Photograph: STOCKFOLIO / Alamy/Alamy
My pregnancy didn’t have the most auspicious of starts. Squinting at the two pink lines on the home pregnancy test, a combination of disappointment and relief coursed through me. Not pregnant. While my husband and I hadn’t been planning for a baby, exactly, neither would we have been unhappy about it.
I showed him the results and shrugged.
“Maybe next time,” I said.
He looked confused, then told me that two lines meant, actually, that I was pregnant. Good thing someone read the instructions.
The pregnancy test set the pattern for the rest of the two months from discovery to the finale in a hospital bed: not pregnant, pregnant, not pregnant.
I made an appointment with a GP to discuss the next steps and upon leaving the clinic, fought a growing tide of panic.
Making a baby was not, as I had always assumed, the simple task of having sex at the right time and then swanning around with glowing skin and an ever-growing waistline for nine months. There were various preparations that I should have taken well in advance. I should have begun taking folic acid three months ago, the pharmacist told me as he handed over my bottle of pills. I should have had a rubella booster two months ago, the GP informed me, after glancing at my blood test results. I should have given up drinking, reduced my stress and limited my fish intake, I discovered on numerous websites, forums and advice columns.
The first ultrasound, at what should have been around seven weeks, showed a sac but no foetal pole. My GP called a few hours later and dropped the M-bomb.
“Unfortunately it looks like a miscarriage.”
Struggling to control my voice, I asked if it could be possible that it was too early to measure. She suggested I get three blood tests, 48 hours apart, to see if my hormone levels were doubling.
My first two tests showed a rise in hCG levels, the hormone responsible for the pink lines on pregnancy tests. However, they hadn’t risen as much as they should. And when the third blood test came back with a drop in levels, my GP repeated her diagnosis of miscarriage.
I argued (because my three days of relentless Google searching made me more qualified than her seven years of medical studies) that after six weeks, levels don’t double every two days and can even plateau. There was probably a note of hysteria in my tone that made the GP realise it was futile to reason with me. She referred me to the Early Pregnancy Assessment Services (EPAS) clinic for a second ultrasound.
After a tense two hours of waiting, I was called. And there, on the screen, was a flicker.
“Is that…?” I asked, feeling my chest balloon with relief, gripping my husband’s arm so hard he’d have bruises the next day.
“Yes,” the young technician beamed at me. “That’s a healthy heartbeat and you’re measuring just on six weeks.”
Once the elation had waned, I found myself a new GP who specialised in antenatal care and poured out my apprehensions to her. Why had I measured six weeks when I should have been closer to eight? Why did my hCG levels drop? Did my running or yoga have a negative impact? She brushed my paranoia off with statistics. My chances of a miscarriage had dropped from 20% of all pregnancies to less than 10% of pregnancies where a heartbeat is seen. Nevertheless, seeing my face, she suggested a fifth blood test.
When she rang the next day, I picked up the phone with shaking hands. My levels had dropped again, she said. I’d had a missed miscarriage, where the embryo had stopped developing, but the body wasn’t aware yet.
“Is there any way to be sure?” I kept asking. “How can you know for certain?” A third ultrasound. And so my husband and I returned to the EPAS clinic, where not two weeks before, we’d seen the fluttering heart and the tiny buds that would form limbs and facial features.
Looking at the black and white screen, within a few seconds I knew that the heartbeat was gone. This scan showed measurements of an embryo of six weeks and two days, meaning it had died just days after my last ultrasound.
The midwife who saw me afterwards said it was just one of those things. There’s so much growth and development taking place every day in those early weeks, she said, putting a sympathetic hand on mine. Just one wrong chromosome, one idiosyncrasy, can halt the whole process. She gave me the options of taking medication, arranging an operation to remove the embryo, or waiting it out. I chose the latter.
In retrospect, my decision was made as an objection to the diagnosis. The operation and medication seemed like an affirmation that this was indeed over, a forced reversal of my state of being. I suppose I was hoping against all odds for a miracle, that the tiny heart would spring back to life as though it had never been interrupted.
For the next two weeks, I was in stasis. My body was cruelly convinced I was still pregnant, taunting me with waves of nausea and crippling exhaustion, but simultaneously, every motion I went through was shadowed with the awareness that my body was a coffin for my child.
I fluctuated between despair at the inevitability of the end, hope of an impossible resurrection and horror that here I was, catching a train or cooking dinner, with a deceased being inside me.
I made tasteless jokes to help me cope. After the miscarriage was confirmed, I sat on the sofa glumly, feeling sorry for myself. My dog jumped up on me, landing fully on my stomach, making me gasp. I pushed him off, scolding, “It’s rude to step all over your dead sibling like that.”
There were other moments too. Two weeks after the final scan, I ended up in Emergency from an infection caused by carrying the pregnancy tissue – no longer called a baby – for so long. In the ward waiting for the operation to remove it, I asked for the umpteenth time whether the procedure would be today or if I’d have to go another 30 hours without food and water. The nurse said she’d check, and said in a low voice to the other, “This one’s a little cranky.”
“It’s my uterus that’s got a problem, not my hearing,” I called out.
My husband put a reassuring hand on my grumbling belly.
“Stop it,” I pushed him away. “I’m the one that needs the comforting; that one’s dead.”
Now, three months after the operation, I have processed the grief and guilt condensed into those weeks of diagnosed miscarriage. Despite my doctor’s assurances, I’d convinced myself it was something I’d done or not done, that had caused this. From an initial reluctance to share my miscarriage with anyone, for fear of being judged, I’ve come to acknowledge that pain and disappointment are part and parcel of life.
When I told my statistician father about my miscarriage, he simply said, “that makes 100% of the women in our family.” While this may sound like cold comfort, there is solace to be found in the collective experience of so many women who have suffered from the same disappointment, the same anger and bewilderment.
My miscarriage has been a humbling experience. For someone who has been blessed with few adversities in life, it has been a blunt reminder that even though we may think we’re in control, it is ultimately a lottery that determines the winners.