My personal miscarriage story

Rebecca Bruton (Textile Artist, Mother)

I’m not sure I can put into words how excited my husband and I were to be pregnant. We had been trying for a while and were full of joy when our test was positive. I couldn’t wait to tell everyone, especially our little 3 year old girl that she was going to be a sister! We began thinking about how we would swap bedrooms around to be ready for our new arrival. I washed and hung all my maternity clothes I had stored away in the hope of wearing them again and couldn’t wait for my bump to come so I could proudly enjoy the wonder of carrying my child. 

I adored being pregnant previously with our little girl although I did experience morning sickness in my first trimester and this was shaping up to be the same. My sickness became difficult to hide and I ended up telling my boss that I was pregnant a bit earlier than I had planned to. However the day after I told my boss he told me I no longer had a job which led into an incredible amount of stress and anxiety as I unsuccessfully fought for my job. 

Absolutely gutted at how I had been treated my husband and I decided to try and put it behind, there was nothing we could do and we had wasted enough energy and too many of my tears on the situation. Now we were determined to focus on quality time with our girl, regaining positivity and looking to our future as new parents again. Then our killer blow came.  

I had some spotting of blood one morning, nothing too concerning but when I had a bit of an ache too I decided to phone the maternity unit just to ask for some advice and reassurance. They told me to head to A&E just to get it checked out. I phoned my husband who had worked all night and was on his way home, he said he would meet me at the hospital. I told him not to worry, to get some rest as I was being over cautious but he said that he wanted to come. All initial checks were good, I then went to sit in the ultrasound waiting area, my husband got there just a few moments before our scan; now I am so unbelievably thankful he was there. 

There was another lady being checked too, her name was Georgia, I know because I heard the nurses talking about her as she was petrified something was wrong and I remember feeling so worried for her. As we were waiting she came out of her scan and burst into floods of tears as pure relief washed over her. I didn’t want to look at her, but could see in my peripheral vision that she was clutching her scan photo so precious to her. I was of course so pleased for her and half wanted to hug her but her emotion was making me nervous, I wished she would walk away and celebrate elsewhere.  

My husband and I were called to have our scan. We went into the little room, I laid on the bed and we were told not to look at the screen until the sonographer had had a look. My husband looked, he saw our baby there on the screen, I know that will stay with him forever. The next sentence changed my life and I’ll never forget it “I’m so sorry Rebecca, your baby’s heart has stopped beating”.

No, no, that couldn’t be. We were having our dating scan in just a couple days. We had tracked our babies progress on a pregnancy app and loving seeing each magical development, we had started playfully throwing some names around, I’d pictured our child, us as a family unit, our future. All gone, in one sudden softly spoken sentence. 

My world crashed, I lost all perception of the next moments I just know my husband grabbed me and held me so tight to his chest for what felt like such a very long time. Another lady came in to confirm the news, then I wiped away the ultrasound gel and shuffled my clothes back into position. We were taken to another room and I think I cried all the way, I know I said ‘NO’ a hundred times trying to catch my breath as I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I could hardly take anything in as it all happened so fast. The nurse speaking to us asked us to make some decisions about what we wanted to happen next. We had three options I could either have surgery the very next day to remove our baby under general anaesthetic, wait for it to come naturally (but they felt that this may not happen for me as they believed the heart to have stopped maybe a fortnight previously) or have a chemically induced labour (which they said could be very painful). We opted for the surgery as my husband naturally just wanted me to be safe and well with no pain as soon as possible and I too just wanted it to be over now. 

The next question utterly floored me as we were asked what we wanted to do with our baby. The choices were to have it cremated compassionately at the hospital, to go to a special service at the hospital with other parents who had lost their babies too or to take it home. That made it real, our baby was dead and I literally felt it like someone was pulling my heart from my chest. We couldn’t make that decision then and asked to talk about it overnight and give the answer when we returned the next day for surgery. 

