Panic attacks after late loss
Hi there... I'm new to this forum but have already decided to stay. I came here seeking happy stories, and I see that they are here to be found, but right now I'd like to share my sad story with you. Sorry that it is long -- I have a tendency to be very detailed.
I probably decided when I was 10 years old or so that I would have kids when I was 30. That seemed like a good, sensible age. So when my husband and I got married last August after 6 years of being together, both of us 29, it was time to start. Sort of like it'd been booked in a calendar. I've never been ga-ga over babies and was 80% sure I wanted one but knew sort of rationally that, once I had my own, I'd be double ga-ga and 110% sure. I knew in my mind that I wanted to create a family, adding to the lovely one that has accepted me into their hearts here in Sweden after I left my own country and my own broken family behind.
While we were TTC two of my best friends became pregnant -- EJ after a couple years of difficulty, PCOS and an early misscarriage, and MK had conceived for the second time after only one month of trying (lucky lady that one). I had just gotten my 7th period while TTC when MK told us she was pregnant again, and I remember being pretty sad. I was starting to feel a longing to be pregnant, but still it was a bit more because the "project" I was working on wasn't succeeding, gosh darnit!
But it turned out that was the month. On January 30 when I expected my period I got spotting, which is always how my period starts, so I thought "Nope, not this time either." But two days later the spotting disappeared instead of the heavy bleeding coming. We tested on Feb. 5 and got a BFP -- at which point my clumsy husband who thinks he has an awesome sense of humor said "This is the last thing I need; I'm starting a new job today!" He has been severely reprimanded for that...
It was less than a week before the worry started. On Monday Feb. 11 I was 5 weeks pregnant, and I started spotting again. I hadn't even had time to accept the reality of the pregnancy yet. I called the midwife that I'd already made several appointments with and she was super nice about it, but said spotting was not unusual and that it was too early for us to know anything.
I spotted for about a week, then no blood for a week, then suddenly when I was 7 weeks along got a nice little gush of bright red fresh blood. I am super good at worrying and cannot still my mind, and it was Sunday night, so I called the on-call advice line to ask what I should do. I got a very nasty "You're probably miscarrying and there's nothing we can do about it, so call the GYN clinic tomorrow." I made my husband take me to the emergency room anyway. I needed to know. There I was examined with VUS by Dr. Lundin and saw the little blob with a speedily ticking heart on the screen -- inside I was relieved and had butterflies in my stomach, though the feeling didn't come out -- I was still trapped inside a shell of tomboyishness and worrying, afraid of being or looking too happy.
Dr. Lundin suggested a follow-up one week later. I went in and met Dr. Sydsj?, who first said when he looked inside me that "This looks like the baby is on the way out." I went numb. But then the VUS showed that the baby was just fine. It was the fact that my cervix was open that initially made him concerned, and he said there was an obstruction -- possibly a miscarried twin that had gotten stuck in the cervix on the way out. He removed the obstruction -- which he promised wouldn't hurt but it felt so funny that I got nauseated and faint -- and said I should come back in two weeks. He was honest about the chances: an open cervix could cause infection and miscarriage, but hopefully after he removed the obstruction it would close and thing would be fine.
The next two weeks I continud to bleed a little, had started a brand new job myself, and confided in my (highly pregnant) boss KH that I was going to be gone Monday morning to find out if our baby was okay. My husband had worked for her for 8 years, so she was very understanding and worried for us. When we met Dr. Sydsj? again, now 10 weeks pregnant, everything looked just fine. He said "I can't promise it will go well of course, but now I see no reason why it shouldn't."
Things continued just fine for a while; I still had traces of blood coming out, but everything seemed to point at this not being something to worry about. I had the 12 week ultrasound with NUPP testing, and boy was that baby ever active! All arms and legs and little nose and mouth, dancing around and waving at mom and dad. Even then I couldn't fully let my feelings out -- even though they were definitely building up inside me and saying, "Wow, I'm going to have a baby!" This is when we chose to tell everyone we were pregnant. After all, the first 13 weeks had passed and we'd had the first ultrasound; now things were safe, right? I remember my mother-in-law screaming to her husband that he was going to be FARfar this time (DAD'S dad instead of MOM'S dad; they seperate in Swedish).
