The Trauma of Miscarriage
My husband took this photo of me while we were at the hospital, where this piece takes place. He said that it was the first moment of peace he saw on my face and that he saw my hand on my stomach even though we were losing our baby.
From the moment we pulled into the parking lot, I could feel that things were getting worse. The pain was more intense and the sensation was all too familiar, probably because I had experienced my first miscarriage only four months prior.
As I walked through the double doors into the emergency room, I felt a wave of relief. Maybe someone in this building could help me. I needed someone to tell me what was going on with my body.
Three days before, we had learned that our second pregnancy had come to an end, and it was time to induce the physical process of miscarriage. I took four pills and waited for what I thought was my Rainbow Baby to leave my body. After all we had been through, I couldn’t believe we were in this place again.
That night, three nights before this emergency room visit, I thought I miscarried, The pain was the same as the first time around, though that time the miscarriage had been natural. I thought that I had made it through the worst of it, and now I just wanted to heal emotionally and grieve our losses. Days passed and the bleeding was light, but I was still in pain.
But on the third day, the bleeding started to get heavier and heavier until I realized that something wasn’t right. “I shouldn’t be bleeding this much,” I said to my husband. I asked him to drive me to the hospital.
At the hospital, I laid in a room that looked like the set of Grey’s Anatomy. Except, I wasn’t in a TV show, and this was actually happening to me. A nurse asks me to sit in a wheelchair and she took me for a vaginal ultrasound to find out what exactly was causing the excessive bleeding, and what could be done about it.
In the radiology room, I began to undress for the ultrasound. Within seconds, there was blood all over the floor.
I sat on the exam table in tears. I was in so much pain, and blood was dripping all over me; I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. When the technician came in the room and saw the blood, her first words were, “Sweetie, are you okay?” She grabbed towels to clean up the blood and helped remove the blood from my clothes and legs. It occurred to me in this moment that she hadn’t been made aware of how severe the bleeding was. Before this ultrasound, no one had seen the blood. They just asked me to tell them about it.
What was happening to see was unfair and not normal.
Three hours later, I was still losing a lot of blood. I was finally given heavy pain medication and we waited for the on-call OBGYN to come and talk with us about our options. Since walking into the emergency room, I’d needed to replace my maxi pads two to three times an hour. To this day, I remember what it felt like as tissue abruptly left my body. No one could have prepared me for what that would feel like.
As we hit the sixth hour in the hospital, we were finally told that dilation and curettage was our only option because of my blood loss. After the procedure, we headed home to emotionally heal.
The truth is, the trauma that I experienced that day and the night of my first miscarriage just four months prior, has never left me. At tie, because of it, I feel lonely and broken. I can still conjure the physical feeling of losing those pregnancies. Following my second miscarriage, I sought therapy, acupuncture, medication, and meditation to try and handle the PTSD. All I can say is that it does get easier. However, I wish I never had to worry about it.
Not many people are aware of what is miscarriage is really like until they go through it.