Bounty.com homepage

Thursday 4^th September 2008

On Monday 1^st September my husband and I drove to Worthing hospital for our routine 20 week scan. We were silent on the way there and my husband asked how I was feeling. I replied “I am not sure if I am excited or nervous”. Even though we had had the routine 12 week scan and everything was ok, in the back of my mind I still hadn’t let myself get too excited about this pregnancy as my 1^st pregnancy last year ended in a miscarriage at 8 weeks and we were totally shocked and devastated by it. This coupled with the fact I still had not felt any flutterings in my tummy as so many other expectant mums at my stage of pregnancy have described, made me a little anxious.

We sat in the waiting room and I saw the sonographer walk over to the desk, pick up my notes, and walk away again. I immediately got a bad feeling in my gut as I recognised him as the same sonographer that delivered our bad new last time. He called out my name and we followed him into a dark room, the same room as last time, and I laid on the same familiar bed. The cold gel was rubbed into my tummy and the scanner was placed upon it. There was a deathly silence as the sonogragher examined the screen. I looked at the screen and then looked at my husband and could see by the look on his face that he knew too. After 2 minutes of silence the sonographer said “I am sorry to tell you this but your baby has died”. Dejavu. I placed my hands over my eyes and cried. This can’t be happening again. The sonographer took measurements and said that our baby had died some weeks ago as it was only measuring about 15 weeks old.

We were then taken upstairs, still in shock, to the midwives office. I can’t remember much about what was said and discussed as I was just numb and not really listening at the time. They gave me a tablet to take and I was told to come back in 48 hours to have labour induced. This was the bit that woke me up, as I had imagined I would be put under general anaesthetic and have a D&C where they perform a small operation to remove the foetus. I did not like the idea of having to go through all those labour pains for nothing and having to give birth to a dead baby just really upset me. I asked if I could have a D&C but they said I was too far into my pregnancy and it was only possible to do this procedure before 13 weeks.

The following morning I woke up early and started to think about what lay ahead the next day. I was scared to death as I didn’t know what to expect. I woke my husband up and broke down into tears saying “I cant believe I have to go through labour and still give birth to it. And, I have to go to the labour ward where all the other mums are going to have their babies and take them home and I can’t take mine home, it’s not fair”

Wednesday came and we arrived at the hospital. Firstly the doctor performed an amnio test on me where he inserted a needle through my belly and pierced the amniotic sack to take a sample of the amniotic fluid. He said there was hardly any fluid left and together we watched the tiny black bubble on the screen get smaller and smaller until it disappeared when all the fluid had been withdrawn.

I was then taken to the maternity ward and given a private room with a bathroom attached. The midwife inserted 4 tablets into my vagina and explained these would bring on the labour contractions and I would continue to take them orally every 3 hours. Within 15 mins I could feel an uncomfortable pain in my abdomen and lower back. I vomited twice and my teeth were chattering as I felt so cold. I laid on the bed with extra blankets wishing I had remembered to pack a thick pair of socks as my feet were so cold. I was shivering all over. The pain felt like bad period pains but not contractions like the midwives were describing. They gave me an injection, a cocktail of morphine and something to stop me from being sick. The morphine completely relaxed me and it was like I was not really in my body anymore. I was given my second dose of tablets and vomited another 4 times. The pain started to come back but not as strong as before so I decided to take cocodomol tablets and save the morphine for when I felt like I really needed it. I laid there with my eyes closed and tried to meditate. I took another 3 doses of tablets throughout the night and waited for the contractions to come which never came. I wasn’t sick with the subsequent tablets either and the pain seemed to subside rather than get worse which I and the midwives had expected. The midwives told me that I had one more dose of tablets left to take and then I would have to have a break for 12 hours and then try again. As I laid in bed I could feel a trickle and so I went to the toilet to see what it was. Some blood came out but not much, the midwife said this was the start of things and I felt anxious about the contractions yet to come.

15 minutes later I needed to go for a wee so I put the bed pan over the toilet seat to catch anything that may come out. I suddenly felt a lump in my vagina, it wasn’t painful or uncomfortable I could just feel its presence. I pushed and squeezed my muscles together and out came a lump the size of an orange. The midwife examined it and confirmed it was the baby, born at 5am on the 4^th September 2008. It was still in the amniotic sack complete with the placenta, umbilical cord etc so no further operation would be necessary. I was relieved as it was all finally over and I had escaped the painful contractions I had been expecting. I didn’t breakdown in tears as I had imagined I would and I think this was because what I saw could not be identified as a baby. When I compare it to my last miscarriage, the last one the amniotic sack was so clear you could see straight through it to my 8 week old baby floating around in the fluid as clear as day. This one was different, the sack that contained my baby was a dark mucky grey colour and you could not see anything through it. It just looked like a lump, it reminded me of a hernia. I was tempted to tear open the sack to see if I could see my baby’s face inside but I thought that might be a bit sick and I didn’t want to be left with a bad image in my mind. The midwife said she could clean it up a bit and bring it back in a blanket if we wanted to say our goodbyes but we told her to just take it away. It would have felt wrong wrapping it up in a blanket when it really did not look like a baby. It would have been different if it was bigger and resembled a baby more then I would have been in tears, wanted it to be handed back to me in a blanket for a cuddle to say goodbye, and probably would have wanted to attend the cremation and have it buried in a place that we could later on visit but, we didn’t feel this was the right thing to do with this one. As far as we believe, our baby’s spirit is back in heaven with all the other angels now, and is watching over us waiting for it’s next chance to meet us. The baby that came from my body earlier today was not really our baby but just it’s shell, our baby is now in heaven. We have decided to send our baby off for a post-mortem so we can find out any possible reasons why this happened which might help any of our future babies to make it full-term. We are naturally devastated and gutted at what has happened to this pregnancy and our dreams have been shattered once again. It has reminded us once again that not all things in life are simple or work out as you hope they do. Lets hope the next one will be a success but we are open to the idea of adopting as there are also lots of other babies in this world that are sadly not wanted by their parents, so we could look after one that is already here who also needs to be loved.