Miscarriage remembered

23 years ago today:

My first child had been a “text book” baby. Having endured a twenty-seven hour labour, I’m not sure I would agree with the midwife’s description, but now I was expecting my second, three years later, all was going well.

We were watching telly and I started to get cramping pains, rather like period pains. I’d had them before, so I just kissed my husband good night and decided to go to bed early. The pains continued and I went to the loo. There was the tell-tale sign that all was not well – blood – and lots of it. My husband called the doctor – a locum – and he said to stay in bed and “try not to go to the toilet”. The baby was fine. We felt the advice a bit odd, but decided he knew best. I lay there, worried. When my husband came to bed, he noticed the mattress was soaked with blood. He called an ambulance.

The ambulance workers were kindness personified. They lifted my legs up above my head and spoke soothingly, saying I’d be all right when I got to hospital. The baby was fine, they said. I had to go to the hospital alone. We felt it unfair to drag our three year old son with us; we did not know the neighbours well enough to wake them up at 3am and my sister who lived nearby was abroad.

Once they left me at the hospital, things started to go downhill. I was put on a trolley in a side cubicle, the curtain drawn. The A and E department was busy. I heard crying and raised voices. Two seventeen year old boys had come off their mopeds and were being attended to urgently. A nurse came in and told me a gynaecologist was on his way. I lay in the cubicle terrified, hearing pandemonium around me. In the background I could hear a tap dripping. It wasn’t a tap. It was blood, my blood, slowly dripping onto the floor.

Eventually the gynaecologist arrived. He seemed irritated and slightly annoyed. It was 4.30am. “What is the problem?” A nurse appeared to answer his question. “She’s losing a lot of blood, 18 weeks.” “I need to examine you.” He pulled up my hospital gown. “Do not weep!” I had started to cry. I couldn’t tell from his reactions what to think of it all. “What about my baby?” I asked quietly. “It’s dead” he said, in a matter of fact way as if he were delivering the football results. I was devastated. “Dead?” I asked in case I had misunderstood. The doctor earlier, the ambulance men, they said the baby was OK. The doctor ignored me and roughly put back my gown. The nurse reappeared. “We need to get rid of the growth”, he said. Growth? That’s my baby in there you are talking about. I wanted to get up and punch him. Punch him for not understanding, punch him for being so unkind, and punch him because he didn’t deserve to be a doctor. But I lay there, mute and submissive. “25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage” he said, matter-of-factly. Oh, that’s OK then, I thought. Shall I get up and dance round the room? I’m not interested in your sodding statistics I wanted to screech at him, you haven’t got a clue, have you? You’re bloody useless. At this moment in time I want to kill you. But I lay there, mute and submissive. I cried a bit. But again he said “Do not weep.”

I was taken up to a ward of sleeping women. They had all just had abortions. Oh the irony! Then a sudden thought hit me. What about my baby? What about the dead baby inside me? I was hooked up to a drip and given an injection. I was terrified. “What is going to happen?” I asked an Irish nurse, who showed me some kindness. “We have to wait for the baby to be born. It should happen tonight. Try to sleep.”

Sleep? How could I sleep? I lay awake, lonely and upset and scared.

The butcher returned at 8am. “We have to get rid of the growth” he said and plonked a kidney bowl on the bed, disappearing to call a nurse. No nurse appeared so he decided to do it solo. I felt a sharp pain and the swoosh of something dropping in the bowl. He had bloodied hands and needed to find a towel. “Do not look!” he commanded as he left the cubicle. But I did look. It was my baby. How dare he tell me not to look?

I named her Elizabeth. I tried to write an official complaint to the hospital but found it too upsetting. Even now, twenty-three years later, I have tears in my eyes as I type. It took me seven years before I would consider having a baby again.