I was starting to smile and glow and get giddy about being someone's mommy. But I continued to worry. And when I was 14 weeks pregnant, we got another unwelcome shock -- another bleed, this time more like menstruation amounts, coming suddenly, and containing small clumps. I had a bit of pain (but was I imagining it?). Again we called the emergency line (it was another Sunday night!) and again we got a lame, rude snarky answer. My husband decided to call the GYN clinic directly to see if they answered, and they did. They also told me to stay home and wait. Then 5 minutes later I got a phone call. The clinic had called back; she asked, "Did you say you were *14* weeks pregnant? Oh! Then you should come in right away!" It's hard to get them to hear and see you as an individual instead of a statistic.
They put me in a room and treated me as though I'd already miscarried; offering me ibuprofen and being comforting and sad-looking. But once again, the VUS showed that things were "fine". This doctor, whatever his name was, sad he couldn't see a reason for the bleeding from the uterus but that all looked fine. First he wanted me to stay overnight, but then suddenly I was being sent home without being offered a new time. I tried all the next day to call them to try to demand a follow-up time to ease my worry, but their phone lines were busy, busy, busy. I couldn't concentrate at work and had to go home. I called my sister-in-law, who had 4 M/C before having her youngest daughter, just because I wanted someone to talk to and ***** to. She ended up calling the GYN clinic and demanding that they call me and give me an appointment -- it's good to have tough people on your side.
When I went in for the follow-up, 15 weeks pregnant, this doctor saw that the placenta was slipping away from the wall of the uterus a bit. It was something the previous doctor has suspected might be happening. But they both said that it wasn't dangerous at all (ha!) and said the baby looked just fine.
This is about when I finally stopped worrying. I felt convinced that everything would be OK, and was genuinely and openly joyful about the baby growing inside me. But for a card-carrying pessimist who believe that life bites you in the ass if you're too positive, I guess it was the wrong time to decide to be happy. On the Monday when I was 17 weeks pregnant we had just gotten back from a short trip to London and I'd had back pains the whole weekend. After getting home from work and a driving lesson I started having some pain in my uterus area. I didn't think anything of it; I'd had lots of dull pains down there and everyone said it was supposed to be normal. And I was so convinced everything was fine that I honestly didn't even give a thought to something might be wrong.
I didn't give it a thought when I started getting sudden, strong pains that came and went. I took a warm bath.
I didn't give it a thought when the pains started coming every 5 minutes. I went and lay down in bed. The pains came every 4 minutes, and then every 3 -- I noticed this on the clock, but I still didn't think to worry. What was I thinking?
Then I started bleeding, and my husband called the hospital. Get her here immediately, they said. By the time we were to leave, I felt as though I really needed to use a bathroom (I remember hoping it was just severe constipation...) and was in such pain that it was hard for my husband to convince me to walk to the car. I wanted to sit down and just wait for the pain to go away. Walking hurt; sitting hurt; and I felt sick to my stomach. We grabbed some plastic bags and made our way to the car.
Once in the emergency room -- where they have one nurse signing in patients but two to take payment -- my husband knocked directly on the nurse's window and said "My wife is 17 weeks pregnant, in a lot of pain and bleeding." This is where things seriously started to go wrong, because she said: Take number.
We did so, and I painfully sat on the edge of a chair. The other people waiting came and said "Here, have my number; I only hurt my finger..." But after a while we realized we couldn't wait; my hubby asked if we could go in and lie down while I waited. That was okay with them, and a nurse that I will forever have nightmares about came over to us to try to see what was happening.
Right when she came over, I suddenly had to vomit. I grabbed the plastic bags we'd brought with us and threw up. I also felt a desperate need to use the toilet. The Nurse pointed out the toilet and, instead of sticking around and asking my hubby why we were there, she turned around and left and said she would be back!
I sat on the toilet and looked between my legs to see how much blood was coming out, and that's when it happened. I felt myself pushing involuntarily, and out of me came a small melon-sized sac. I screamed faintly. When I stood up I saw my baby's little arms and legs floating in the sac, in the toilet. I was, needless to say, in shock.
I went out into the hall and said to my husband, "The baby came out in the toilet." I repeated it, over and over. He sighed and hugged me and then went running for help. I stood in the bathroom watching our little dead baby floating around in the water, assuming that it was best I didn't flush because they would surely fish up the baby and do tests on it. I had no idea what to expect them to do, just like I had no idea what to expect in any case, this being my first pregnancy.