That night we surreally swam through the motions of an evening and we cried ... a lot. I can’t recall much about how we got through it now looking back. Neither my husband or I are religious, in fact my husband is a science geek and he said something to me that night that I’ll always remember forever. It made me cry with guttural emotion and sadness but also with such comfort and happiness at the same time. He had his hand on my belly and he simply said ‘energy never dies’. 

We were at the hospital first thing the next day after the first of many sleepless nights. We waited to be let into the ward with a happy pregnant couple waiting to enter the adjacent ward for their c-section. We were shown to our dreary room, with a sad sunbleached watercolour painting of flowers on the wall. There was the bed with a gown folded at the end waiting for me, probably one of the saddest sights I’ve seen. We didn’t realise at this point that our day would go wrong and that we would be there until the evening, I’m just so thankful to all the NHS staff that were brilliant throughout. 

Forms were swiftly filled in and the surgeon came to speak to us straight away but then we waited and waited and waited. Eventually we were told that the surgery was set for lunchtime, later than planned but we had a slot. Lunchtime came and went. We kept being told, hopefully it will be soon. An anaesthetist came to put a cannula in. I’m terrible with needles as my body goes into flight mode and just switches off. I have to lie down for anything with needles as I will faint and to top it off my body doesn’t give blood well. The anaesthetist dug around in both my hands for nearly 20 minutes trying time over time to get a cannula line in me with no success. I felt sickness run through me and was head to toe in a cold sweat as I battled my bodies switch off which was exasperated by the lack of food and drink. 

Finally we were told surgery would be within the next hour so I was given a pessary to help loosen my cervix to make the operation easier however what it did was induce incredible pains. It just didn’t seem right, the medical staff had said I may experience period cramps but this wasn’t that. It became so intense, the pain so overwhelming that I starting writhing on the bed in pain, not knowing what to do with myself. I was frightened, something was wrong, the pain was coming in agonising waves. What I didn’t realise was that I had gone into labour and I was experiencing lifeless contractions. The contractions seemed endless and I was becoming exhausted then suddenly within me, deep inside I felt a strong popping sensation that rippled from my womb throughout my body. It felt like one part of me releasing from another and then everything stopped, was still, quiet and warm. A profound sense of peace washed through my body and seemed to fill our room. 

Still naively unaware of quite what had happened, I next felt a fluid running from within me. I put my hand to the fluid fearing for blood but it was clear. Now I know that that was my waters breaking but at the time, alone in our room it was terrifying. I stood to go to the bathroom, walked the 3 steps to get there and then it happened. I gave birth to our sleeping baby stood undignified at a bathroom door. It was utterly terrifying the feeling of everything coming out of me. The most harrowing and visceral experience of my life. I knew it was there, everything, just there in my pants. I held my heavy underwear up shaking in fear, calling terrified to my husband. I was so scared to look, I pulled my waistband tentatively away from my stomach and peeked down. There was a deep red mass that looked like nothing I’ve ever seen before, like something from a horror film. My husband pressed our room alarm and a nurse came, I clutched her arm to stand up and with breaking voice said... ‘it’s here, our baby, it’s in my pants’. 

I had three nurses around me in minutes and sobbed as I was manoeuvred into a sitting position whilst my underwear was removed and I was instructed not to look. I was told they were going to inspect what had departed my body and finally my husband could get to me. Both shellshocked by what had happened I sat with all dignity and life lost on the toilet as my husband once again held me close to his chest, neither of us spoke reeling from the physicality of our loss. 

A nurse came back and sadly confirmed that our baby was within the horrifying mass that left my body. She was armed with cardboard bed pans, wipes and maternity pads. She cleaned me and then the  room, then informed me that more was to come. She instructed me to let it pass into the bedpans and let her know when this happened so she could monitor what was produced. 

