Ruth’s story
After her third pregnancy ended in miscarriage, Ruth found that blogging and talking to others who'd gone through a similar loss helped her through.
Miscarriage affects so many people but it is not something that is spoken about.
Right from the beginning my pregnancy felt different. I didn’t feel anywhere near as sick as I did with the boys. With my two previous pregnancies, I had to tell people I was expecting quite early on because I was so sick. We told both sets of parents the week before our scan, so they were the only ones who knew. In hindsight, I wish I had told people because they never got to hear the good news, just the bad. It was devastating and it was all happening on my birthday. Thankfully I didn’t pass the sac until the next day so at least I can separate my birthday from the miscarriage.
The day of my booking appointment I noticed a tiny bit of pink discharge. The midwife said it can be totally normal but if it gets worse to go to my GP. It did get worse so I went to the GP. He referred me to EPU. Going in for the scan I thought it was 50/50. Finding out that I had a missed miscarriage was so hard. The nurse went through my options. There was no way I could make a decision that day so I went home to think about it. I wrote a blog post explaining why I have not been in touch and what had happened.
The clinical care I received was okay but in terms of the psychological side of things it just wasn’t there. Thankfully I did have a lot of support from my family and friends. The next day I started going into labour and went to hospital the following night with heavy bleeding. It all happened really quickly.
Being open with lots of friends made me realise how many had a miscarriage and were open about it. So many people messaged me to say it happened to them. People who had the same experience were most helpful because they knew what to say.
Before my miscarriage, I had friends who had gone through it. Back then I didn’t really know how to react as I couldn’t empathise with the experience, and didn’t want to say the wrong thing. Having experienced excellent support from others, I would say that just listening to me (or offering to listen to me), sharing a similar experience of miscarriage, or giving me recommendations for books/articles/websites etc. that helped them have all been good for me – I know not everyone is the same. I think the worst that I’ve heard is along the lines of ‘better now than later on down the line’ or ‘I’ll just have to get over it’ but thankfully those kind of comments have been rare!
Miscarriage affects so many people but it is not something that is spoken about. I wanted to raise awareness of the issues we had and the lack of support. I have blogging about my experience also has a therapeutic effect and helps me process what is going on.
Ruth