A missed miscarriage Pt. 1

August 27th, 2021

“There’s no heartbeat”…

Those three words broke me.

August 23rd, 2021

I was eight weeks pregnant today; I woke up and checked my app to see what size fruit the baby was this week (even though it was our second baby, we had been trying to conceive the entire year so needless to say I was excited about being pregnant again). I was nauseas, exhausted, and so in love with the idea of being a mom to two small people. I love being a mom, it took me time to get to this place but I’m here and I love it.

That evening I went to bed, and something wasn’t right, I had a burning sensation in my stomach and severe cramping in my pelvis. I couldn’t help but run to the bathroom every hour that night expecting to see blood, I was in so much pain but to my relief every check was clear. I rocked myself back and forth in bed and prayed the pain would stop and everything was ok with the baby growing inside of me. After a few hours of broken sleep, I woke up exhausted, the burning sensation had subsided, and I was left with cramping on my left side “round ligament pain”?

Two days rolled by quickly, being pregnant with a toddler leaves no time to think about being sick and tired. It wasn’t until I woke up Thursday morning that I knew something was wrong…

I went through the flow of my busy morning routine effortlessly; my gym session was productive and intense (something I hadn’t been able to do in 8 weeks) and it wasn’t until I got home I realized the painful tingling I’d had in my breasts for weeks on end was suddenly gone… I didn’t feel pregnant anymore and sadly those mama instincts I talk so much about had suddenly kicked in telling me I needed to go get checked.

After a long conversation with an urgent care nurse I wasn't sure what to do? My doctor was away on holidays, and I wanted to stay as far away from the ER as possible with COVID cases increasing in our area. To be honest, showing up at the hospital with a “gut feeling” and no symptoms didn’t seem worthy of taking a doctor or a bed away from someone who really needed it. I must have sounded on the fence about seeking care because she even called me back after we had hung up, she had spoken to another nurse and they were both concerned with how my week started and how it was ending. The two of them advised me to walk into an urgent care facility to start the process of seeking advice, knowing I didn't want to go to the ER.

Bless the doctor that saw me at urgent care, I couldn’t imagine being in his position, a patient sitting in front of him with no symptoms other than a “feeling” in the pit of her stomach that something was wrong with her baby at 8.5 weeks. He was kind, patient and he listened. He took blood, a urine sample and sent me for an ultrasound as soon as he could the following day. Those next eight hours were the longest eight hours I had faced in a long time…

August 27th, 2021

3:00 PM couldn’t come fast enough, I ended up at some ghetto imaging center in an old mall due to no appointments available anywhere in the city. I asked the technician if I could FaceTime my husband so he could see the heartbeat, she politely asked me to wait and take a video instead for privacy purposes. At this point I had convinced myself that everything was going to be fine, and I was lucky to be over the first trimester sick phase 8 weeks earlier than my last. As she rolled the paddle over my lower abdomen, all I kept seeing was a blob on the screen without any of the flickering life I remembered my son having so clearly at only six weeks. My heart sank into my stomach as tears rolled down either side of my face. Nothing was confirmed but my heart knew… There was no heartbeat.

A vaginal reading just in case baby was “hiding” but the technicians body language said everything as she left the room for me to get dressed. The radiologist entered the room, she didn’t really need to say the words because I already knew, I was crying, hot tears were filling my mask as she quietly said “I’m so sorry Mrs. Caputo, there’s no heartbeat”

I wanted to run out of there as fast as I could, but the technician decided to sit beside me on the bed to tell me how it was for the best and that I didn’t want a baby with “down syndrome” or any other health issues. I was appalled at her lack of bedside manner (what was wrong with being blessed with a baby gifted with extra chromosomes)? I left the room abruptly and ran out of the mall as fast as I could, I hadn’t ugly cried like that in a while…

A missed miscarriage…

I knew nothing about having a miscarriage, only that it was a sad traumatic experience that had affected a handful of women close to me. You don’t know until you know… After talking to several friends and the random doctor at my clinic while my doctor was away, I had learnt I had a missed miscarriage. The baby had stopped developing and my body was taking it’s time to remove it from my uterus. It was the waiting game for me… I was sad, anxious and didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. The last thing I wanted was to be in public and have it happen, I would go to bed at night wondering if ‘tonight was the night’. I was a mess; I wasn’t ok, and it had been a while since I hadn’t been ok.

A few friends of mine had shared their experiences with having a D&C, after several conversations with a few close women in my life it sounded like the right option for me. I would go to the hospital, be put under for 20 minutes and wake up ready to move forward with our loss and finally start to heal both mentally and physically. It was a lonely afternoon of waiting and being pushed around to different areas of the hospital. A blown vein from a failed IV in my left hand and the same conversation as to why I was there and what I was getting done with several nurses and doctors. I finally got to meet the doctor who was doing the procedure and as she explained the risks and the small amount of woman that experience them, I consented to the procedure almost excited to be done and over with it all. I woke up 40 minutes later to the amazing staff at the Sturgeon General Hospital and was escorted to my husband an hour later to head home and start my healing process.

September 2, 2021

2:30 AM

That's when the contractions started, I was two days post op and knew that bleeding and cramping were going to be a normal part of my healing. I had just been pregnant and now I wasn’t by the sweep of a 15-minute procedure. However, the pain that struck me suddenly reminded me of going into labor with my son. I had waves of sharp stabbing pain across my pelvis and my back was aching uncontrollably. I ran to the bathroom and that's when the first of many golf ball sized blood clots fell into the toilet.

Part 2 Tuesday September 14th @ 8:00 AM MST