The Mumsnet Miscarriage Campaign

It is hard, but she is being brave, I have DGD overnight as DD goes in for a D & C ( or whatever they call it now ) first thing tomorrow
I think it will hit her hard when her BF produces number 2 any day now.

Sorry to hear this Susie - please take heart that this is very common occurrence and happy outcomes usually follow, although that is not to minimise the trauma, which as you will know stays with you. Lots of good luck to your DD.

So sorry to hear that your DD miscarried Susie. Pleased to hear she had good care & hope it continues & she has understanding if & when she tires to conceive again. She has your understanding too but it must have re-triggered a lot of awful memories for you. Lots of love to all, x

I am so sad reading this. as my DD miscarried this morning, but her care was a lot better than mine was 31 years ago when I was told to treat an early miscarriage as a period - I am rhesus o neg, and miscarried the next baby as I should have had an anti D injection...

Let us hope that this Mumsnet campaign will result in more compassionate care. I do think that the use of pregnancy tests to prove that the episode is over is somewhat callous, especially for those who have tried hard to conceive - the idea of hoping the test might be negative is very strange, and my DD found it quite traumatic. I think if it had been handled gently she might have coped, but they were so offhand.

I had a very traumatic miscarriage and the 'treatment' I received could not have been more calculatedly callous. It took me many years and a lot of counselling to get past it.

You are right - the impact is always there. It was a difficult time; but a happy ending.

How awful for you all Mishap. So glad all is well now but many think that once you have managed to have children it is all forgotten but the impact is never forgotten. My DD still suffers terribly from anxiety.

My DD suffered two miscarriages, for reasons unknown, but on both occasions her care fell far short of the ideal.

The first was a "missed abortion" or "blighted ovum", where the embryo had died, but the placenta kept producing hormones, so the "pregnancy" continued. It took a while for them to work out what was going on and by that time she as about 15 weeks. The contents of her uterus were removed by means of a mini labour - just as painful as the real thing, but with nothing to show for it. She was sent home to continue her life, but 2 days later she produced a sack about the size of a grapefruit with the products of conception in it - she was distraught, thinking that the doctors had been wrong and she was giving birth to a foetus in a sack. What had supposedly been removed at the hospital no-one knows. Her OH was instructed to scoop the sack and its contents from the toilet and take it to the hospital to be examined. A few weeks later she had to undergo a pregnancy test in order that a negative result might confirm that all was over - a traumatic method under the circumstances.

Another pregnancy went to about 8 weeks and she began to get severe pain. My OH (a doc) instructed her to ring the GP urgently. The response she got was to wait and see, and let her know the next day if things did not settle. OH went ballistic, as he was concerned that she had an ectopic, and told her to go to A&E. In fact she rang the nearby Nuffield hospital and managed to get an urgent scan, which was seem by the consultant and he got her admitted (under him as an NHS patient) as he was sure it was an ectopic. In fact, at operation, it was found that she had a large rapidly-growing cyst as well as being pregnant - the surgery resulted in her miscarrying.

Just to cheer us all up - she has two lovely children now! Not without some trauma as she suffered a very severe ante-natal depression with the second, and was extremely ill for about 4 months. But we have all come out the other side, and I have told her she must keep her knees crossed in future as we can't take any more!!!

This is a good & welcome move. Unless you've been through or alongside it, most have no idea of the impact of this disenfranchised grief. My DD experienced 3 distressing miscarriages from 2006-07. The care in the hospital after each one varied but wasn't the worst we've heard of. What was bad was the service in trying to find the cause of her miscarriages. She was passed from one hospital to another, notes & crucial test results were mislaid, staff were uncaring & rude. She was even on the verge of going down the IVF route at great expense which, as later we discovered, would have been a waste of time as the foetus would have miscarried. Eventually she was granted funding to see a consultant privately at the Recurrent Miscarriage Unit at St Mary's, Paddington by Benenden Health Care, a mutual society for anyone who has worked in the public sector & their families - it provides a safety net when the NHS fails in some way. It took one consultation & one test (I believe more sophisticated than one she'd had on the NHS) to be told the cause - Hughes syndrome. Once she knew the reason & treatment, her fear of another pregnancy subsided & she conceived very quickly. By taking daily heparin injections & aspirin, plus extra care during the delivery & just after, this & a subsequent pregnancy produced 2 lovely GCs.
Hughes Syndrome causes blood clots blocking supplies to the foetus. It was discovered by Dr Hughes at St Thomas's Hospital. It is one of the MOST COMMON causes of recurrent miscarriage yet few GPs, midwives & nurses have heard of it. I think this is shameful when you see what misery it causes. A cousin's wife had 15 miscarriages back in the 1980s & never did have a baby - she was told she was not 'meant to be a mother' by a consultant. I often wonder if she had Hughes syndrome.