The starting gun 

And so it ends in much the way I anticipated it would. No gurgling infant to close out this blog. No exhausting and life-giving labour end to this story. The beginning of the end indeed fired the starting gun for what has felt like the inevitable from the start.  

Yesterday morning I returned from the nursery run to find the cyclogest pessary had deposited a tell-tale pink colour in my underwear. The lingering ache in my back couldn’t be ignored any more and was that a dull pain in my abdomen or am I imagining it?  

To my eternal surprise and gratitude my self-referral to the EPU yielded an appointment for a scan the very same day.  

Mindless distractions 

The same dread visited itself upon me throughout the day as I tried to make sense of the work I had to do. Again, grateful to have something of a distraction. More so that it was simple and mindless. Time slowly made its way round the clock until it was time to leave. Another trip to the gallows. 

The game is up 

The lady who performed the scan, Amy, knew immediately that there was little she could say to a woman who has had 3 miscarriages about the likelihood of things being ok. She was pragmatic, honest and compassionate all in the right measure. When it came to performing the scan she said ‘I imagine scans are quite triggering for you’ – the first person to have acknowledged something so simple. Seconds into the abdominal scan she told me she could see the pregnancy sac but would need to switch to an internal scan to get a better picture (great). At this point, I knew the game was up.  

No sign of life 

Lying with my arms wrapped around my face and head, my husband at my head squeezing my hand, I was told that what she could see indicated that our dream was over. She explained everything to me. Never patronising, never overly clinical. She asked me twice if I wanted to see what she could see. I said no. I couldn’t unwrap my arms from my face. I couldn’t bear to witness the stillness on the screen. I wanted to disappear, for all my senses to halt because hearing and seeing the thing I’d been dreading for weeks was too hard.  

Unbearable kindness 

Before the worst of the news unfolded, I told Amy how kind she was and what a difference it made to me. She told me that she hoped to be kind enough to be forgettable because ‘people always remember the worst experiences’. I think she’s wrong; when standard practice lacks compassion and empathy and kindness is the exception, it will always be memorable.  

‘Nothing I say is going to make today any easier’ Amy said. And for all the pain I feel, I’m so grateful to know she knows that. 

A tiny wave goodbye 

From the size it’s likely our little heart didn’t beat for long after our first scan. Perhaps it was just a tiny wave goodbye.  

As I feared, for weeks I’ve been sustaining an unviable pregnancy with the progesterone treatment. How cruel. To know the treatment can stop your body from bleeding, and yet knowing that it wasn’t enough to save this little one. Amy tells us that the standard procedure at this stage would be to scan again in a week, because the NHS can’t officially use the private scan as evidence that there’s been no growth for 3 weeks. She says that the official guidance would be to keep taking the progesterone until another scan in a week’s time, but ultimately it’s my choice.  

I don’t take any more progesterone. The bleeding starts the very next day.