Missed miscarriage: ‘I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was a mother without a baby’

When you have a miscarriage, it’s secret, private, and buried. Quiet expectation is shelved. Your preparations and your dreams stop in their tracks. Nobody shares that picture.

Miscarriage is a phenomenon that is forever past tense, only explored from the safety of motherhood. You don’t have to feel too sad about miscarriage once there is a baby as proof of your efforts. For those of us living still with that loss, and who have not conceived again yet, the loss and emptiness feels lonely and profound.

​Back to the start of 2022. I was 31, had a stable job and a husband, and together we were on our way to buying our own home. It seemed like a good time to start a family, so we started trying.

I never thought that having a baby might be a challenge. I’m the eldest of five and my mother never had any issues, nor had anyone I know. As far as I knew, nobody in my acquaintance had ever experienced miscarriage.

We’d been trying for almost a year without any luck. And then, in November, a few weeks after my 32nd birthday, it happened.

We couldn’t have been happier.

We kept the news to ourselves, save for immediate family and very close friends, sticking to the maxim that you should wait until after the first scan.

I had sort of remembered my doctor saying that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage but, honestly, the information sort of sailed past me like when they’re explaining the safety information before you take off in a plane. You never think it will happen to you.

I felt like I was on cloud nine in those first weeks but held off on making many long-term plans or buying baby things, because I wanted to see that ultrasound first.

I had quite a bit of bloating, mild cramping, and morning sickness, particularly in weeks eight to 10. From Doctor Google, I learned this was all normal. There was nothing to signify to me that I should be worried.

​Finally, the day of the scan arrived. My husband and I felt a little nervous but were generally just excited. In the waiting room I kept to myself, observing the women around me masked up (as was still the requirement then) and all at various stages of pregnancy with bumps of various sizes.

When I went in, the doctor swiped gel across my abdomen and then began looking with the ultrasound device. She said she couldn’t really see anything and that she was going to check trans-vaginally.

I wasn’t unduly unnerved. She was calm, so I was calm.

After a few moments, I felt a hand on my leg. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

My heart sank into my stomach. 

She explained that I had had a missed miscarriage. My body had “missed” the fact that there was no longer a viable pregnancy.

At some point, the baby had stopped growing but the pregnancy sac had continued to grow.

The doctors needed further confirmation, so I was taken to another floor for a second scan on a more advanced machine with another doctor in a different department. In that waiting room, women did not have bumps. The notice board included signs for miscarriage and bereavement support services.

I lay back as the device passed over my belly, there was no excitement. And appearing on the monitor was what looked like a black bean.

I was asked if I wanted a picture. I’m sure this is some comfort to some women, but I wouldn’t need a souvenir. That image will be forever seared into my mind.

There are some moments when it feels like your life reaches a fork in the road and all of the expectations up to that point are washed away. Suddenly, life presents a whole new range of decisions and we have to reorientate to deal with them.

I was taken into another room, small and private, on the same floor. We waited for no more than an hour to hear our options, but it felt like an age.

I knew surgery might be a possibility from what I knew about miscarriage. “Please don’t let it be that,” I remember thinking. I had never been under general anaesthetic and I had never had surgery.

But the options were equally unpleasant.

Managing naturally (where your body finally recognises that you’re not pregnant and breaks down the pregnancy sac) or at home with medication from home would be bloody, messy, and painful. The sac, that black bean of nothingness, was too big to manage alone.

There was just no mitigating what was ahead of me, no “good” decisions. Every route led to the same unfathomable outcome, from elation to devastation in mere hours.

Up to then, I think, I was in shock, struggling to take it all in, maybe, to accept it. I felt like I was watching it all happen. Suddenly, faced with a decision I never thought I would have to make, it became real.

I started crying.

Once the tears had subsided, we thrashed out the medical options some more. We all agreed that of all the options, surgery was the safest.

​In lieu of a picture, I went home with a doctor’s note to take a couple of weeks off work. I was glad my husband and I had taken the day off – though we had originally hoped to spend it celebrating with our families. While walking back from the hospital, we called our parents.

