Experiences of miscarriage

It was like when we had miscarriages you have to wait until you're 12 or 13 weeks before you tell anyone that you're pregnant. But when you find out that you've lost a baby, it's been a big secret and you can't tell anyone about it first. It's hard when people say, 'oh, when are you having another one'? And you're just sort of looking at them, thinking, 'well, I was going to and we lost it'. So it's sort of like it's hidden.

And what we found amazing was, when we had our miscarriages and we just spoke about it, that people would come in and they'd say, 'oh, that happened to me, that happened to me'. You know, nearly every person that you spoke to would say that they'd experienced it too. And I don't understand why it's a secret. I don't feel like that - I don't really feel you should be ashamed of anything with regards to, I guess, mental health or miscarriage - I don't think anything should really be a secret. I guess people don't want to feel embarrassed. I'm not sure. But we need to work against that. I don't think anyone should feel embarrassed.

The journey started back in 2000 when my husband and I decided that we - [it would] be a good time to start a family and I fell pregnant within three months and everything was just fine, I was glowing, I had that you know, healthy pregnancy feeling and told people. I was very excited and then one day noticed some bleeding and the world fell apart, basically. I went to the doctor and had no idea what was going on. Contacted the gynaecologist, the obstetrician, and pretty much had miscarried and nothing prepares you for that, because you've had friends do it. My mother had miscarried - everyone and what actually happens is you have no preparation for it because you don't know. After, the first thing I did was ring my girlfriend who'd miscarried about a month earlier and apologised for not being as sensitive as I could have been because I actually understood what it was. I think the thing that I wasn't prepared for was that after it happened you still feel pregnant and you feel pregnant for about - oh, for me it was about two weeks. I felt pregnant but I wasn't. So that was just yeah, my world collapsed and I think the hardest thing was then having to tell people and you know, you hear people say you don't tell people for 12 weeks.

I understand that now but in the excitement of it, it just all happened and so the un-telling of people was really hard and it was hard because they didn't know what to say. The old 'meant to be' comes out quite a lot. Not helpful. 'Oh, you'll get pregnant again', not helpful. So really, there's nothing other than really, basically say, 'That's really crappy and I'm really sorry it happened to you'. That would be my advice to people. Just say, 'That's really crappy,' rather than try and make it like it's a natural thing and, 'Oh, the baby wouldn't have - you know, it wasn't meant to be'. It really isn't helpful.

So that was that and dealt with it, had some really great support. My girlfriend who'd also miscarried, we had a bottle of wine together and talked about our experiences and then I actually started talking to lots and lots of people about it and in talking about it, so many people said, "Oh, I've also miscarried", and I think one thing we do as women is maybe keep it to ourselves. And by me talking and talking and talking to people it gave them the opportunity to talk about their experience as well and while they're all different, there's one commonality that sense of loss and that sense of what could have been and I still have the due date in my head.

Doctors and nurses do their best to help you through it but in terms of giving you answers why it might be happening, we don't have any now - why things are the way they are and why it was such a struggle.

I mean they just say, 'Oh it's a genetic defect that meant that the foetus died'. But, which genetic defect or a recurring genetic defect.

The first time it happened was the first time that we had conceived so that was disappointing but not ... nothing ... disappointing because I don't think anyone expects bad things to happen to them necessarily. And, that was a bad thing but, on the other hand, it was the first and had meant nothing for the future. So it was easily, at least for me, reasonably easy to get over it and look towards becoming a dad the next time. Then when it happened the next time that was more difficult.

The second or the third time, anyway ... that's when it started to get hard because then it was part of a pattern and no-one was able to tell us what might be causing it or what we might be able to do to fix anything. So, there were certain times - there was one, I think, where we'd even managed to get a printout from an ultrasound so that you could see a body in there. Make out a baby.

So it got more difficult to deal with and at that point we decided to seek help or had been recommended to go and see the IVF clinic because they do the gene tests of the zygotes and can help you pick something that seems healthier rather than taking potluck with something that might have a genetic defect. They could filter out those ones that were knowingly abnormal or visibly abnormal, whatever tests they did to see. And, hopefully then increase our chances. At that point, we had, I think, even got the drugs to begin the cycle or the cycle was due to begin and it turned out then that she became or fell pregnant naturally so just by chance, and that pregnancy became our son.

I guess, we thought we had cracked it as well, you know. That finally we'd had a son and we would be right in the future, you know. That whatever problems had ironed themselves out but, no, perhaps quite the opposite. Perhaps he's extremely lucky or genetically fortunate or stronger than the other ones. Whatever reason was that he survived and no-one else did.

For which we must be grateful. And, more than six years on - six miscarriages on, it doesn't seem to be any point. So that's it.

And so your - your wife was willing to try again?

She was very keen to have a reasonably large family, or at least modern relative terms. But, I wasn't that keen to go through anymore miscarriages and I could only see based on the statistical stories that you read about that we were only likely to continue struggling with miscarriages and having to find money for doctors, hospitals like sort of stuff.

She still would struggle to talk about her experiences without crying. It still upsets her greatly.

Some doctors are better than others ... you know, we had one lady right back at the beginning who didn't seem to be very emotionally attached to any of her patients. But the lady that she's been seeing for years and years now, seems genuine and genuinely concerned and capable of helping on more than just a physical health basis.

I was depressed after the miscarriage. I couldn't get over it. I was pregnant with my son about six weeks after. So we're talking about a six week period and I apparently didn't get over it quickly enough.

