Miscarriage

Statistics say that 1 in 4 people with uteruses will experience a miscarriage. That means in a room with 40 uterus bearing people, at least ten of them will have experienced a miscarriage in their lifetime. A couple of weeks ago Chrissy Teigen shared her experience with her miscarriage. I am also one of those 1 in 4 and want to share my experience.

My first miscarriage occured in August of 2019. On July 29 I took a pregnancy test that came back positive. I had been feeling a little off, my moods swung faster than a Newton's cradle, and my breasts were extremely tender. I realized that I was about a week late for my period so my husband and I bought a pregnancy test. It came back positive. Two days later I was having some cramping, which I thought was normal since some women have implantation cramping. On July 1st my dad and my husband took me to ER because I was in an immense amount of pain, and didn't want to face the truth that I was having a miscarriage. While I was being checked over for the miscarriage, they also diagnosed me with a slight UTI. We were told to wait at least three months before trying again. During this period we found out that many of the women in our lives had experienced a miscarriage at least once in their lives, including my own mom. Through the shared experience I was able to heal and feel hope about one day becoming a mom myself, since I was my mom's rainbow baby.

Three months later, in November, I started taking a prenatal vitamin again to boost our chances for conceiving. We made it through my birthday in the beginning of December and finding out that my cousin had been killed by a negligent driver in an SUV. On the same day we found out that my cousin had been killed, I took another pregnancy test that came back positive. We were so ecstatic that I was pregnant again. Due to the holiday season, making a doctors appointment for anytime soon was impossible, so I made an appointment for January 5th. The day of my appointment came, and while I was filling out the paperwork as a new patient, the nurse receptionist was running my insurance card and I found out that I had no insurance. I wasn't able to get in to see my doctor and make sure that everything was okay with this new pregnancy growing within me. I was able to obtain temporary medicaid through Planned Parenthood and had an appointment made to see a doctor on January 30th.

On the evening of January 26, I was relaxing after a long day at work and reeling over the death of Kobe Bryant. Around 9 that night I had a sudden tight feeling in my abdomen, like my muscles were tensing up all at once. I thought I had pulled something since my job involves a lot of moving and light lifting. I decided that I was going to lay down and try to get some sleep. As soon as I laid down my shoulders started hurting right at the top between my neck and where my shoulder curves down into my upper arm. Needless to say that the only way I could get any sleep was sitting straight upright with my shoulders tensed up around my ears. The next morning when my husband got up for work he was very concerned about the pain I was in and the tightness in my abdomen.

Around 10:30 that morning, I decided to take a bath in my grandmothers walk-in tub in hopes that the warm water would help relax the muscles in my abdomen. I spent about two hours in the bath before I realized something was very wrong. I was having difficulty breathing and the tightening in my abdomen was turning into excruciating pain. My grandmother sent my mom my way and I told her I thought that I needed to go to ER because there was something wrong. She urged me to drain the tub, and get out so she could take me, and next thing I knew I was curled in the footwell of the bathtub, with no clue what was wrong. My mom was calling my name and told me she thought I wasn't breathing so she had called 911.

While waiting for the paramedics/ambulance I was going in and out of consciousness. At one point my baby cousin and baby sister came in to try and help me into a nightshirt so I wasn't nude when the paramedics arrived. I got the nightshirt over my head and around the top of my chest before I lost consciousness again and ended up curled back into the footwell of the bathtub. I continued to go in and out of consciousness, and wasn't aware the paramedics had arrived until I had a gentleman behind me trying to lift me up onto the seat in the bathtub. Because I hadn't left the footwell of the tub, and the door opens inward, the paramedic had to climb up onto my grandmothers toilet and then into the tub on the seat. He hooked his arms under mine and helped pull me up onto the seat so we could get the door open.

I was able to help them open the door, but after that I lost any control I had over my muscles. They gently laid me on a carrying travois to bring me to the stretcher they had set up in the living room. All I could do at that point was moan in pain, I didn't even have the energy to open my eyes. I felt the sun on my skin through the blanket they had draped over me as they wheeled me out to the ambulance. The ride was short, maybe 10 minutes, and I was being wheeled into the emergency room. I was asked to give a urine sample, but I was unable to so they ended up having to use a catheter to obtain the sample. Shortly afterwards an ultrasound tech came in and did an ultrasound of my uterus with my mother sitting next to me. My mom helped the ultrasound tech out by unplugging the portable ultrasound.

I was still in and out of consciousness and the next thing I was aware of my husband and dad were rushing into the ER to be with me while we found out what was going on. The ultrasound tech came back and had to do another ultrasound because the first one hadn't saved. An undetermined amount of time later the ER doctor came in and laid out what was happening to me. He told me that due to my pregnancy they hadn't been able to give me any pain medications. I was severely dehydrated and I had a burst ectopic pregnancy, so I had been slowly bleeding into my own abdomen. I was scheduled for surgery, and the bed was tilted so my head was pointing down so that blood could continue to flow to my brain.

The OR team came and got me from the ER to prepare me for surgery, and I was still having issues staying conscious. I laid in the OR prep room for what felt like hours, but was only about 15 minutes as the surgeon prepared what he needed for me. As I was moved onto the operating room table they placed a mask over my face and told me to take deep breaths. I was unable to take a deep breath and in my panic was getting very loud about it. They told me to just take regular breaths then and that was the last thing I heard before everything went black.

After four hours of surgery, I woke up in a hospital room. There were two IV's in my right arm and a blood pressure cuff around my left. My parents and husband were led into my room while the attending nurse explained what happened during my surgery. The goal had been to repair the fallopian tube that had burst, and remove the already dead baby from it. The rupture was so bad that they had to fully remove the fallopian tube and transfused two units of blood into me. Shortly afterwards my parents and husband left for the night, promising to return in the morning. Sleeping was near impossible due to the pain I was in and the nurses coming in every hour to draw my blood. There was another patient across the hall who would call out really loudly as the nurses were doing their rounds.

My physical recovery took about a month. My mental recovery took a lot longer than that. I got through the worst of it with support from my mom and my husband. I was able to talk, laugh, cry and just become myself around them while I healed mentally. Now I can talk about it without depression overwhelming me, and I realize this is a learning curve with my body. I may be less one fallopian tube, but I have a huge heart and when we decide to try again, we know the precautions we need to take. At the end of the day, many women experience pregnancy loss and we're starting to talk about it because it is more common than really known.