My husband kept running to try to find help. He kept hearing "she'll be there soon." I kept watch over the bathroom and the toilet. No one came. Eventually a woman came and wanted to use the toilet, and we turned her away, saying "our baby is in that toilet." Still we waited. I eventually locked myself back in the bathroom so we wouldn't have to turn more people away.
Finally the Nurse came back. They knocked on the door and when I opened she said bruskly, "Well, at least you're awake. Is there a lot of blood?" I told her specifically that the baby was in the toilet and that I hadn't flushed.
She went into the bathroom, looked in the toilet, said "Yup, it was a miscarriage," and then she flushed.
My husband and I just looked at each other, speechless, and once again -- in shock, unknowing of what to expect -- we were not in a position to protest.
This woman continued to be a real smart-ass ***** to me, but thankfully, it wasn't long before she handed me over to other nurses. Before doing so, she did manage to say to the others that she hadn't helped me because she thought I just had a stomach flu, and managed to laugh at me for not knowing what my blood type is according Swedish ways of denoting it. It wasn't until after she left that I suddenly started to cry, that the feelings came out. The two nurses working on me stopped what they were doing and held my hands -- that's the way it SHOULD be, but their compassion was too late to save me from what the first Nurse had done to us.
Since then life has been a nightmare. I've struggled to get test results from tests I KNOW they did on me but that no one has told ME any results for. I struggled to get a follow-up appointment after my D&C and was repeatedly told that "that's not our normal proceedure" until I sicked my sister-in-law on them again and suddenly was offered a follow-up. In the days following the miscarriage I wrote a long letter about how we'd been and were being treated and sent one copy to the patient ombudsmand, one to the ER chief, and one to the GYN chief. I sent the letter on Friday, and on Monday, BOOM, I got 3 phone calls. Since then I've sort of been treated like a princess -- I've been told by everyone who has heard the story that what happened was not acceptable. I've had a meeting with the ER chief and the doctor who cared for me in the ER and was told that the way I was treated throughout the pregnancy and that night were not acceptable and that it will be different next time. I have a note in my charts and Dr. Lundin's card and they both say that I'm allowed to come in whenever I want next time I'm pregnant if I'm worried. I have a counselor that I see every week for free. I was told that I should have expected to be asked if I wanted to hold my baby, I should have been told if it was a boy or a girl, I should have been asked if I wanted an autopsy or a burial done -- and that, yes, I was robbed of all of these things because of someone whose excuse upon being confronted was "I didn't see any baby in the toilet." I was given my test results and an explanation for the miscarriage (repeated bleeds caused placental abruption, and that no statistics show it will happen to me again, even though my loss was late). But still...
Too little, too late for a girl who has already been hurt many times by other people and who is sitting and wondering "why do people choose to hurt me?" I'm trying desperately to recover from the loss of my baby and feel whole again, but that seems like an impossible cliff to climb because of what happened to us; because our baby was ripped away not once but twice. I cannot work full time because I have panic attacks when I'm around lots of people, I am pathologically convinced that people don't love me and can barely go a few minutes without a hug or some sort of encouragement from my husband that he loves me and that my friends love me even if I don't believe it. I cannot manage to gain any support from my three closest friends, two of which had their baby on 28 April, the EXACT day I miscarried, and one of which gave birth now on Sunday -- we were all so happy that we've have babies the same year, but now I'm noticably left out of that little club. They are growing closer, and I'm on the outside, feeling positively worthless as a human being in every way imaginable.
Worst of all today is that I woke up from nightmares, which I have every night about that Nurse or about babies, to find that my cat never came home last night. Just something like that -- she's probably fine, she does this sometimes, but -- I couldn't manage to go to work today because that sent me over the edge.
Okay... now I've written enough. It's time to reel myself in. But I want to say that...
I came here seeking hope -- hope that what the doctors say is true; that a late miscarriage does not have to mean anything; that it is rare but can be just as much a "fluke" as an early one -- I need to hear your success stories. I need to believe that my next pregnancy can go just fine and that I can be a mommy soon -- because now I AM 110% sure that I want a little baby in my arms.
