say I had “flooded a pad” or had passed “a mug full of material” (partly because I’d watched it go down the toilet and who’s really measuring that sh*t when your world is falling apart?) I was told to wait; to not panic and that a clinician would call me back.
We waited 3 hours to be told to go to A&E, which we were already doing as by that time the pain had gotten unbearable and the bleeding had not stopped.

At hospital the criteria questions started again, this time by reference to egg cups. Of course, I had no idea. By then I’d been bleeding heavily for 4 hours. I was too scared to look in the loo. I just wanted someone to listen to me, and trust me and my gut when I said I was miscarrying.

…is it naive to assume they would have access to scanning equipment on A&E given half the population can get pregnant?

Thankfully the nurse understood I was broken by what was happening and needed answers. I’ll always appreciate that he put us in a treatment room rather than back in the main waiting room to give us some privacy while waiting for a scan that never came. (Be honest, is it naive or just arrogant to assume they would have access to scanning equipment on A&E given half the population can get pregnant?)

Instead, and despite being told eventually what I knew, I was asked to return to the EPU the next day for a scan (the same day I should have had my first 8 week appointment with the midwife). That experience didn’t just rub salt in the wound, it fully unpicked it. I remember being mortified that I had to go to the same building where I would have had my 12 week scan and eventually given birth to my baby. Consequently, when we finally got to the door of the unit I could not go in. Where was the back door or side entrance? Or where were the clinic hours designated specially for women in my position?

There were pregnant women everywhere and I didn’t (couldn’t) share their happiness or bear to see a future I wouldn’t now get to live out; certainly not the day after I’d watched one I thought I’d nurtured and had loved disappear down the loo.

I also did not want to be the depressing reminder for those women that things could go wrong, the “poor woman” who tainted their otherwise happy experience by not being able to keep her hormone addled body in check for 2 minutes in order to stop crying.

As it turns out I didn’t stop crying. Not through the ultrasound, internal scan, blood tests. Not when the lovely sonographer sought to reassure me that 1 in 4 women experience a miscarriage.

Quite frankly, society needs to get over its issues with vaginas.

I got very little reassurance from that statistic at the time (and even now if I’m honest). Firstly, all my brain kept focusing on was my failure to make the successful “75% team” and my apparent arrogance that I would have been able to have a healthy baby at 41. Secondly, I quickly found out that despite its prevalence there was a shocking lack of conversation surrounding miscarriage that left me feeling isolated but also trapped. As though someone had locked me in a house and switched off all the lights. I ended up feeling completely stranded at a time when we thought we had a clear route forwards for the future.

I blame that initial isolation mainly on the undercurrent of secrecy and stigma surrounding women’s reproductive health. Quite frankly, society needs to get over its issues with vaginas.

For that, I will forever be grateful to TWGGE and its community for helping me realise I was not alone.

I was lucky, I had the personal support and frame of mind to reach out to others, ask the awkward questions and answer my own. It wasn’t easy but it helped me realise I wasn’t alone in this process. I could begin to navigate a way out. For that, I will forever be grateful to TWGGE and its community for helping me realise I was not alone and that I could (actually, was entitled) to talk about my experience.

Miscarriage is an event that affects a huge number of people. Therefore, it deserves a consistent dialogue to help others receive the support and reassurance they need at this time.

Written by Adele Parsons