"Miscarriage Care"

I recently attended early pregnancy at PRM with my second miscarriage this year. The staff in the unit were nothing short of amazing. Everyone was so kind and compassionate. They were lovely and supportive and really took the time to talk through everything with me. The sad thing is, all this means nothing without changes to the system itself.

When waiting for my appointment at early pregnancy we were left waiting in a corridor with heavily pregnant women passing us constantly. After being told our baby had no heartbeat, I walked out the scan room to see another women who was quite clearly a happily, heavily pregnant walking out of the room next to me after her scan. I understand it’s a maternity hospital but there isn’t even an attempt to shield you from it. There was no compassion whatsoever in the set-up. Considering women attending early pregnancy are only there because they have had some type of complication that puts them at risk of miscarriage, should it not be set up in a more sensitive manner to try to minimise encounters like this?

Despite bleeding in both of my miscarriages and my babies not having heartbeats, my body continued to hold on to the pregnancy and I had to make a decision about management. I say decision but there was no real choice. The length of wait times to access this care leaves women without a real choice. I had opted with my first miscarriage to have medical management. The experience overall was traumatic, with the medication failing. After extra rounds of medication and multiple internal examinations I was taken for surgery. I struggled massively physically and psychologically following this experience. I knew this was a risk again so with my second miscarriage I opted straight away for surgery. It had only been 3 months since my last treatment and I honestly couldn’t face choosing to go through it again. The problem was I didn’t have much of a choice. I was told the first date for surgical treatment was 3 weeks away! I was to wait 3 weeks before they would bring me in. How is that even I viable option?

I’m well aware that medically my pregnancy is seen as a tiny fetus but to me it was our very much wanted baby. Regardless of how early I was, we seen heartbeats in both our babies and they were now gone. I know this isn’t anyone’s fault and I’m in no way blaming the health board for the outcome of my pregnancy. What I feel they are responsible for is the lack of care following on from this. I felt backed into a corner and pushed into a form of management I didn’t want to do. I felt like because my baby was no longer alive, I wasn’t really a priority anymore. Regardless of how many weeks pregnant I was, these were my babies and the whole experience has taken a massive toll on my mental health. Waiting, knowing my baby has no heartbeat and is still inside me. How do you even begin to grieve and process that whilst you are still pregnant. How do they expect you to wait over 3 weeks and be ok with that?

I knew I couldn’t wait 3 weeks so I did discuss the only option they could offer me within the week which was medical management again. I was disgusted to find out if I did choose medical management to avoid a 3 week wait and it failed again, I would be bounced back to early pregnancy to wait again for a surgical date anyway. So what was the point? Either option was traumatic so what choice did I really have? 

I know the system has its pressures with staffing and funding, but something needs to be done. I think it’s totally unacceptable to expect women to just accept this as a standard of care.

There was no consideration for the women accessing the service, no surgical appointments, no genuine choice in my care and no real care when I needed it most. The system seems to be set up to fail and they have staff in early pregnancy that go above and beyond but without changes to the structure of the system itself, I feel early pregnancy care in Glasgow will always be substandard.