Shattered dreams

One in five pregnancies in Ireland – 14,000 annually – end in a miscarriage, yet it is an issue most are uncomfortable talking about. An East Clare woman, who has tried desperately to have a baby for four years, suffered a miscarriage on her first pregnancy six weeks ago. She tells her story to Dearbhla Acheson

“AT the age of 33, a gynaeocologist told me that I was going to have problems getting pregnant but this didn’t really register with me.
In my eyes, I was young, healthy, recently married. How hard could it be? Yes, I’d heard of people who needed help to get pregnant but that wouldn’t be me; of course I’d have a baby.
I had been told following a number of hospital stays with abdominal pain, severe bleeding every month and a lot of tests, including keyhole surgery, that I had stage four endometriosis. Endometriosis occurs when uteran tissue is found outside the womb in other places or attached to other organs. This tissue bleeds each month and causes scarring and tissue damage. The doctor told me this can lead to pain and infertility, which may require treatment.
After a year of trying to conceive, we went back to the gynaecologist and for almost four years, we underwent testing, took fertility medications and finally, last year, we decided to try IVF. I found it a terrible ordeal, physically and emotionally.
I got pregnant on our second attempt at IVF and I will never forget the feeling when I saw the positive pregnancy test. We jumped up and down and then I stopped jumping in case I’d cause some damage. Then we hugged and laughed and cried all at the same time.
We hadn’t told anyone that we were having fertility treatment, but all of a sudden I wanted to tell everyone that I was pregnant. My husband was more cautious and in hindsight, I know he was scared.
Within days, I couldn’t help myself taking a longer than normal browse through baby shops, subconsciously looking into every buggy that passed me, picking out names and constantly thinking about what my baby would look like.
We couldn’t wait until the 12 weeks had past to share our news. I had all of the signs of a thriving pregnancy – a disappearing waistline, sore breasts, tiredness, regular nausea but I didn’t care. I wanted all of these symptoms. At eight weeks, we had an early pregnancy scan and saw our baby’s heartbeat on the screen.
The feeling was overwhelming. The life inside me was growing and had a strong heartbeat. From then on, our baby had a name. He, and I really do believe it was he, was Tom – after my Dad who had passed away 10 years ago. I had the baby room planned in my head. I picked out the buggy in the shop and imagined constantly what he’d look like. We told our families and close friends and everyone was over the moon and said we’d be amazing parents.
One Tuesday morning, I woke up early with bad cramping in my stomach. I put it down to a stretching pain, which I’d become used to in the previous weeks. But after an hour or so the pain was really getting to me. I went out to the toilet and found that I was bleeding. I panicked and called my husband, who stayed calm and reminded me that that doctor had said that some women do bleed in early pregnancy. But I wasn’t really in the early pregnancy stage anymore – I was 14 weeks.
I called my GP who advised me to go straight to the Regional Maternity Hospital, Limerick.
I asked him over and over again on the phone, why would I be bleeding at 14 weeks and he said that bleeding in pregnancy occurs for different reasons, but stressed the importance of going to hospital.
I was in some state. In hindsight, I knew it wasn’t good news. I just felt deep inside that something was very wrong. We got to the hospital and directed to admissions. To my horror, my husband was not allowed into the admissions ward with me. I was crying and shaking not from the physical pain but from panic and fear. Once inside, I could hear a foetal monitor and the beautiful, healthy sound of a baby’s heartbeat pounding through it. All around me, I could see women blossoming with lovely big bumps but here I was, dealing with whatever was happening my tiny precious little baby.
After what seemed like forever but realistically only half an hour or so, a nurse brought me over to a bed and pulled the curtain. I described all of my symptoms to her and she said very little. I gave a urine sample, which she tested. I kept asking her if I was miscarrying and she just kept telling me that time would tell. I know I probably wasn’t very nice to her but I wanted to know what was happening. I kept asking for my husband but ‘patients only’ she continuously said. I asked her if I could be brought away from the sound of another baby’s heartbeat but I was told that was no other option. I found it terribly distressing.
