Back to square 1 :-(

[Renee71]

I had some bright red spotting on Saturday, then heavy bleeding and clots overnight. I went to Addenbrookes A&E first thing on Sunday morning, where they checked me over and took some bloods. They couldn't give me a scan as it was weekend and they booked a scan appointment with the EPU for 11:50 today. It wasn't good news and the scan confirmed that I had a miscarriage. I need to back to the EPU tomorrow to have more blood taken, but so far nobody has an idea what caused this miscarriage.

I had IVF treatment in November and I was on estropause and progesterone until 10 weeks to reduce the chances of miscarriage. I stopped these medications last Monday, but thought I was okay as I didn't bleed within a few days.

The sonographer couldn't give me details of when the baby had died, as I had already miscarried by then. The only thing I had was a really bad headache for 4 or 5 days in week 9. The only details they gave me were my HCG levels for Sunday which were below 1000. They are checking my HCG levels again tomorrow.

This is really devastating for my husband and I, as we are running out of time to have a baby. We funded the 2 IVF courses ourselves, but my husband is currently unemployed so further private treatment isn't an option until he finds a good job. We are going to ask if we are eligible to try a cycle on the NHS in the near future.

 

[fifideluxe]

really sorry this has happened to you life can be so unfair

Dont give up hope xxx

 

[ClaireMuir123]

So sorry to hear your sad news xxxx

 

[Weeplin]

I am so sorry this has happened to you and your husband. Fingers crossed the NHS helps and don't lose hope xxx

 

[lisrad]

so sorry to hear your news. thinking of you and send you a big hug.

 

[prdlyexpectng]

i'm sorry sweetheart. not much can be said to console you. but.. i learned with my miscarriage the saying "time heals all wounds" holds true. your angel baby is watching you!

 

[mummy2lola]

Oh sweetheart I'm so so sorry for ur loss.ur story has bought me to tears,please keep believing that u will have a baby in ur arms one day.sending u and ur husband all the love in the world xxx

 

[ahbon]

I'm so so sorry this has happened to you x Be strong for each other x

 

[AFatKindaThin]

so sorry for your loss hun. Look after yourself and don't lose hope hun it will happen for you x x x

 

[Nanaki]

So sorry for your loss, hun. Please don't losing the hopes to have a baby, and you will!

Lots of love and hugs! xxxx

 

[Newmommy2011]

I'm so sorry girl!!!

 

[hope4bump]

so sorry

 

[Jobi]

So so sorry for your devastating news. I expect you have got loads of questions and are in shock. Hope you have lots of support. I cannot imagine what you have been through.

 

[05mummy07]

Oh sweetheart, I'm so sorry xxxxxx

 

[AndreaBat]

So sorry for your loss hon. There are no words to comfort you right now.

 

[Waitin4astork]

I'm so, so sorry hon.
Thinking of you x

 

[Renee71]

Thanks for all your messages of support. I just thought I would post an update.

On Monday we asked if we could go to our own GP for the further HCG tests, but they said we should really come to the hospital to do them. Our GP is 3 miles away, but the hospital is nearly 25 miles away (and the blood is forwarded to the same hospital to provide the results). They told us it wasn't just a case of having the blood test - we would be meeting with a consultant to discuss what happened and there may be the need for further treatment.

We made the appointment to visit the EPU for 11:00ish. They don't give exact times - you just turn up. The blood was taken by 11:25 and the nurse told us to come back in between 1 and 1.5 hours for the results. We came back at 12:45, checked in with reception and sat in the waiting room. The nurse who took the blood saw us sitting at 13:15 and said she would check if the blood test results had come back. We didn't hear back from the nurse and were left sitting in the waiting room until after 15:00. By this time we were both very fed up and getting angry at the lack of communication. I went to reception and asked if they had forgotten about us. They said that the blood test was still not back. I asked when we could see the consultant but she said he needed the test results. The consultant called us into his office at around 16:00 to say that the blood test results were still not back from the lab. He told us he was only told of our case about 5 minutes before and had he seemed to have just skim read the notes. He said the HCG levels didn't make sense - over 12,000 and then a result of under 1,000 a week later. We said this wasn't the case - the 12,000 HCG level was done on 20/12/10, so it was just over 1 month later. We were expecting the consultant to be able to tell us when the baby died, why it died and discuss ways to reduce this happening in future pregnancies. The guy couldn't give any definitive reasons and just spouted statistics about miscarriages in pregnancy.

Basically, he said 15% to 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Chromosomal abnormalities are the cause of over 50% of miscarriages. These can be caused by the repeated copying of cells. If a cell divides and there is just a little error,then all future cells that divide from that will have the same error. This may cause things like the brain or heart etc to fail to develop properly due to the incorrect copying of the cell information. He said that miscarriages up to around 8 weeks are probably due to chromosomal abnormalities. He says this seems cruel, but it is natures way of ensuring that a fetus with major problems is terminated. He said that miscarriages between 9 and 12 weeks are usually due to problems with the placenta formation. He said he didn't think this was our problem and said he guessed the baby died around 7 weeks. I still feel it probably happened at around 9 weeks, which coincided with a bad headache.

We asked about the possibility of IVF on the NHS. He said this wasn't his area of expertise, but believed the upper cut-off age was 37 for this. He said fertility rates drop sharply after 37. He estimated the chances of us having a "baby in arms" via IVF were around 15% per cycle and the NHS wouldn't fund the treatment at such a low rate. Reading between the lines he sounded a bit negative about using the private IVF clinics, but we got far better treatment there than when we were in this NHS hospital.

He said he wasn't expecting to fit us in that day and he was holding up his other patients who had an appointment and he made out he was doing us a favour by seeing us! We don't know what went wrong with our appointment and who made the error. A woman called from the EPU last night to give us the Tuesday HCG results - now down to 205. The consultant wants 1 final HCG test to be done on Monday. He has agreed that we can do this at our local GP surgery, but he says we will still need to attend the EPU to discuss the results. I don't know what else he is going to say, but at least we will have a confirmed appointment next time, rather than feeling like we are disrupting his schedule!

 

[fsugirl]

So sorry for your loss. Sending prayers and hugs to you and your husband. I hope you are able to try again soon.

 

[MooMrs]

Really sorry for your loss, and such bad treatment from the hospital too. Hopefully the consultant was just really negative and you'll have more luck talking to someone else about the future who'll be more positive.

 

[Fallen Angel]

Oh Renee, so very very sorry for your loss sweetheart.

It's bad enough to have to cope with losing a much-loved angel, but to them be dumped on with totally inadequate input from NHS medical staff is almost intolerable.

I know it's slightly different because your baby was an IVF baby, but from my own experience, you'll never get a straight answer to why you lost your little angel NHS protocol only starts investigating reasons why when you've had 3+ misarriages, which I think is terrible, personally.

For now, perhaps you should try and focus on giving yourself a little time to grieve because I'd hate for you to go on a journey looking for answers that you're probably never going to get from the NHS.

With regards to NHS IVF, it varies from one health board to the next, I know in Gloucester the upper cut-off was 38. But you're GP should be the right person to help you with this advice.

Look after yourself hunny and I'm sending as many good vibes your way that you get your little bean in the near future xx