Dealing With a Miscarriage, Naturally

When a woman is pregnant it’s customary to keep it a secret until you have past the first trimester. The reason for this is because many pregnancies don’t make it that far, and it’s difficult to tell someone that you are no longer pregnant.  Trust me on that one.

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I  have a problem keeping my mouth shut when something is such good news. I was pregnant two years ago and then at 11 weeks I suffered a miscarriage.  At the time of the pregnancy I never expected that I would lose the baby.  I told everyone the day after I got a positive reading on my pregnancy test.  I told everyone for two reasons, one I was so excited, and two with the way I suffer from morning sickness and teaching children, it’s just easier to tell the truth.  No, it’s not contagious, yes I only FEEL like I’m dying but I’m really not.  So after the entire world knew I was pregnant, I had to then retract my story and tell them the baby had died.  That was rough, but was it really any worse than suffering in silence would have been?

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Not only does it feel horrible to experience the death of your child, and all the hopes and dreams that go along with being pregnant, but it’s scary to know that the fetus is still inside of you. I actually do not mind telling this story anymore.  I’m still a little sad at the life that was lost, but I marvel at the miracle that is the human body.

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I went in for a routine ultrasound at 12 weeks of pregnancy. I believe the ultrasound was scheduled at that time to date the pregnancy.  I remember being so excited, my husband came along to the appointment and we brought along our daughter.  I laid on the table with my bare belly exposed.  As the ultrasound tech put the gel on my belly I could hardly contain my excitement.  Then she kept moving the transducer around to find the heart beat.  My smile turned to horror.  She wouldn’t tell me anything!  I had to wait for the doctor to come in and have a look for himself.

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The doctor came in the room, checked my belly and in exactly 30 seconds said five words I never expected to hear, “You have had a miscarriage.” I broke down in tears, I was devastated.  Every question I could think of went through my head “How could this happen?  Why me?  What have I done to cause this?  Is this real?”

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Next, the doctor said I needed to decide on a plan for evacuation. Evacuation!  Evacuation! The only plan I was prepared to deal with was writing my birth plan!  He told me I could take the evening to think about it and give him a call in the morning with my decision.  So my two choices were either I could have the doctor remove the fetus or I could allow my body to deal with it.  The most discomforting thought was that the baby had passed away inside me a week prior.  I thought, “How could I be so out of tune with my body that my baby has been dead for one week and I had no earthly idea!  What kind of Mother was I?”  Of course these were the most irrational thoughts of a grieving Mother.

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I stopped over at my Midwife’s office to tell her the sad news. She consoled me and my husband, and then we went home to let the news sink in of what just happened.  I decided on the car ride home that I didn’t want to let anyone poke around inside me and to trust my body to take care of the miscarriage on it’s own.  Never did I make a better medical decision in my life.

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Three days later I was lying in bed around 11:30 at night. I began to feel contractions.  I had started bleeding earlier in the day so I knew something was going to be happening soon.  No one had prepared me for what would happen if I let my body take care of the evacuation on it’s own.  So my instinct kicked in, and I decided to listen as closely as I could to my body.  When the contractions began, they weren’t terribly painful, they came in waves and felt like I remembered labor to feel only on a much smaller scale.  I decided I didn’t want to wake my husband because I felt I was not alone.  I was with an expert, my body.  It was like my body took on a life of it’s own, it was driven by some other force and it was not my own.  I was in awe of what was happening.  It was the first time throughout this ordeal that I had not felt emotion.  I was too much in awe of the process to be sad.  As time progressed the contractions became stronger, I was rocking back in forth in pain.  At one point the pain became so strong I fell out of the bed and onto my knees on the floor.  I still did not wish to wake my husband because I felt like I was the strongest most amazing woman.  It really wasn’t me, but it was my body that had taken charge.  All of a sudden, I instinctively went to the bathroom to sit on the toilet.  Within about two minutes of that, I passed the baby.  I couldn’t see the fetus, it was just a ball of dark matter.

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The most amazing thing to come out of this whole horrible situation was that I learned to trust my body. My body was not defective, I did nothing wrong, sometimes these things just happen and it’s OK.

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After everything was over, I woke up my husband to tell him what had happened. I don’t know that he ever grasped the magnitude of the event, but he was relieved that for the first time since we had gotten the bad news I was just fine.  I would not have felt the same way about the miscarriage if a doctor had done the procedure.  I would have continued to feel like a failure as opposed to feeling like a super woman.

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I called my midwives the next morning, and they then told me, it is a lot better for your body to not have a D and C or a D and E. That those procedures were invasive and it is much better to deal with it naturally.  I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why didn’t they tell me that in the first place?”.   When you find out you’ve had a miscarriage, you certainly cannot think clearly.  I believe my God given intuition led me down the correct path.

I went back four weeks after that and they told me that I was in such great shape I could immediately begin trying for another baby. We got pregnant on the first try, and the rest is history.

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So if any of you super women out there end up with a miscarriage, and I hope to God that you don’t.  Try and allow your body to do it’s job instead of the doctors.  I truly believe that helped me with the grieving process.  It also helped me trust my body during the next pregnancy.  It’s difficult not to be afraid of losing a baby after suffering a miscarriage.  It wasn’t your fault, or your body’s.  Your body is a super human elite piece of machinery.