I feel I need to write this because I am already forgetting so much. I've tried to write this as it happened, without emotion. That side of things is still on going and I don't think I could probably put it into words quite as easily. I wasn't sure whether to write it or not, especially as at the moment there is a carnival devoted to 'bad things about pregnancy' clearly this is not quite the take on the subject that was required.
Day 1
This year is my 37th year on the planet. I think probably, all things considered it's a contender for my worst year ever. I had my first miscarriage in May, just a couple of days shy of 12 weeks and my first scan appointment.
I picked up the pieces and carried on with life, we decided that we would wait until September to try again, my husband’s work is very seasonal and we kind of needed to avoid giving birth in the May/June period if possible, despite my having a good working knowledge of my cycle and when I was ovulating we managed somehow, despite only having sex once that month to get pregnant in July, two months after my miscarriage.
Fast forward 7 weeks and my first scan, I am stupidly nervous, so much so I wrote a blog post about it. The appointment was for 10.30am, I arrive in town ridiculously early at 9.45 and then take the slowest walk I can muster along the river into town. I have to stop a couple of times to take in the scenery to kill some time and still manage to poll up at 10.00am sharp. I am lucky there is no one else in the chairs outside Dr Valesquez’s room. I’ve barely got uncomfortable in my seat when a nurse pops her head around the door to see who’s next. She looks vaguely surprised at the lack of clients and asks me my name, she seems non-plussed about the fact that I am early and invites me in.
I am immediately put on the back foot when asked to undress from the waist down to see that the implement for a vaginal scan is being oiled, I am 11 weeks so I thought that I would have the usual scan… obviously not… It’s OK though and within a couple of seconds I see my uterus on the screen, a dark black mass, Dr V points to it. He wiggles the stick (I should get to know what it’s called) about a bit and hey presto an image suddenly appears. My baby! I know almost instantly that it’s not good. It’s not moving! And I don’t need to spend 7+ years studying medicine to see that there is no heartbeat. Dr V being thorough needs a few minutes to tell me in a mixture of fast Spanish, poor English and sign language that there is no heartbeat, whilst efficiently printing out pictures. He tells me (or so I decipher…) that the foetus had died between 3 & 5 days ago, it wasn’t my fault blah de blah…
He motions for me to get dressed and he and the nurse then make a bloody meal out of trying to phone the relevant department at the hospital, all the while the nurse is giving me one of those looks! The look that I soon become to despise. The pity look, sometimes accompanied by sympathetically raised eyebrows and in the worse cases by someone who really cares, with tears in their eyes. Whilst the farce of phone calls is going on I am staring vacantly, trying to take it all in, numb! I realise that I am staring at the desk and at the printed scan picture of my dead child, he/she looks perfect, looks like I would expect it to, on the scan you can’t tell that the heart isn’t beating. Why is this picture in front of me? I look away and meet the eyes of the nurse who is trying to busy herself looking for the correct telephone number to dial, another one of those looks… my eyes fill and I have to look away, I'm not sure if I can hold it together there.
I get sent away with a note for the labour ward and advice that if I bleed tonight to go straight to hospital otherwise turn up in the morning with this piece of paper and I will be dealt with accordingly. ‘Lo siento’ (I’m sorry) he says to me as a parting gesture. It’s worse than the nurses withering look, because it means nothing.
Day 2
After a fretful night we drop Joseph off at school and head off to the hospital. The last time I had been taken in by ambulance as an emergency, being very much in the throes of a full on miscarriage, this time as it was a missed miscarriage I was aware that it would have to be stage managed. I hoped that they would take me down as early as possible and give me a D&C and I could maybe, fingers crossed, go home that night.
After some confusion at the reception we are directed to ‘Urgencies’ or A & E to us Brits, we only waited about 10 minutes until we were directed up to the labour ward. We then spent an hour and a half sat on very hard chairs watching very pregnant ladies come and go. Some were obviously in for planned C-sections others I couldn’t say, maybe routine testing, certainly no-one looked like they were in labour. We were getting twitchy about the time, Joseph finished school at 12 and we were a good 20 minutes away, finally we agreed that at 11.15 my husband should go and fetch Joseph. At ten past eleven I was called through so kissed him goodbye and took a deep breath, no menfolk were allowed past this point anyway so there was no point in him staying. I was inspected and my situation confirmed but told that there were no beds available. Not for at least 2 hours, more likely 3! Great, having sent my husband away not ten minutes ago I now had to ring him to tell him to come back after collecting Joseph from School to take me home. An hour at home had to be better than 3 hours hanging around the hospital.
I had been informed that I would be having pessaries to bring on the bleeding and if that didn’t work then ‘intervention’ would be carried out. I spent the hour I had at home scouring the internet for information on pessaries and found nothing informative although a brave look at my scan picture told me that the baby was 9+1 - so much for dying 3-5 days ago! We made our way back to the hospital, my husband dropping me off and then having to double back to take Joseph back to School.
