Threatened miscarriage: one mum's story
Snuggling
up with a book on the sofa with twin daughters Emily and Melissa, Linda
Jones can’t imagine life being any better than this but the day
she was told she had lost her babies is still a heart wrenching memory...
April Fool’s Day 1998 was one hell of a day. Just 24 hours after a
home pregnancy test revealed I was expecting, I was having a scan to
find out if I had an ectopic pregnancy. I had gone to my GP to get the pregnancy confirmed but instead she
sent me to hospital for further investigation of stomach pains.
Thankfully the pregnancy was not ectopic, and the resulting scan showed
not one but two tiny heartbeats! At that moment, I was ecstatic. Little did I know that just seven
days later I would be having another scan, in more sombre circumstances.
That weekend my partner Neil and I sat down for a serious talk. There
was no question of us not keeping the babies but money was tight. How on
earth were we going to manage?
Lying down after the tough discussion, I felt a strange sensation and
realised I was bleeding heavily. This was it, I thought, I was
miscarrying. I screamed and collapsed in a flood of tears. Beside himself with worry, Neil came running and gently led me to his
car before driving like a maniac to the nearby Leicester Royal
Infirmary. I was whisked from A&E to a ward to be examined
by a doctor. I remember being struck by how kind she was. She gently
quizzed me on what the 'loss' had looked like.
She told me I had 'passed the pregnancy' and gave me a leaflet about a support group
for women who miscarry. Back on the ward, Neil curled up on the bed with me until he had to
leave. I handed him my scan pictures from the week before showing the
tiny dots inside me. "You’ll have to get rid of these, " I
said, I could not bear to see them again.
The following morning I was due for another scan. It actually showed
a single heartbeat so I was sent home and booked in for another scan the
following week. I did not know how to react. I felt like I was in limbo.
I spent the days fretting that the surviving heartbeat would have been
snuffed out by the time I went back.
But when I went back to the hospital a week later the scan showed not
one but two heartbeats again. I went into shock. Going from
expecting two babies to none to one and back to two again in a matter of
days was an emotional rollercoaster.
I
couldn't – and didn't – relax until Emily and Melissa were born at 34
weeks, weighing a healthy 5lb 3oz and 5lb 10oz respectively. I will never find out what exactly happened on the night I was told I’d
miscarried. But the sense of loss I felt as I lay weeping in that
hospital bed will stay with me forever.
According to the Miscarriage Association, threatened miscarriage is
simply the name given to unexplained bleeding in early pregnancy. It is
very common and about half of these pregnancies continue normally. It can happen any time in the first 24 weeks, with the first 12 weeks
being the most common. There are no figures available on how often it
happens.
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