Adele from Our Pale Days submitted this post – I’ll let her explain why ❤
This post describes the medical management of my missed miscarriage in December 2015. I wanted to write about the experience in as frank and real manner as I could for others going through the same suffering. When I had learnt my baby had ceased to grow after 6 weeks I didn’t know what to expect from medical management. I found the official literature sugar coated the procedure so when I decided to write a blog I wanted to talk about the gritty reality of medically induced miscarriage.
After publishing the post a few people got in touch with me via instagram (our.pale.days) saying how much my writing had affected them. It even helped my husband understand what I was going through back then as I was starting to shut myself off and spiral into depression. Those comments from strangers particularly confirmed to me that what I was writing about, although heartbreaking and cruel was the right thing to do.
Starting a blog has really helped me through both of my losses, the Our Pale Days blog is my angel baby’s legacy and will always live on. I am pregnant again for the third time and hope this one will deliver us our Rainbow, and when they are old enough they will learn about their older brother and sister watching over them.
Our Christmas of 2015 was the worst of my whole life, in fact it didn’t happen, to us it was another day there was no cheer or celebration. We had no Christmas dinner, no presents, no Christmas tree, it was dire. We were deep in grief and I was on the hunt for answers why we had miscarried. I am a biological scientist and as a scientist I naturally need answers and understand why things happen. I’m one of those people who search their symptoms on the internet for example.
I found the common causes of miscarriage – mostly a defect in the genetic or chromosomal make up of the embryo either caused by a dodgy egg or sperm where nothing can be done. But I did come across other websites stating that too much Vitamin C can cause miscarriage and there were even websites giving instructions on how to bring on a miscarriage for unwanted pregnancies. It basically said to overdose on the fizzy multivitamins and it would cause a miscarriage. I must admit I did try this method as the two weeks wore on but it did not work. I was pretty shocked there are these websites out there basically saying how to have a home-made abortion in my opinion. I found other websites claiming menthol caused miscarriage, this worried me greatly as I’d had a terrible cold the same day as I started spotting and I had used menthol crystals the help with my congested sinuses, although I had researched before using them and had mixed reviews I’d taken no other medication and was suffering greatly so I used the crystals. That played on my mind quite a bit, I couldn’t forgive myself if Bean had died because of something I did. But Bean had stopped growing 2 weeks before that point so that couldn’t have been the cause. I also researched into miscarriage-causing foods in case I had eaten something I shouldn’t have and it came up with cinnamon as a possible cause, again this brought up a lot of concern for me as I had eaten porridge with cinnamon on almost everyday of my pregnancy. I was becoming frantic trying to find a reason, something or someone to blame. Of course I blamed myself entirely even though there was nothing I could have done. Luckily throughout this frantic period Rob was there all the time, he gently brought me back down to earth giving me the facts that there was no one at fault, we both did everything we could have done for Bean, his genetics just weren’t compatible with life, no one is to blame.
Courageous Mothers Community 