Diary of a Miscarriage

It was my first real pregnancy. (We had a chemical pregnancy previously.)  I didn't know what to expect. I was supposed to start my period on Saturday, but starting the Thursday before, I started having lots of cramps and extremely sore nipples to the point if rolled over on them in my sleep it would wake me up. When I didnt start on Saturday, I took a hpt on Sunday and it said PREGNANT. I was floored. I kept thinking that NOT would pop up in front of the word PREGNANT eventually, but it didnt.


I didnt have any nausea, but they say not everyone does. I just had the sore nipples, fever blisters, and diarrhea. Kinda made me wish for nausea instead. By Tuesday, I could feel a tight ridge down low just above my pubic bone. It was so fun reading everything about the baby's development. I had so much to learn, too. No hot dogs, no deli meat, no coffee, the lists of things you can't do or eat is overwhelming. When I called the Dr's office as a new patient (hated my old OB/GYN and wanted a change), the nurse asked me lots of questions.


She worried my Progesterone was low because I have irregular and early periods - even when I was on BC. She told me to come in for blood work and she was right, my Progesterone was 17 and the Dr. wanted it to be 20. I started Prometrium orally that night. My HCG was 120. We didnt tell everyone we were pregnant - just our closest friends and our parents and siblings. I'm thankful for that.  I had lots of cramps, but no bleeding for several days. Being my first pregnancy, I didn't know what was normal.


Everyone talked about being tired, and I was once or twice, but not all the time or every day. If it weren't for my boobs feeling heavy and sore and the cramps with no period, I wouldnt have known I was pregnant. Around the 5 week mark though, my boobs stopped being so sore. They were still not normal, but they weren't as sore. And that little hard ridge I could feel? I couldnt feel it any longer. I just knew that something wasn't right. That was Saturday. I had my second blood test to check my Progesterone on Tuesday. Monday night, I went to the bathroom and just like I had 500 other times since I took that pregnancy test, I wiped and looked at the toilet paper just to be sure nothing was there - only this time, something was. It was pinkish brown. It wasnt much, but it was something. I freaked out.


By the next morning, every time I wiped there were brown specs on the toilet paper. Never red, just dark brown. I never had cramps. My back never hurt. I read all the miscarriage symptoms over and over, but I only had minimal brown spotting. I went for my blood work and when the nurse called, it confirmed what I already knew deep down. It was 6 days later and my HCG was only 212. She said the spotting and the low HCG were consistent with signs of a miscarriage. I stayed home from work that day and cried, sobbed...my husband came home and stayed with me. It was awful. I never expected it to be so gut wrenching. I cried for 2 days straight.


I spotted the brown stuff when I wiped (it was never to the point of needing a pad or tampon) from Monday night until Friday afternoon. On Thursday night, I started having this horrible pressure down low - right above my pelvic bone. When I walked around or bent over, it felt like something was going to fall out. I called the Dr's office and the nurse said it sounded like the "products of conception" getting ready to come out.  Doesn't that sound pleasant?


She had me come in for another Beta test to be sure and ordered the results to be rushed. I failed to mention that even though I was spotting, my next appt wasnt for 5 more days. Can you imagine spotting for 7 days before you can see the Dr. or get more blood work? But because I had the pressure, this nurse had me come in and rushed my results. I'm so glad she did - just for the answers.


She called me back within the next few hours and confirmed what I already knew - my HCG had dropped to 26 - a sure sign of miscarriage. That afternoon, I started spotting red. By late Friday afternoon, I was cramping and hurting so bad I went home early from work.  By Friday night, the cramps were miserable. I barely slept at all because I had to keep going to the bathroom and because I was hurting so much. Saturday I laid around on the couch, but the pain was radiating through my back and my cramps were so severe that I felt no effects from Tylenol every 4 hours. It was horrific.


No one warned me about how painful a miscarriage would be. By mid-day Saturday, I had passed a ton of clots. And then, I passed something that looked like a deflated balloon that was shredded some. It was a grayish-red. I can't explain it, but to say that it looked like tissue and not like anything I'd ever seen in a lifetime of periods. After I passed that, the cramps went from being horrific to normal bad period cramps. They were still awful, but they were typical awful - if that makes sense. And by Saturday night and Sunday, it was like having a normal period. I don't know how long I'll bleed for, but its manageable now. Its just like having my period and I can handle that. I think the worst is behind me.
I have so many unanswered questions like will this happen if I get pregnant again? Was it something I ate or drank? Could I have done something differently? When did it actually stop developing?


So many people around me don't know. They probably think I've lost it by the way I've looked and acted over the past few weeks. I'm glad we hadn't told lots of people. But on the other hand, because no one really knows, I don't really have a support network of people or their sympathy. Its weird. I don't want that and I do.


And I started to not write this because I didnt want to give other girls like me fuel for the worry fires, but at the same time, I needed to talk about it -to voice all this stuff and not keep it bottled up - and I think if I'd given more credence to my diminishing symptoms and hadn't been so stuck on the typical signs of miscarriage, I might have called the Dr. sooner - before we'd even told our parents. And because we told our parents, I now have all these videos of happy, screaming, crying people finding out our happy news - videos I'll never watch again or ever know what to do with.


I never knew that miscarriage would be so hard psychologically and physically. It's a hard, hard road that I wish no one ever had to go down.