I was lying on the bathroom floor when my husband found me in a pool of blood.
I was just 7 weeks pregnant but the bleeding was horrific.
It had started with cramps that after noon .
I had gone to lie down in my bed and I think if I am honest I had an instinct about it. I had risen from my bed and was sitting on the toilet when suddenly rivers of blood and huge clots had fallen from me. I remember the most awful feeling of nausea a strange intense pain and then my vision clouding over with sparkly lights, [not unlike standing up too quickly when you are in a hot bath but 100 times stronger] in pain and overwhelming fear. The blood just wouldn’t stop so I slipped from the toilet to the floor and screamed for my husband Alberth to come and phone an ambulance.
I felt with every heart beat the blood flowing and with the blood went my strength. The most horrible thing is I was completely aware and feeling everything and there was no relief from the helplessness and fear I was going to die.
Two ambulance men arrived and I was painfully aware this was just a job to them. They were not comforting me at all and were asking me to stand up and put a sanitary towel on as at this point I was covered in blood on the floor , I was later to find out they estimated I had lost a litre and a half of blood and that was only while I was in hospital.
The quantity women lose in a miscarriage is so great because the womb is full of blood vessels and when it contracts its just like a massive cut that pumps blood with every heartbeat.
They were getting impatient with me and telling me to stand up. In my heart I was wanting to do everything they asked me and I felt frightened because it was impossible. As soon as I stood up {my husband tells me my lips were blue and my face was grey} I passed out and fell to the floor but the relief was only temporary as when I came round again they continued to be exasperated with me and told me I had to walk.
I was crying by this point because they didn’t understand I was doing my best and my husband was there trying to comfort me but was in shock himself. He later told me he thought I was going to die and the bathroom looked like a murder scene with pints of blood splashed on the seat floor and even the walls where I had tried to get up again.
Eventually they let me crawl to the front door then they lifted me up because I was taking too long and threw me in a wheel chair. The wheelchair was awful because my every instinct was telling me to lie down and while I bump, bump, bumped down the path the pain and fear were so intense but they had no idea or were not interested, their unspoken thoughts were just to get me to comply and get me to a hospital quickly. As soon as I was sitting up directly the blood pumped faster and harder and that was intensely painful and terrifying. I was so glad to lie in that hospital bed in the ambulance. I arrived at the hospital and they put me in a bed and started working on me.
I have a phobia of needles so they started to get impatient too and quite bluntly told me if they didn’t get the IV in and take blood immediately to discern my blood group I could die. This matter of fact bluntness shocked me when I thought about it afterwards as it was not what I needed to hear . I am now aware of how prevalent the attitude is of complete unwillingness to understand pain and fear , they just want to do their job and I was expected to just shut up and let them, even though they were doing it badly.
4 times they let a student nurse stab into my veins with no success. {When I left I had been injected 6 times in one arm with bruises at each site and 4 times in the other arm, I also had bruises that completely covered both hands where they had eventually got blood from }. I had lost so much blood already it took them 20 minutes to get the sample and I felt every drop of it. Next thing they did was give me an internal exam and it was awful as I was still gushing blood, then to my horror she produced a giant syringe and inserted this into my vagina and drew back the plunger. Of course this started the hemorrhaging again. There were five staff around me at this point who were writing notes and doing things. The sheets beneath me were saturated in blood so they ripped them off from under me and remade the bed with me in it. The pile of sheets in the corner along with four white blankets that had been under me in the ambulance gave a grisly testimony to the state I was in. Suddenly I felt myself pass something and the doctor picked it up and took it to the side. When I asked what it was she told me it was the baby, so I asked if I could see it.
She brought over what looked like a small chicken fillet. It was about 7cm wide round and cloudy, the whole pregnancy was intact and I couldn’t really see the baby inside, however I could see a small dark form but it wasn’t very big considering the amount of blood loss it had caused.
An hour had gone by and I was still in the same condition so I was rushed to the theatre. In there they lay me on a weird contraption that I don’t think many people get to, or would want to see.
I was supported at the neck with a clamp and the bed was narrower than my body was. The surgical light was looming above me and there were lots of people around me, I remember thinking God I hope it is Jesus I see on the other side of that thing , I did not think I was going to wake up again.
As they injected me with the drug to put me to sleep I remember all the pain and fear leaving me and it was like falling on a bed of cotton wool.
The taste of it just reached my nose and mouth when I fell under.
They gave me a DNC and I awoke crying and talking rubbish to the nurses.
After an operation the nurses woke me up when I was still drunk with the drugs they gave me and even now I’m still embarrassed thinking about it.
I am a very sensitive person and I feel a lot which is a great source of torment for me but it does make me empathetic to other people
I apologized for being a nuisance and explained I was just terrified.
There was only 1 nurse through all of that who actually cared about my feelings and it was in the operating theatre I met her.
I will be forever thankful for that nurse. People in hospitals have nothing comforting to say a lot of the time and although this nurse might not have been the doctor who saved my life, I will be forever grateful to her.
My husband had not been able to come because we have an 8 year old child.
I recovered from my hellish ordeal fairly quickly but it will be forever etched in my subconscious.
Nurses and doctors could benefit from doing a small section in their training to do with psychology as stress can effect a persons recovery and it is a scientific fact that patients who are suffering from depression are more likely to die. { this was the conclusion of a survey who assessed people who were having cancer treatments}.
Mental health issues appear to be being disregarded in the general hospitals which is crazy considering the massive bill for mental health treatments in our country. Support just is not offered at the moment after miscarriage and considering the bereavement involved , it is not taken seriously enough, women are left to deal with it alone until full blown clinical depression sets in, which could have been avoided if the issue had been dealt with from the beginning.
It really is not that difficult to say a few encouraging words and it is so sad that this lack of empathy is so prevalent in emergency rooms and hospitals. This being said, the ones who do take the time to remember their not treating a piece of meat, shine like stars in a dark sky all the more for it.
People in general are not usually aware of how dangerous pregnancy can be, maybe my experience here will shed some light on the reality of it.
Young women need to enter in to pregnancy with full knowledge of what can happen, maybe there wouldn’t be so many unwanted pregnancies if they knew the risks involved.
Men should learn as well so they can appreciate what a gift it is for a woman to give him a child and so they can care for their partners should it happen.
Most people don’t like to share their personal experiences in depth like this but even if its only by being able to explain a similar event, that might bring comfort to someone in knowing their not alone in their tragic loss.
Another inhumane practice that’s found in women’s wards is putting miscarriages in with pregnant and nursing mothers.
We seem to be missing the point entirely if we don’t see mental health as important in recovery, surely it wouldn’t cost that much for them to be separate?
I understand the reasoning behind miscarriages being together with pregnancy as they are both related to that area of the body but it is blatantly insensitive I think.
Another problem is when after bleeding they take women alone to be scanned. From my personal experience after having two of the above, It is a gut wrenching feeling to be waiting for the heartbeat to appear alone.
Small changes need to be made that would make a big difference.
Hopefully my story might help to highlight some questions that should be being asked and then we can all rest assured we will be emotionally and physically safe should it happen to us or our loved ones.Happily I did have a healthy baby. His name is Daniel Andres and he is a constant source of enjoyment for me and his doting father Alberth. We both love him dearly and celebrate each of his little achievements individually. He loves playing up to the camera and his dad does regular video logs which everyone can see at the address below.
Written by Margaret MG 33 years
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