On October 6th 2020, we had a scan at our fertility clinic when I was 8 weeks pregnant, where we were told that our embryo’s heart had stopped bleeding. We were experiencing a missed miscarriage.

We were shocked because I had strong pregnancy symptoms – nothing had told me that my embryo had stopped growing. I was told to call my GP to get an appointment at the Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit – which I did, for the following Friday. In the meantime, the clinic told me to stop my medication, and wait for the inevitable.

I googled frantically, having no idea what a miscarriage would entail. I suddenly realised, there isn’t a lot of information out there on what physically happens, what it feels like, etc. There wasn’t a lot out there, except one woman’s experience on a blog which I found really helpful. So I thought I’d write mine out too- not focusing on the emotional toll of a miscarriage, but on what actually happened.

For the most part, things continued as normal for that week. I had quite bad nausea, which seemed pretty unfair considering my baby had stopped growing, and I was very upset. On the 9th October I went into the Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit at Birmingham Womens Hospital, where they re-confirmed what the clinic had told me had happened, but because the embryo was so small, it is procedure to wait 7 days to double check. So they booked me in for a follow up scan for the following Friday, where they would give me the options for a procedure had the miscarriage not resolved naturally. I remember sitting in the waiting room with two other women who were discussing why they were there, and being so jealous that these ladies probably weren’t going to lose their babies (I don’t remember the reasons but they were minor).

***This next bit gets graphic, so stop here if queasy!***