'My silent miscarriage made me hate my body – one week later, I feel in awe of it'
Mum’s the Word is a new series from Yahoo UK allowing parents to speak freely on the issues we typically feel we can’t talk about.
Today, broadcast journalist and CNN Sports anchor Rhiannon Jones, 39, writes about her recent ‘silent’ miscarriage.
Miscarriage is a subject many choose not to talk about. One in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. That’s a lot of people not talking.
Pregnancy can bring with it so much joy but I want to acknowledge the suffering, too. I want to raise more awareness and help others who’ve suffered to feel less alone.
I knew what a miscarriage was, though I had no idea how common it was. And I had never even heard of a ‘silent miscarriage’.
This is my body clinging on. I am three months pregnant. My gestational sac has grown as normal, my hormones are still playing havoc, I am suffering from debilitating morning sickness.
Having made it, or so we thought, to 12 weeks, we’d been looking forward to our first scan on February 5.
Read more: Mum releases picture cradling her stillborn who died because of NHS failings
Sadly, we were told our baby had died. Despite my body still carrying it and continuing to think it was pregnant, I’d suffered a silent (or missed) miscarriage.
We were sent away to wait a long, agonising week before we were allowed to take any action.
Our options were to have surgery to remove the pregnancy, take tablets to speed things up or wait and let nature take its course.
A week having already passed, and having been told it could take up to another seven before my body registered the loss, I wasn’t prepared to wait any longer. We chose medication.
That afternoon the bleeding started. A few hours later, I was haemorrhaging in the resuscitation room of A&E.
Read more: Women share their miscarriage experiences
Despite losing 1.5 litres of blood, no transfusion was needed and by the morning my haemoglobin levels had returned to normal.
In the space of a week, I’d gone from hating my body and its incapacity to look after our baby to feeling in absolute awe of it.
It had fought so hard to cling on to our baby and then it fought hard to save me.
At first, we regretted having told people we were pregnant before the first scan but, on reflection, thank goodness we did.
The support we’ve had around us has been overwhelming and has helped enormously.
We all deal with trauma and heartache in our own way.
Talk. Cry. Just remember: it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.