Eventually, she returned to me and sat on the side of the bed and told me that the pregnancy hormones in my urine were very low, which would very likely indicate a miscarriage. I insisted it couldn’t be right, to test again, why I don’t really know because I knew myself what was happening but I just wanted it to be wrong so much.
She said that I would be brought down for an ultrasound scan and I didn’t really want to go, but knew that I’d never believe my baby was gone if I didn’t see it for myself. Thankfully, my husband was allowed to come with me for the scan. He wanted to know what was going on but the nurse kept telling him too that time would tell. I told him that it was over, that our baby wasn’t going to make it. He didn’t want to believe me and said that there must be a mistake.
We were brought in for my scan. The sonographer was so kind to us. She was so gentle. My husband kept telling me that everything would be fine – that soon we’d see our little baby’s heartbeat again.
But there it was on the screen – no little beany baby to see anymore and no flickering heartbeat. That same room where we had seen the most wonderful sight of our lives just six weeks before, was now like a dungeon, with the most horrible empty image on the screen before us. My poor husband asked the sonographer was there any chance the scan was missing something but she just shook her head and put her hand on mine and said she was really sorry and I firmly believe she was too.
The rest is a blur. We walked back up to the admissions ward and my husband was carrying a printout of the scan. He handed it to me outside the door of the admissions unit, where once again he had to stay outside – patients only. I still have the scan in my pregnancy book, with the scan which shows our little baby at eight weeks.
I was once again put to lie down on a bed and offered some pain relief. I didn’t want pain relief, I wanted to be pregnant. I wanted there to be a mistake. The nurse tried to be nice but it only made matters worse. She read through my file a bit and obviously saw that I’d had IVF and her next words cut through me like a knife. She said that once I was feeling up to it, I could try again, something to the effect of every month is a new opportunity. I didn’t want a new opportunity, I wanted this opportunity to work out. I wanted to still be pregnant with my baby.
Soon after that an on-call doctor came to my bed. She confirmed that I was having a miscarriage, that according to the scan and pregnancy hormone levels, the pregnancy probably became unviable about two weeks previously but the miscarriage was currently underway. She said that the scan showed the foetus had stopped growing about two weeks earlier and that there was no foetal heartbeat. Was she sure? I still felt pregnant. But she was sure. She was sorry too. She suggested that I have a D&C procedure to remove the remaining foetal tissue, or I could have prostaglandin-based medication to speed up the pregnancy loss. I didn’t want either. I wanted to do what my body needed to do naturally. The doctor was hesitant but agreed that I could come back after a week, when another scan would be done to see what the best course of action would be.
In the meantime, I was to go home and rest. I could take pain relief to deal with the cramping but, unfortunately, no painkillers were going to take away the real pain that I felt inside me. She gave me a doctor’s certificate for three days off from work – so basically I felt like I had three days to rebuild myself and get on with things.
I felt the emptiest I have ever felt in my whole life. I can’t really describe it in any other way. I felt sick but it was like my heart ached and my head wasn’t clear on anything. I felt like I couldn’t talk or even open my mouth because I wanted to scream.
The following days were horrendous. My husband did his best but I don’t think he knew what to do. I’ve been horrible to him too, I know I have. I did go back to work after three days because to be honest what else was there to do. The more I sat at home the more miserable I felt. At least at work I was busy and my mind was off it.
A week after we went back to the hospital for another scan and the doctor confirmed that the foetus had passed itself. I think I knew that. I had bled heavily with bad cramping for six days. So basically our baby was gone. But in my head he’ll never be gone because he’s still part of me, in my head and my heart. My husband and I have talked a lot about it just these past two weeks. It’s hard but we’re getting there. I didn’t realise he was so cut up over it too and I wish now that I had. I made it all about me, whereas he was losing our baby too.
I feel at the initial stage maybe counselling would have helped me anyway. It was such a rollercoaster from the fertility treatment, to getting pregnant, seeing our baby’s heartbeat, sharing our news, to miscarrying. I’m still not strong about it but I guess I’m getting there. We feel that we will try again but I’m definitely not ready yet. As one great friend said to me just a few days ago, when you miscarry you don’t lose only a baby, you lose your hopes and dreams too and it’s hard to hope and dream again.