I'm really sorry to hear what your friend is going through Ange.

I've had two missed miscarriages - one was an early one, a blighted ovum like Sousie had. The other was at 10 weeks.

I opted for a D&C for both. Lucy mentioned feeling like her body had let her down, and I think for me that was the underlying factor in my decision as well. I felt like if my body hadn't recognised that the baby was gone by now, I certainly wasn't going to sit around waiting for it to click and for something to happen. I just wanted it over with - particularly with the blighted ovum as I had already been spotting for a week and was a stressed out mess because I knew from the start that pregnancy wasn't right.

From the research I did at the time my understanding was that the further along the pregnancy is (and this is generally speaking) the longer it can take for the miscarriage to start, and it also becomes more likely that it will involve some pretty severe bleeding.

The other issue with a more advanced pregnancy is the possibility of infection but I'm sure her carer is on top of that.

I recovered very quickly after both of my D&C's - I only bled for a few days and my cycle returned to normal the following month after each. Both were done under a general anaesthetic in day surgery and while they certainly weren't experiences i would like to repeat, for me I felt it was far less traumatic than miscarrying naturally at work (or god forbid out to dinner like poor sousie endured...hugs to you hun).

This was purely my experience, but there are also women who feel that the process of physically miscarrying their baby helps them to accept the end of the pregnancy and I can totally understand this as well - I will never forget the strangely empty feeling of waking up after surgery knowing the baby was just "gone" yet never feeling or seeing anything actually happen to help me process that loss.

Just my thoughts.