Peter and I married in 2004 aged 20 and 21. We were very excited about starting a family and didn’t waste any time embarking on that journey. After six months of trying, which seemed a lot longer, we finally found out the news we were waiting for, we were expecting our first child. We rushed out in excitement and bought pregnancy books and started poring over catalogues. We told my family straight away, unable to contain ourselves. We had a due date of 22nd November 2005.
To our utter dismay we suffered a miscarriage six weeks into the pregnancy. This came out of the blue, we had never expected this to happen to us, we were both young and healthy. Why had this happened? At the hospital we were reassured that although a large numbers of pregnancies do sadly end in miscarriage there was no reason to expect it to happen again, most women go on to have a successful pregnancy next time.
We decided to start trying for another baby straight away. We were a little more apprehensive, but we kept the hospital’s reassurance in mind. Another six months passed before we were once again looking forward to a baby, due on the 14th June 2005. This time around the hospital offered us a reassurance scan at 6 weeks. The day of the scan arrived and we waited in a room full of other nervous couples, anxiously drinking the required cups of water. When our turn arrived I was unable to look at the screen until I heard the words I’d been holding my breath for, “and there’s the heartbeat”. We breathed a huge sigh of relief and started to enjoy the pregnancy. Shortly after this scan our fears re-surfaced when I started to bleed, once again we sat in the waiting room waiting for bad news. I was scanned and to our amazement there was still a strong heartbeat, the baby was however measuring smaller than it should be, the sonographer tried to tell me my dates were wrong, but I knew they were not. The sonographer pointed out a sub chronic haematoma around the pregnancy sac. She reassured us that although the bleeding would probably continue in many cases it will resolve and the pregnancy will continue without problems. After this we received several follow up scans, although the baby remained small for dates it did start to catch up.
Once we reached 10 weeks we had one final scan booked before we were discharged from the early pregnancy unit. To our horror, this final scan revealed the baby’s heart had stopped beating. Our hearts were broken, we had watched this baby growing for four weeks and now we’d lost this baby too. The most amazing midwife saw us after the scan and agreed to refer us for testing to see if there was a reason for this. We went straight up to have the bloods taken but would have to wait six months for an appointment at the miscarriage clinic for the results.
