So the last entry I was talking about the mild bleeding I was experiencing at week 12 of my pregnancy. It turns out that it was a miscarriage.
An internal ultrasound showed a missed miscarriage, which in my case meant the foetus died at week 7 – 8 of the pregnancy but my placenta carried on producing good levels of pregnancy hormones, which meant we had no idea I had miscarried. It was a shock to say the least, as I was still experiencing all the symptoms of pregnancy like morning sickness, sore breasts, cravings and aversions. I guess I felt a little cheated that my body kept the illusion of pregnancy going 4 weeks longer than it should. I was advised that I would need a D&C to remove the foetus and the birth material which would probably be a 1 -2 day hospital stay. Since I don’t ‘do’ surgery unless I had to, I made the choice to try and do things naturally. I have a great doctor who supported me in this decision, but gave me a week otherwise I was straight into hospital. I also had to monitor myself for infection, haemorrhage, and sever pain which could mean serious complications to my health. The natural solution In cases such as these we use herbs with an emmenagouge action. Which simple means a substance that promotes menstrual flow. Several of these herbs are also considered abortifacaceints which does what the word sounds like it does. It is for this reason that you need to be 100% sure that the foetus is dead before using such herbs. I used a combination of: I took 2 mls every 30minutes for 4 hours then hourly for another 4 hours. I repeated this for 2 days, after which you have to stop for 1 -2 days as the herbs in high doses can be quite toxic. I also saw one of our fantastic practitioners Carol Goddard to deal with all the emotions that I was feeling. Including failure, grief, loss, shock, well you can imagine. It was this session that made the great difference. We did a visualization to relax my cervix to allow everything to pass naturally. That afternoon 4 hours after our session I had what I can only describe as 3 heavy and painful contractions, after another 2 hours I passed everything. No one warned me about how traumatic this process would be. If anyone has done this after week 12 you will know what I mean. I passed the placenta, tissue and foetus, which in total was the size of a deflated football. I also had to collect it all for my doctor so he could tell if I had passed everything. This was aweful as collecting the sample and storing it made it all so real, to see a life that never came to be. I guess the good news is that I avoided surgery and with a lot of support I am getting there. The lessons which I have taken away from the experience are invaluable and in time I hope I will be able to help women going through similar situations. So for now thank you to all my friends and family for their beautiful support and hopefully people will stop asking me how my wonderful pregnancy is going! Thanks Fiona