It was 15.45 when I was seen again by the duty midwives, I was given a pessary (3 tablets) and told that I wasn’t to move for 2 hours, they would assess me at 22.00 and again at 06.00.
So onto a ward, I am sure this isn’t unique to Spain but why the hell do they put miscarrying women on the same ward as new mothers. OK, they aren’t as hard-faced as to actually make you share a room with a new born but they are not that far away. The rooms are two bedded and one curtained. The curtain divide being across ¾ of the room but not around the bed. My room mate, I deduced had given birth prematurely as her baby was not around and she seemed to be spending a lot of time out of the room, probably with her baby. She had a lot of visitors. Which was great… for her! Not so much for me.
I was now feeling the effects of my pessaries but was now bed-bound, trying desperately to eat the truly awful hospital food I’d been served up in front of an audience of, at one point, 10 people. I send a text to Al which reads.. “I am officially in hell, woman in next bed has over 10 people crowded around her bed (and mine), about 17 visitors so far, all of the fuckwits leaving the door open so I get a nice view of the newborns opposite. Can’t even eat my bastard soup ‘cos they haven’t given me a bleeding spoon! Heavily bleeding right now, just what I need with a mass audience.”
Day 3
It’s close enough to midnight to call it the 3rd day. I am taken back down to the labour ward and my progress is monitored. Despite heavy bleeding and some very uncomfortable help with disposal of ‘waste’ I am given another 2 pessaries. ‘No comes ahora, para ocho horas’ I am told… no eating for 8 hours, OK, not hard really given that it’s practically midnight and there isn’t a plethora of takeaway establishments nearby, I get wheeled back to my room and I have a very disturbed nights sleep.
So, 8 hours come and go, I wasn’t daft enough to think that someone would see me at 8am, or even for that matter 10am. At 11.00am I am taken back up to the 2nd floor again for an examination to see how the overnight pessaries went. As expected, it wasn’t good so the need for a D&C was rather crudely mimed for me by the doctor in charge by a vacuuming noise and an accompanying hand movement. ‘You go to sleep and we shhhhhcuuuupppp’ I believe were his exact words!
12.15pm comes and so does a nurse with a fetching nightie, (one that I am later to find that I am supposed to do up at the back, being one handed due to the drip in my hand I do it up at the front) and a green hair net, not long now. I am a little relieved, surely if I have the op early then I could go home tonight. I text my husband to say don’t come to visit yet, I’m being taken down…
When will I learn? The hours and half hours float by so slowly and eventually at 17.15pm the porter arrives for me, typical! I have spent all day alone because of Joseph’s school hours and the minute he’s free to come and visit I get taken away. Never mind, I comfort myself, last time I was only out for an hour and then back on the ward, I’ll be able to see him later. One of the midwives catches me mid journey, just outside the lifts, she pinches my cheek affectionately and says ‘guapa chiquita’ (pretty little girl) I feel about 4 years old.
I find it really hard to write about the next half hour, I am still so angry.
There seems to be a lot of green masked people, thinking back there were probably about 7 or so, my nightie was on the wrong way, there was much talking between them all and I remember one of the nurses shouting at the surgeon to speak ‘Castillan’ instead of Catalan to me. I thought I was going to be put to sleep so I wasn’t too concerned but they just kept fussing. Then they made me sit up, OH SHIT! They were giving me a spinal block. Can I just say that my epidural with Joseph – never felt a thing! Spinal block – Oh my lord! The shock of it at first, then the anaesthetist kept saying 'left' or 'right' meaning I assume which leg would go numb, I swear my left leg got it twice and I never felt it in my right. Why did they do a local for such a procedure? I have never been so terrified in my life! My only saving grace was the needle in my hand. The nurse who put it in made such a bad job of it that every time they attached me to a new drip or painkillers it hurt like crazy. They decided to play around with it whilst I was in theatre, it hurt like mad but I could have kissed them all because they at the very least gave me a distraction from what else was going on.
Pretty much by the time the nurses had stopped fannying around with my drip the doctor informed me ‘esta’ (that’s it). I was then wheeled over to a recovery bay to wait for my elephant legs to return to normal. Clearly my legs don’t respond too well to spinal blocks because two c-section women were brought in and their babies delivered in the time I was willing my legs to start working again. All the time watching the clock tick through from OK visiting hours for Joseph to his bedtime and way beyond…
I finally got discharged from hospital at 11.45am Saturday morning, having spent more time in there then when I had actually given birth at the same hospital 3 years earlier.
Oh and it seems almost petty to complain about this, but my right heel now has an acute stabbing pain in it, a side effect from the Spinal block surely?
