Of all the hurdles we’ve had to overcome since relocating to France, miscarriage was certainly not one we would have expected. And yet here we are, having to work through the experience of three pregnancy losses in the past twelve months.
My first loss happened in February last year. We fell pregnant in January after the first try and were elated. This would be my third child, but first in almost a decade, and Remy’s first. Around seven weeks gestation, I started to spot, and when the bleeding became heavier, we rushed to the emergency gynecologist at the Bayonne public hospital. The pandemic was in full swing, and the hospital had to make an exception to their rules to let Remy come in with me as my French was simply not good enough to navigate a medical emergency.
Waiting in emergency at Bayonne Public Hospital
The gyno was a male intern, a young bloke who seemed nice enough but was inappropriately chirpy and perhaps lacking the necessary empathy to support a woman having a sudden miscarriage. The gyno-chair was horribly old, sporting cold metal leg restraints that I have only seen in my birthing nightmares. The intern gyno slapped a condom on the intravaginal radiology scope, again with more chirp than I felt was appropriate and a “tack tack” as the condom snapped on and he went about his business. Indeed, we were mid-miscarriage. The scan showed debris but no pregnancy sac and nothing resembling a fetus. Perhaps it never really formed at all.
Healing round one.
The doc too my blood to test for HCG and told us to go immediately to see a doctor to get a Rhophylac shot (I have RH negative blood so I have to take an anti-D shot at 23 weeks pregnant and after every birth, and a miscarriage is considered a birth), come back in three days for another scan and a secondary HCG test to ‘confirm’ the loss of pregnancy and ensure my body was cleaning itself without complication.
We drove home heartbroken to Remy’s parents’ house in Pouillon where I grieved in bed for a couple of days and started to heal. Remarkably, my body cleaned out in under five days. This had been an emotional shock for us, and it would take some time to heal the mind. But I am no stranger to hardship and this ultimately felt like another mountain I needed to climb. Though I don’t deny myself the space to feel all the feels, I don’t like to cling to trauma, and prefer to move onwards. Remy and I fell more in love and closer together, and I fell pregnant again three months later.
Engaged under the magnolia tree a few days post-miscarriage. Life could go on.
