Gloria V, UK

Second time pregnant, after first child

After trying for our second child for 9 months I finally discovered I was pregnant whilst in Australia visiting relatives.  I decided to wait until I got home to visit my GP whom I have known for most of my life.

On my visit one of the first questions she asked me was “Do you feel pregnant?”.  I thought this was an odd question as I was only about 5 weeks by then, but somehow she knew that something  was not quite right.  My answer to the question was “No,  I did not feel pregnant at all”.  She referred me to the early pregnancy unit at the hospital where I was scanned which confirmed there was a heart beat.

When things started going wrong

That evening I started bleeding.  I returned to the hospital where I was examined and informed that my cervix was still closed and even though I was bleeding, it did not necessarily mean I was miscarrying.  By this time I was very worried that in fact I was about to lose my baby.  The bleeding continued but it was now accompanied by stomach cramps.

I was due to go to a wedding in Cyprus two weeks after all this began happening and upon speaking to my doctor she informed me that flying would not cause a miscarriage, so I was able to go.  I still had not actually lost the baby but by then I believed there was no doubt that I would in fact eventually miscarry.

We left for Cyprus on Friday evening and by now the bleeding was quite heavy and the cramps and backache were very intense.  I tried to put the whole situation out of my head as I did not want to ruin our friends’ wedding day.  The day prior to the wedding I was feeling very low and in quite a lot of pain so I stayed in bed all day hoping that maybe if I lay down I could prevent the inevitable.

I think, when going through something like this, until the baby is actually lost you will try anything to stop it happening.  On the day of the wedding my husband went up to the roof terrace with the groom for drinks and when I got out of the shower something fell onto the floor.  It was the size of a 20p coin and red, but not covered in blood.  I then realised that I had just lost the baby.

How we coped

The emotions at this time are hard to explain.  I had almost a sense of relief, as it took more than two weeks to happen, and I was thinking about nothing else, so to have this closure was what I needed.  But, on the other hand I had just lost the baby we so much wanted and the sense of grief for someone we had not met yet was unbearable.

After the miscarriage

We eventually went on to have another two children (I’d had one child before the miscarriage too, so we now have three children in total).  But the baby we lost is always in our thoughts and we often talk about what sex it might have been and who it might have looked like.