I was now finally allowed some toast and drunk endless water as I was told this would help to irritate everything out of me more effectively. I built a relationship with our nurse quickly that day and I remember checking up on her, questioning her to see if she was ok after all that had happened.  Over the next several hours mass after gory mass endlessly fell from me into cardboard bed pans that I lined up along the bathroom floor like some gruesome art installation. Most shocking to me was the quantity of what was coming from me, I guess naively once the process started I thought that was it, that something the size of a fruit would be everything inside me. We had focused on one of those apps that tells you the weekly size of your baby by relating it to fruit. I hadn’t considered the placenta, sack and umbilical cord that was of course inside of me too. 

Finally that evening they were happy to let us go home, physically exhausted and emotionally barren to continue the process on our own. We left clutching a small NHS leaflet in hand and leaving what was our baby behind. We couldn’t quite believe that was it, no follow up appointment, no counselling to attend.  We were done and discharged back into the world depleted of hope and joy.

Let me make it clear that I cannot praise the nurses enough they fantastic, I felt their genuine sadness for how the day panned out and for our loss. 

The next few days for my husband and I were a bit of a blur. My mum stayed for a couple nights with us mainly to take care of our daughter, which I’m so thankful for as our house had become a vacuum of sorrow. Hearing them carry on as if nothing had happened and my daughters joy at time with nanny was healing to us. Those first days went by hour by hour and were of pure heartbreak, emptiness, gulfs of silence, non-stop talking and everything in-between. For me I spent much of this time reading statistics, medical research, advice and mostly other people’s accounts of miscarriage in all its vast and varied forms. My husband and I were shocked by the commonality of miscarriage and a realisation of how many people we knew who have experienced a loss. We were both endlessly grateful for the support of one of our closest friends who helped by gently yet candidly guiding us through the time by sharing her own experience. I spoke to her one day unable to breathe through my uncontrollable crying but finally put down the phone having laughed with her. She gave me a piece of advice that I’ll never forget which was that my husband and I must look each other in the eyes and talk. Although always connected it was a perfectly timed reminder to be open in communication with one another at a time when you wish to protect each other. In all my reading I didn’t see any resources aimed at men but it was our loss equally. In my personal experience women can form an instant network around one another at a time of need but it seems somewhat harder for men. A week after our loss one of my husbands colleagues arrived at our door with a gift for him and the news that their baby had just been born whom they named after my husband’s son, it’s was such a poignant moment. 

Within my reading I saw little comment on the weeks after the event of the loss. My leaflet had told me to expect period like bleeding for up to 2 weeks. For me this lasted an alarming 11 weeks, I thought I must be broken because I couldn’t find accounts of other people having it last that long but I think mainly that was because people only shared the event not the physical symptoms following it . My body hurt all over , I was exhausted for some time. 6 weeks after our miscarriage I collapsed outside our bathroom in agony, extreme cramps like those of our sad labour gripped my body and I was suddenly bed ridden with no strength. The blood which came from me for all those weeks was nothing like a period, it was almost black at times with clots or a clingfilm like substance within it. I wore sanitary products designed for ladies who were postpartum for nearly 8 weeks resulting in a painful rash from the bulk of it between my legs. But worst of all was the smell of the blood, blood that had been inside me too long, to me it smelt of death and it made my stomach turn. I wonder if others don’t share this because it seems too much, too gruesome or real to share perhaps.

And so here we are 4 months down the line. My husband has been my rock throughout and we are more in love than ever. We have hearts that are healing but will never forget. Still grieving our baby that we loved and still love but that we never met and don’t even have one single photo of. Changed but determined to become better. And remembering that ‘energy never dies’. 

Invisible Motherhood

Lizzy Humber would like to invite you to help her create a platform of stories and artistic responses to invisible aspects of motherhood. This can live on the Mothers Who Make website as a resource and to support visibility for motherhood experiences . If you would like to share something or start a conversation about something you would like to make please get in touch lizzy[at]motherswhomake.org