Endbryo

The past 48 hours have been the worst.

After spending most of my weekend just lazing about, watching the telly, I log onto our joint chat/meet account that Husband has set up and find a flurry of messages sent between the 16th and the 23rd between Husband and 3 women, 2 in Brazil, 1 in Chicago, asking to meet. He maintains that he had mentionned "meeting people through this site" but he never said anything about it again and I find messages sent to young 20-something attractive women in foreign cities. I was so hurt, I confronted him on the phone on Sunday afternoon, after he gets into Sao Paulo. He says he doesn't understand, it was not meant to be a secret thing and that he had mentionned it before but going from meeting people to setting up appointments and exchanging phone numbers with girls is quite a stretch. I was blind-sided with all this. I call the only person that I can confide in, my best friend for the last 18 years. She's agreed with me. She's an enormous help: listening to me, giving sound advice, being there.

"You're a very strong woman."

Really? I never felt that way.

Meanwhile, I start to bleed. I am just getting over the shock and getting used to the idea of being a future mum. I read baby sites, I check on Amazon for baby books, I think about where and how to give birth, I time my stint at bcw so that I can plan for maternity leave.

And then one Saturday afternoon I start to bleed. Just little spots. Nothing out of the ordinary. Husband reassures me. Is there cramping? Is it heavy?

And it stops.

And then it starts again..... and doesn't stop.

By Monday morning I am frantic. I call NHS 24 helpline and speak to a nurse who reassures me and tells me to go see a doctor. I phone in at work and then make an emergency appointment at my clinic. I see the doctor there, who is very nice and reassuring and who issues a referral to the Early Pregnancy Unit at the Queen Mother Hospital at Yorkhill, near Kelvinhall. I go home first and change into something a bit more comfortable and get over there and wait to see a nurse/midwife. I sit there and fill out a form. By this time I am worried. I know something is wrong. I'm bleeding all the time, not heavily but continuously. The nurse finally sees me and asks questions, takes a blood sample to see if I am RH- (my blood type is A-) and tells me to wait until the scanning room is free. While I wait I can hear the heartbeats of other babies under the scanner. I'm wishing to hear this sound, to be struck by it, to freeze in my tracks and listen to the sound of another heart beat.

I get to the scan room, take off jeans and panties and lie down. The nurse/midwife does a tummy scan, pressing down hard on my belly. Nothing. She then suggests an internal scan, where they insert this long, vibrating thing, not unlike a toy, into me and she looks at the screen. She takes the scan from every possible angle. There's definitely a sac with something in it. But no heartbeat. She looks at me. The embryo is at just under 8 mm and possibly 7 weeks. There should be a heart beat by now.

"We generally can tell by this time but the hospital has a protocol to follow so we'll schedule a scan for next week but I wouldn't be confident about it."

I'm all alone, in this ward, bleeding and surrounded by pregnant women, I can't take it any longer. I'd held back at the doctor's office, during my first meeting with the nurse/midwife but now, the worst case scenario is true and I don't know how to cope. I brak down. The nurses are sympathetic but I'm sure they've seen it all and worse.

"There's no heart beat."

I can hear heart beats of other babies, foetuses, embryos...

Next week's appointment is just to check up on the womb and if there's anything left, they'll flush it out. It's gone down the drain.

I saw a photo of a nine-week-old miscarried embryo online. It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen. No heartbeat, a little creature frozen in time, like a dead rosebud pressed in a book.


I was ushered into a curtained off area in the same room where I met the first midwife to wait to speak the midwife who did my scan. One of the nurses comes by with a cup of tea. There are posters on the wall advertising miscarriage support groups. I call Husband and tearfully tell him what happenned. I then call Betty, my closest and dearest friend, who's six hours away in Texas, to tell her the terrible news. She's there for me too. She's always been there for me. At all costs.

The nurse comes back and advises what to do. I'm to wait to see what my rh blood test results are: if they are negative, I must receive an injection to prevent infection of some sort. I wait until the results come in, the longest loneliest half hour ever. I test negative and make a further appointment to see her for the injection (since the nurse doesnt have it handy - they have to order it) I agree to be back for 3:30. I call my clinic and arrange for an appointment with my regular GP for 4:30 to assess my options.

I go home, call my bank and student loan firm to arrange payment on my remaining loan. I'd received a threatening collection letter from the Quebec Loans and Bursaries crowd so I arrange for a quick transfer of funds from our joint bank account to the one in Montreal. I have to be at NatWest tomorrow at 11:00 to meet with my account manager to arrange the transfer, I am paying the whole damned debt so they can fuck off outta my life.

I go back to the hospital to get my injection and then I'm over to see the doctor at 4:30. He shakes his head when I explain.

"They did an internal scan?"

"Yes."

"They are usually very accurate. I'm sorry, lass."

By this time I had cried so much I felt numb. The doctor suggests I take time off, I get two weeks but most likely I will be back the day after my second scan, a week from tomorrow.

I go home and make more arrangements for my loan payment transfer. I call everyone and decide, on nurse's advice to have someone over to help so I call my close friend here in Glasgow, an ex-work colleague. She's brilliant, she comes over and she listens to what I had to say. She then cheers me up. Meanwhile, husband, still a world away, still devastated too, decides he has to get back to me. He's at the airport in Sao Paulo now and will board, hopefully in less than an hour. He'll be home tomorrow night, flying from Sao Paulo to Heathrow and then up here.

My friend sleeps in the spare room (and I'm thankful we have one because I cannot bear the thought of being alone on the first night). Thank God she came over. The tears are gone, but the sadness is there. I've been pregnant, and still am, I guess for 7-8 weeks. I'd found out 25 days ago so gotten used to it and looking forward to it. I was full of fear about whether or not it was healthy - my worst nightmare is giving birth to a severely defective child. Did my body listen? And what about those dreams that I had the week before I took the test?

It is all going away and I feel empty.