My date for the procedure was eight days away. It was just my luck that there was a bank holiday the following weekend so I would have to wait longer than usual.

That night I called a friend who had had a miscarriage. I almost didn’t even need to speak, she just said everything that had been on my mind.

So, then what do you do?

My husband and I watched some movies – silly action ones like Bad Boys 2 and Con-Air – had a few drinks, tried to distract ourselves.

Impossible.

For a start, drinking again felt strange.

Then we had to start the cancellations, the visits with friends and grandparents, and the announcements. Now there was no picture to pass around.

I met with my younger sister a couple of nights after finding out the news. I told her that I just wanted it out of me, that it was torture to have this empty nothing in me. I didn’t see anyone else in those first few days, bar my husband. I wasn’t up to it.

I could not stop crying. I spent a lot of time just lying in bed and on the couch those first few days and nights. I didn’t eat much or sleep.

My doctor had given me her number before I left the hospital and said I could call if I was struggling. I called her that Sunday.

She could not have been more empathetic and arranged for me to come in that day to have the surgery. I could not have been more grateful, and relieved.

There was one saving grace. By not being being able to eat anything, I had unwittingly fasted, as is required before surgery.

I came in for the procedure a couple of hours later. It being a bank holiday, it was especially quiet, and I was glad to have the solitude. The staff were warm and kind and I felt looked after. The general anaesthetic wasn’t as bad as I had imagined but I was taken aback at seeing the blood, a sight I had feared seeing for 12 weeks prior. I was in and out of the hospital in a matter of hours.

The following day, the grief descended.

It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Sadness, loneliness, anxiety. Sorrow for what I had lost, trauma from what had happened (memories from that maternity hospital playing over and over in my head), and fear for the future. What did this mean for us and the family we had imagined. Was it in reach anymore?

It was exhausting and I felt it. When I looked in the mirror, the person I saw looked much older.

I started to write down what I was feeling, writing pages and pages in my journal. I watched TV, I read celebrity biographies. I started seeing a therapist, and then another. I cried, I talked it through with my husband and my family. I cried some more. I contacted miscarriage support services. I did everything they tell you to do to get through grief, not repressing but processing.

​Nothing could shake the feeling that I was a mother who did not have a baby. The emotional distress was compounded by physical symptoms – aches, pains, I felt a weight in my chest and had cramps in my stomach.

It was the longest February of my life and by April, I was still struggling psychologically. My parents and husband suggested anti-depressants at different points, but I didn’t want to go down that road.

Then, one night I was sobbing and ranting to my husband, again, and this time, his expression was different.

He looked really sad.

He had always been the one to steady me and reassure me when I was breaking down; this time he was struggling to lift me up. I worried that I was subduing that part of him. Seeing him suffer galvanised me. I would be recovering for him, for us.

The next day I made a plan.

I was going to eat properly again, take walks – outside – every day, and I stopped drinking.

I would also commit myself to meeting friends and telling them what happened. I continued therapy – just with the one therapist – and I started to do some jobs around the house.

Slowly, and very gradually, I felt like I was getting above the turmoil – getting back in control.

I was disappointed to only ever hear about miscarriage from women who had gone on to have children, not women like me, who have not had their happy ending yet. But I could empathise with why as it’s extremely difficult to talk about because it is so heartbreaking and there is stigma, and it’s a very difficult experience to relate to if you have not had firsthand experience. It took me weeks to gradually tell my friends and others what happened. I want to share my story to help other women not feel as alone as I did.

There are still some days when the grief comes without warning and shatters me. The day I totally changed wasn’t the day I learned I had had a missed miscarriage, but the day I got my pregnancy result. There is a hole in my heart that I carry and just live with now.

I have colleagues and friends who have had babies and announced pregnancies since, which has been especially painful, but now when I see pregnant women on the street or little children, I smile. I know that I’ll have the family that I want someday too. The hardest part is the wait for that day to come, but if you have a dream, you’ve got to give up the when, and just keep going. 

If you have been affected by the topics raised in this article, please contact Samaritans on 116123 or Aware on 01 661 7211. Families seeking advice on pregnancy loss can also visit www.pregnancyandinfantloss.ie