Without Tommy’s, Gracie and Lola wouldn’t be here
I was completely unprepared for what happened when Sam and I decided to have a baby. I have a daughter from a previous relationship so I knew I was able to have children, which I think made it even more shocking for both of us.
It began in March 2016. I was in the early stages of pregnancy and had been feeling quite sick. Then suddenly, at 8 weeks, that stopped. The midwife sent me for a scan and they found no heartbeat. I’d had a missed miscarriage.
I was given tablets that were supposed to cause the ‘pregnancy tissue’ - that cold medical term - to pass out of my womb, but they didn’t work. Then I was told to wait for it to happen naturally, but it didn’t. In the end I had to have surgery.
Questions after loss
In the autumn of 2016 I got pregnant again and we went through a similar ordeal, with another missed miscarriage at 8 weeks. This time, I had surgery as a first treatment but they couldn’t find everything they needed to remove.
They gave me tablets instead but again those failed to work, so I went back for more surgery in January 2017. After that I was told I had a bicornuate [heart-shaped] uterus and that I'd had a rare type of ectopic pregnancy, high up in the right-hand side of my womb.
Two days later, I had a letter saying they wouldn’t refer me for investigations after 2 miscarriages as it was unlikely they’d find any cause. In another letter on the same day, I was advised to go to my GP surgery to discuss contraception.
I didn’t want contraception. I wanted a baby.
Throughout all this, we were offered very little support, even though we’d been in and out of hospital, seen various consultants and visited the hospital almost every 2 weeks. I had questions they couldn’t answer. We were told: ‘It’s just one of those things’.
I started looking around for help elsewhere and that’s when I first made contact with Tommy’s midwives.
Tommy's midwives made me feel for the first time that I wasn’t just a number and that our feelings mattered - not just mine, Sam's too. We were being listened to and understood, rather than having our emotions brushed under the carpet.
I’m so thankful I found Tommy’s at that point, because the miscarriage that came next was probably the worst of all.
Heartbreak again
After a positive test in August 2017 I had an early scan which confirmed the pregnancy, although the consultant couldn’t say if it was viable. At another scan a few days later there was still a heartbeat, but by 8 weeks it was gone.
We were advised to opt for medical management rather than surgery, so once again I took the tablets. I was sent home the same day but within hours the pain and the bleeding were so bad that Sam drove me back to the hospital. The early pregnancy assessment was closed and I wasn’t allowed access to the gynaecology ward so I had to go to A&E. It was awful. I was in a wheelchair in a packed waiting room, crying.
When they finally called me in, I wasn’t sure if they knew about my previous experiences as initially they thought that I’d had an abortion by choice. Sam and I both corrected them that it was a miscarriage. It was so undignified. There was blood everywhere. It’s where I passed our baby, which still haunts me.
They kept me in overnight because my blood pressure dropped so dramatically - I’d lost a lot of blood. Even after I was discharged the next day, it wasn’t over. I was still carrying a small amount of pregnancy tissue which had to be removed surgically about a month later.
Tommy's Recurrent Miscarriage Clinic
We were too traumatised to try to conceive again immediately. We wanted something positive to focus on instead, so we decided to get married and started planning our wedding.
At around the same time, I went to my GP and begged him to refer me to Tommy’s. I‘d looked on the Tommy’s website and I was confident they’d be able to offer me more than the standard NHS care.
I was right. It was life-changing.
The team at Tommy’s Recurrent Miscarriage Clinic in Birmingham carried out all sorts of tests, including a hysteroscopy which showed I didn’t have a bicornuate uterus after all. Rather than a dip in the top of my womb, I had significant scar tissue from my previous operations. That was probably a factor in at least one of my pregnancies failing to progress.
They also discovered I’d inherited a condition called thrombophilia, which makes my blood more likely to clot and is believed to be associated with some pregnancy complications.
In May 2018, I had surgery in Birmingham to free my uterus from scar tissue. Shortly afterwards, Sam and I got married and went on our honeymoon. That’s when I discovered I was pregnant again.
Reassurance and regular check-ups
One of the first calls I made was to Oonagh and Debbie, midwives at Tommy’s Recurrent Miscarriage Clinic, for advice and support. They were fantastic. I was assigned a place on the ALIFE-2 trial run by Tommy’s National Centre for Miscarriage Research, looking into whether heparin (an anti-clotting medication) could help prevent miscarriage in women with inherited thrombophilia who’d had 2 or more miscarriages.
I was in the non-treatment arm of the trial, so I wasn’t given heparin, but throughout the pregnancy we had regular trips to the clinic for scans and check-ups and support. That was hugely reassuring as our anxiety levels were sky-high.
I would wake up every morning and think: ‘Am I still pregnant? Is my baby still alive? Is this finally going to be the one?’
Throughout the pregnancy we had regular trips to the clinic for scans and check-ups and support. That was hugely reassuring as our anxiety levels were sky-high.
When Gracie was born in February 2019, Sam and I hoped that stress would start to fade. In fact, we were overwhelmed with fear as well as with love. I ended up with severe postnatal anxiety and I think some postnatal depression. I was convinced something terrible was going to happen to Gracie.
In December 2019 my period continued for longer than usual and I took a pregnancy test which came back positive.
I went back to the early pregnancy assessment unit for a scan and they told me I had miscarried again. I was advised that I had passed the baby but they wanted to check that my levels of HCG (the hormone that rises in pregnancy) were dropping. They weren’t, they were going up.
I continued to bleed and had to wait for another 2 weeks when a further scan on Valentine’s Day confirmed a heartbeat. Then COVID hit. The anxiety came back in full force.
The effects rippled through the family
As a nurse, I wasn’t allowed to work while pregnant at the beginning of the pandemic so I had very little to distract me. I was so scared that Sam would catch COVID or bring it into the house – he’s a builder who runs his own company so he was inevitably coming into contact with other people, even under lockdown and social distancing rules. At one point, he nearly moved out to protect us.
During my pregnancy with Lola, I had weekly telephone sessions with a psychologist. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The effects rippled through the whole family. My older daughter, Rochelle, who’s now 17, didn’t know about the miscarriages at the time but she experienced the impact of my anxiety afterwards.
Overall, I had months of counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy. My brilliant midwife and health visitor managed to access support for me beyond what would have been available normally. I’m still not fully recovered, although things are much better.
This year I ran the London Marathon and raised more than £4,000 for Tommy’s, which was a form of therapy in itself. So many of my friends and family didn’t know about my miscarriages, but because of my fundraising I felt able to tell them.
Without Tommy’s, Gracie and Lola wouldn’t be here. It got people talking, and it turned out many of those close to me had been through miscarriage and loss as well.
Lots of people talk about having support to help cope with grief and loss in their life, but there doesn’t seem to be the same recognition around miscarriage. It’s shocking there’s still such a taboo, and I’ll do whatever I can to help change things.