At the time, prior to all of all of the subsequent events, having a miscarriage was one of the most traumatic things I've ever had. Partially because of the psychological but there's such a physical component to it. Your body is already building up and in my case the place where we lived it didn't have legal abortions and I had to have a D&C and I found myself in a very sophisticated country and a very sophisticated city in a basement with a bunch of people where I was told that if I paid 50 bucks I could jump to the head of the queue and not have to wait.

It was horrible. It was so humiliating. It was terrifying. I hate needles. It was the first time I'd ever had a full anaesthetic and I just remember, talking about small comforts, the woman who actually gave the anaesthetic said, "I had a miscarriage and I went on and I've got two children". And that I think was probably the biggest part of it because I had a miscarriage before I'd had a pregnancy. I just didn't know if I was going to be able to have kids and I knew of a lot of women who'd had IVF and had miscarriages and I'd watched them.

So there was this, 'Is that going to be me? Is that what's going to happen?' And that element of not having a choice which you just presume that you have which now that I have children seems insignificant but at the time that you are facing that decision of having a child is a massive thing to have taken away from you.

So it definitely, it definitely impacted on me. I took one day off work and then I had to go back to work. They did tests on the D&C results and I got a call at work which was one of the most bizarre things that's ever happened to me and they called up and said, "Oh we're just calling to say that there were no genetic abnormalities. You're probably fine to have other kids and by the way the gender of the baby was a boy," and I was in my office and I just cried and I cried and I cried.

I was lucky I had an office where I could close the door. It was like, 'Why did you tell me that?'. I don't think that would happen here. I think that was just part of the general lack of sensitivity surrounding anything to do with children or birth in that country.

I met my partner about four years ago and we actually became pregnant quite quickly. And I had a series of miscarriages and most of them very, very early. One was at nine weeks, which was - that was hard [laughs]. Not just yeah, like an early one. And so I suppose I was feeling a bit anxious about pregnancy and I think I became quite - well, obsessed with it I suppose you could say, because I was in my early 30s and had met this person and the timing was just all right and I just knew quite quickly that we would be together. And so I had a series of miscarriages and as I said, just became quite wound up in the whole pregnancy thing.

So when I became pregnant with my son, I was quite anxious about it, all along. I mean I think that I was always predisposed to anxiety anyway, but yeah, I was very anxious quite a lot throughout my pregnancy.

And then, my partner and I got it into our minds that we wanted to have another child [laughs] so I went off the medication and we tried to get pregnant and it happened very quickly, but I had another miscarriage early on. And then when I came off the medication I really went downhill very, very quickly.

And I suppose at that time I realised that maybe the medication was helping more than I realised and plus having the miscarriage it was upsetting. I mean it was very early on but still - and it happened so many times. And I suppose it's just shattered dreams, you know, that type of thing. But if I was honest with myself I really wasn't in the right place to be being a mother all over again and going through it all over again.

So she gave me as much time as I needed, my GP, and so I just didn't know when I left work that day when I'd be back but I just needed some more time. So I took some more sick leave and [sighs] so I ended up being off for 10 weeks and that made a huge difference, so just to be able to go and get counselling.

Got in touch with support groups. The SANDS group, which is, Stillborn & Neonatal Death Support group, that was amazing and it's run by volunteers who have lost babies themselves and they have meetings once a month with parents. That was fantastic and I've actually made some fantastic friendships through that as well because until you could go to that group and actually talk to people that have been through it, no one else has any idea. They can try and feel sympathy for you but most of the time they invariably say the wrong thing even though they're trying not to and some people don't talk to you at all 'cause they don't know what to say.

Other people, they just sort of stare at you and give you these [laughs] pitiful looks and you just don't want to be that girl and you're just so wishing that you weren't. And, as I say, the ignorance prior to it occurring that after you're past the 12-week mark that this could even happen. And when looking back, I mean I've read that it could happen but I just didn't think it was going to happen to me, so I think I probably thought I'd had enough issues leading up to it. So this was finally my time for it to work and it I've come to learn that that's just not the way things are in life, unfortunately. But, since then like I've been very lucky that things have worked out.

Like this one time I felt I did want to talk about it. One time it felt I really didn't want to talk about it. So I think encouraging people to do what's comfortable to them I guess is good there. But, I suppose I felt like, in some ways maybe, if I was holding it together until I got pregnant I was just trying to make sure I got there and so when I got pregnant it was, 'Okay' - when I found out that I was pregnant the second time, my initial response was just to burst into tears because I just expected to have another miscarriage. And that was my overwhelming experience.

I think because we're having babies later, it's a reality for us. I think it's probably always happened, and people haven't talked about it and this is the other thing about getting these weekly updates. Because if you do have a miscarriage, you still get them. It's pretty horrible to see, 'Okay this is what could have been'. And I think also this focus so early on finding out if you're pregnant.

Like in the past, people wouldn't have known probably. It would have just been a heavy period. But because we do know immediately now, what does that mean to people? For some people it is just a missed period, but for other people they've already got the name picked out, they've looked up the due date, because this is what the Johnston & Johnston calculator encourages you to do. And so, all of a sudden I think we are more in to a lot of those feelings a lot earlier.

I don't think a lot of people know how to support people in that situation. I think some people avoid talking to you, which I can understand, but isn't helpful. And some people, you know, who mean well and say, 'You know, it just wasn't meant to be', and even though that might medically be the case, it's still an experience that you've had that, for you, it was meant to be. So I think talking about it is what I did to, well I found that helpful for me. And then other people, 'Oh actually I've had one'. You know, it opens up the opportunity for people to share that and you look back in your family history and you think, 'Oh I wonder if that had happened to my grandma or my aunty', or because it's part of our experience of women. It's part of our experience of fertility. And increasingly so, with us having babies a bit later I guess.