TW: This piece of writing discusses miscarriage in extreme detail.
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I found out at a scan when I was 10 weeks pregnant, that I’d had what is known as a ‘missed’ miscarriage three weeks earlier. I was prescribed drugs to induce a full miscarriage, so that the pregnancy tissue inside me would, well, not be inside me anymore.
In the public bathroom of Tunbridge Wells train station I passed the actual embryo. A tiny little bean which might have had the potential to become a person. I sat on the plastic loo seat crying over it. I told it, ‘I’m so sorry’, and flushed it away, racked with horror and grief. Because what else can you do?
The next day I went to a wedding, in a new dress I’d purchased to try and feel like my old self. Huge chunks of tissue fell out of my body as I smiled and drank champagne. The hosts had hired a block of fancy port-a-loos which had dark blue chemicals instead of water in the loos, which meant I couldn’t see my own blood. I was grateful for it. Half way through the wedding I had to make my husband give me his boxers, because my normal knickers couldn’t withstand the industrial sanitary towel I had to wear.
I had been warned when I opted to take the medication to induce a full miscarriage, that it doesn’t always work. But I’d bled so much it didn’t seem possible that there could be anything left inside me.
I dreamed I was giving birth to pieces of plastic tubing, covered in blood, or giving birth to a tiny, perfect plastic doll, also covered in blood.
But there was. A small piece of pregnancy tissue stuck at the top left hand corner of my uterus, still secreting hormones which tricked my body into thinking that I was still pregnant. A gloriously kind doctor at UCLH told me calmly that the best course of action was going to be surgery to remove it. So a week later I was writing a makeshift will in a Kate Spade notebook, in case I died under anesthesia. I had the surgery. They removed the tissue. I was finally, weeks after my loss, no longer chemically pregnant. It was over. Or at least I thought it was. Then the dreams started.
Most nights I would dream the whole thing, reliving the sensation of pregnancy tissue coming out of my vagina, the cramping, the nausea, the bleeding. Then the dreams shifted. I was giving birth to pieces of plastic tubing, covered in blood. Giving birth to a tiny, perfect plastic doll. Also covered in blood.
I’ve always loved sleep. I’m amazing at it. I can do it easily, quickly and anywhere. But suddenly that skill was lost. I knew that if I closed my eyes I was going to have another miscarriage in my mind. Sleep became the enemy.
A week after I started my job here at Grazia I woke up in the middle of the night with agonising pains in my upper abdomen and lower chest. I crawled to the kitchen, lay on the stone floor, desperate to cool down because I was so hot. I cried for my husband to call an ambulance, which he duly did.
When the paramedics arrived it transpired that I was having a panic attack. I’d had them before, but the ‘oh fuck my heart, I can’t breathe’ type. Not the type where you’re so genuinely sure that you are going to die that you call an ambulance at three in the morning.
The next day I spent half an hour making my eyeliner symmetrical and went into work on a handful of hours of sleep, faintly embarrassed about having made such a fuss.
A while later I posted on Twitter, asking if anyone had a way to control their dreams. And the replies, both to the tweet and in my direct messages, mostly said the same thing. Have you had therapy? Are you seeing anyone? And eventually a psychologist got in touch with me and said ‘it sounds like you might be suffering from PTSD.’
PTSD was for people from war zones, not women who had miscarriages. One in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage. How could I have PTSD over something that common?
It turns out that PTSD is not just for people who have been to war zones. Research released today confirms what I learned the hard way. Miscarriage can without question leave you with PTSD.
There is no neat bow to wrap this story up with. Things have got better, slowly. I moved house, and no longer living in the flat where it all happened seemed to help. I went to work every day. Walked a lot. Read a lot about how to look after myself. Talked about it. Sought out help and support. Went back to ballet lessons. Wrote a book. The dreams have mostly stopped. I’m less terrified of trying again.
If you’ve experienced a miscarriage and you’re suffering with trauma, please don’t brush it off. Yes, miscarriage is common. That doesn’t make it any less traumatic. You are no less deserving of support because your experience is not unique. See your GP. Ask for help. Don’t live with PTSD because you don’t realise you have it.
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