Miscarriage-The hot new show on NBC

I’ve had a miscarriage and I feel weird about it. I feel like there is some expectation that I will fall apart and never want to talk about it. The Internet, various TV shows and books have told me this is how I’m to react.  So the Internet will hear about it, just like they have to hear about women’s birth stories and I want to talk about. I don’t regret telling my family or close friends. I will tell them again when and if I get pregnant again. This will be long so I split it into three parts.

I ended up having a blighted ovum which is an egg that has been fertilized with a sac and no baby/embryo. As I told one friend “I had a little burrito with no stuffing in it. A nice tortilla, but no chicken.” Being pregnant was great. It was a pretty good experience, but miscarriage was like a really awful TV program.

I went in for my 10 week check up with a midwife, she was awful and made me feel stupid when asking questions.  She went to check the heart beat and couldn’t find one, there was an old sonogram machine in the room, and she couldn’t find anything on it, and finally did a manual exam and said I was only 6 weeks along.  At this point I was like okay she doesn’t seem worried, and you can’t really hear a heartbeat at 6 weeks.  She did say that we should get a real sonogram and to make an appointment and acted like it was elective.   I came home I was doing the math and there was no way that I could lose a whole month. When I got the call from the ultrasound tech, he let it slip that this had to be done within the week. I pretty much knew that something was wrong and cried the rest of the day until Daniel got home. There was a chance I was just being a hormonal nut job worrying for no reason why freak out Daniel or anyone else.

The night before we went into the doctor, I started to bleed “a lot”. I just remember saying “shit” and Daniel running in asking what’s wrong. I told him and we decided to wait until the next day because there was no real rush.  We waited forever to get the ultrasound and found out that Daniel’s dad woke up and couldn’t remember the previous day (again terrible TV). Waiting was probably the worst thing for us.

Once we got into the Ultra sound Daniel first said “Wow that’s your uterus!” The tech kept saying, “Well I see a sac. I want the doctor look at it though.”   When she left the room to get the doctor, I turned to Daniel and said “I failed at failing! I couldn’t even get a baby to miscarry.” Daniel was in shock and kept asking if this was a real thing and we should wait for the doctor.  When the tech came back, she said the doctor would be here soon, and sit in this room across the way. Daniel went to the bathroom while we waited, I then over heard the ultrasound tech and office ladies talking about how there is no baby and the doctor is on rounds, but there really is no baby and where did I go. I finally said I was right here, where they put me (thinking, who the crap talks about patients in the hallway how unprofessional, I really didn’t want to find out this way). Only one of the ladies was embarrassed that I caught them, she was kind and told us where to eat lunch while we waited for the doctor to finish rounds.  Daniel came out of bathroom totally confused as why I was trying to rush out quickly.  I was going to lose it, and I hate to cry in front of strangers (I’m pretty sure it would be the ugly cry).  

We spent an hour, with me crying off and on about Daniel’s dad and losing the baby. The worst day ever (Daniel’s dad ended up being okay). We went back and waited for the doctor and Daniel saw the ultrasound tech coming down the hall and leaned into me and said “There goes the lady that murdered our baby. I can’t believe they let her walk around free.” I busted up laughing. The whole day was just so absurd.  We went back into the room, as the nurse who escorted us leaves, smiles and says “congratulations!” I looked at Daniel incredulously saying, “Seriously, I get congratulated now! I know she clearly doesn’t know what’s going on, but come on.” He smirked, “You were complaining that no one in the office had congratulated you, so here it is.”

The doctor came and was the first person who explain anything and everything. She said I had three options to continue to bleed and see if I would miscarry on my own. Take medication to miscarry or do a D&C. I knew that I didn’t want anything too invasive and I was leaving for Vietnam the next day, so I opted for natural miscarry.  The doctor kept telling me that there would be a lot of blood, and Daniel said I was leaving the country. She said if I started to bleed out that they would have to land the plane, but I could go.  I went to Vietnam in disbelief mostly because I was in denial. Probably a good and bad thing. Good for me to get away from it, bad for Daniel who just didn’t deal at all.  As a friend put it, miscarrying is the dying of your hopes and dreams.  I really had been hoping and dreaming hard with this baby and it wasn’t happening anymore.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream so completely die. I’ve been disappointed or changed a dream to make it work, but never had it just die.