Long post alert – and rather graphic too. Avoid if you’re feeling queasy.
As mentioned in my last post I went back to work at the end of last week. On Friday I had to give an important presentation – it went well. It went very well indeed until I said goodbye to the participants and felt a warm gush. More red blood – this time flooding through the liner and soaking my tights. A truly horrible feeling.
A quick text to our doctor and I was in the stirrups within 30 mins. And there they were again – two perfectly sized blobs, two perfect heartbeats. Accompanied by lots of full flow red blood coming from….nowhere. My lining looked good, my ovaries looked good, my cervix looked good. No haematomas, no shadows. Just terrifying, inexplicable bleeding.
He instructed me to go home and rest. Take a week off work….take two weeks off work, do whatever it takes until the bleeding stops.
I wish that was the end of the story. Unfortunately not. Last night a post-dinner bathroom visit revealed a huge bleed that filled the toilet bowl with bright red blood. Even worse – I passed a couple of pretty large clots, each the size of a £2 coin. One plopped out on to the floor when I pulled my pants down and one disappeared down the toilet. I know, gross. Apologies. I called husband and showed it to him, I just didn’t know what else to do. It was dark red and kind of liverish. Had I miscarried? Was this one of our babies? I was in a terrible state. I texted our doctor (10pm and he replied straight away! Honestly, that man….) and he asked us to come in for a scan first thing in the morning. Husband and I hugged and cried – the last couple of weeks have been horrendously stressful – for nothing. I just couldn’t believe it was over. We talked about bad luck, trying again, failure, sadness and disappointment. I lay on an old towel in case of overflow bleeding and eventually fell into a horrible, restless sleep.
Fast forward to 10am this morning. Well…guess what. There they were again. Two blobs, one 13.5 mm and one 12.9mm, each grown a couple of millimetres since Friday. Two pounding little heart beats. I lay in the stirrups and sobbed. I have no idea how these little guys survived the last 24 hours. The bleeding has been intense, like a super heavy period. And those clots! Incredibly my lining is still intact, my cervix is fine. The doctor saw a tiny little bleed on the scan but nowhere near big enough to explain the quantity of blood. He told us that the clots can’t have been uterine tissue, they must have been congealed blood. When he pulled the U/S wand out of me a load of blood dumped on to the floor, like a horror film.
I’m back home now. Needless to say I have been instructed to rest with capital R.E.S.T. No cooking, no laundry, no tidying up, no snack hunting. I need to lie down and only get up for the loo. I’m scared to go to the loo quite frankly but the bleeding seems to have calmed down a bit since we got back from the hospital. If heavy bleeding resumes tonight/tomorrow we’ve been told to go to the EPU as I may need a drip/iron injections/a couple of nights in a hospital bed. I truly hope that will not be necessary. I’ve doubled my dose of estrogen and vitamins and I’m doing the fanny bullets via the back door so I can give my vagina a ‘rest’. Seriously.
I am so grateful and happy that our babies are alive and well. Even though they are teeny tiny I feel overwhelmed by love for them – they are clinging on to life despite my body waging a war on us. I am also grateful for my husband for being so supportive, loving and kind. I am in awe of women who go through this alone, it is utterly terrifying. Finally I am grateful every single day for our gynaecologist. He is a treasure.
