My Miscarriage Experience: A Day-by-Day Account of a Loss at 7 Weeks

This is a raw account of a miscarriage, so if this sort of content is difficult for you, now is a good time to close out this page. In the spirit of transparency, it gets a little bit graphic.

This was written two weeks after my loss. However, some time has passed, so is not being posted in real time.

I understand why women are quiet about their pregnancy loss, especially when it’s early. It feels weird to announce a loss because it’s not good news, but it’s also not something I ever wanted to be a secret. 

I don’t know how much time will have passed by the time I publish this (because at the point of writing, I am simply not ready to open up this part of my life), but two weeks ago, I had a miscarriage. 

The range of emotions I’ve experienced in the past two weeks can only be described as weird. I know they are very human emotions, but I have never had a front-row seat to anyone else dealing with this, so it’s been hard to understand what I am feeling. I’ve questioned if I am feeling what I am supposed to feel, even though rationally I know that there’s no “right” way to deal with this.

Throughout the process, I did a lot of Googling. Reddit was my go-to resource because everything else I read was so clinical. I knew that I had to share my experience because if it brought comfort to even one person, it would be worth it. So here we are. This is my experience.

Early Miscarriage and Recovery: A Day-by-Day

This is where things get a little graphic, but it was important to me to share the details of this experience because I didn’t know what to expect, so I assume others are in the same boat. Of course, every person’s experience is different, so take this with a grain of salt, but this is how it went for me.

3 Days Before

The first sign that something was wrong was spotting when I was 6W6D pregnant. I came back from a walk, and there was some blood when I went to the bathroom. 

I was very alarmed, but I checked in with a friend who had a similar experience in a previous (healthy) pregnancy, and she assured me that it is usually not a cause for concern. The people of Reddit said the same thing, but I still did not have a great feeling. 

I just wanted it to stop, but it continued that way all day.

2 Days Before

The next day, the spotting continued. I was slightly more, but still only when I went to the bathroom. I was holding my breath at this point because even though I didn’t have any pain or anything, I felt off. I was scared.

The Day Before

The day before, I woke up very early with some clotting. The clotting was still in the realm of spotting, but there were tiny clots nonetheless. I called the midwife who I was supposed to meet for the first time the following day, and she sent me for an ultrasound. 

We went for the ultrasound, and the tech confirmed that the pregnancy was in the right place. There was a baby, and the baby had a heartbeat, but it was measuring almost a week behind. At this point, I was supposed to be 7W2D, and the baby was measuring 6W3D. 

Even though there was a heartbeat, I was only slightly less stressed. I knew something was wrong. My husband was convinced that everything was fine, but I was not. 

The Day Of

On the morning that I was supposed to be 7W3D, I woke up very early needing to pee. The clots were a little bit bigger, and I was too stressed to go back to sleep. 

I laid back down with my toddler, and a little bit later, I felt an urge to go to the bathroom again, but not necessarily because I needed to pee. It felt oddly reminiscent of when my water broke and I went into labor the first time, but there was no gush of fluids when I stood up this time. 

When I got to the toilet, I felt my body pass a massive clot. It was almost the size of my fist, and I immediately knew what was happening. Blood started running down my legs, and I started shaking. My toddler was still asleep, so I texted my husband even though I just wanted to scream.

Please come I don’t know what to do

There’s so much blood

I made him look at everything because I needed to know that what I was seeing was real. I don’t think he fully understood what had just happened, but I felt it in every fiber of my being. He was holding onto hope, and I was not.

I was no longer pregnant. It was over.

I laid down and cried for just a moment before my toddler was up and at ‘em (always with impeccable timing). I asked my husband to take the morning off so I could cancel the babysitter because I wasn’t in the mood to see anybody. I took a shower because I didn’t really know what else to do.

I was definitely in a bit of denial for a moment because I planned to try to get some work done until my midwife appointment. However, something told me that maybe I should reach out to the midwife to determine the best course of action, so I texted her to ask if I should come to my appointment or go to the ER. She said the ER was the best option. 

If you know me, you know that I very rarely leave my son with anybody but my husband, so even though I knew he was in good hands, leaving him with his grandma while I went to the hospital was somehow one of the most difficult parts of the experience. I sobbed in the car because I was worried that I wouldn’t be home for his naptime.

At the ER, I got an ultrasound and some blood work, where they confirmed that I had a complete miscarriage. The PA confirmed that the fist-sized clot was likely actually the baby, sac intact and all. She asked me if I was okay when she broke the news, and I told her that I already knew.

After a shot of RhoGam (I am Rh-negative), I was able to go home. I hadn’t even considered that I’d need RhoGam, so the surprise shot in the butt was the icing on the cake.

I made it home for naptime. I got Subway for lunch because that would’ve been my post-delivery meal had I made it full-term. I just kind of laid around the rest of the day, and by the evening, the cramps started. They weren’t awful at this point, so I went to sleep.

The Day After

Waking up not pregnant for the first time in a month was really weird. I didn’t feel nauseous or hungry. At this point, the cramping was pretty bad, akin to a bad period. 

I got up and took my prenatal vitamins because I was not equipped to deviate from the self-care routines that I had worked so hard to establish over the previous month. I did have a little hiccup with the routine because I couldn’t bring myself to eat my daily seed bite (which is basically just a granola bar that is packed with a bunch of seeds and grains to help me stay on track with seed cycling). I don’t know why I felt that way, but I did.

Otherwise, I felt oddly okay from an emotional standpoint. I was mostly just annoyed that my plans for the next year were ruined. Since I was really sick with my previous pregnancy, we’d pretty much put any plans on hold until I got pregnant, so we’d have a clear timeline. 

I felt very guilty for not feeling sad about the loss. I felt guilty that the experience just felt like an inconvenience.

2 Days After

When I woke up the next day, I felt pretty okay. However, we had plans with family that morning that ended up involving a lot more walking than I thought they would. I ended up walking about three miles that morning, and it did a number on me. 

I felt the same as I did when I’d overdo it after giving birth to my son. I felt like my uterus was going to fall out. However, I didn’t tell the people we had plans with that I’d miscarried just two days before because I wasn’t ready to talk about it with them. Since I usually walk long distances for fun, complaining would’ve been a red flag, and I just wanted to fly under the radar and act like it was normal. Looking back, this probably wasn’t the best choice.

I spent the rest of the day in bed. The cramps came and went, and the bleeding was like a period.

3 Days After

The physical exhaustion of the day before left me in bed until about 3 PM. I only got up to eat breakfast, then I laid and watched TV for the next six hours. 

It was at this point that the heavy feelings really started to hit. There was still a lot of weirdness around the idea of grieving something that was barely developed past a clump of cells. I started to realize that we were really grieving the future of our family that we had gotten excited about. My toddler was no longer going to be a big brother. We were no longer going to have a little baby to hold next year. We were no longer going to be announcing the pregnancy to our families the next week.

We got out of the house to go to dinner, but I wasn’t in the best spirits. My son was being such a ham, and the server commented that we had a beautiful family. All I could think about was the fact that I was pregnant just a few days before, and this family was about to look very different. But nobody even knew what was happening. Again, it was weird. 

One Week After

In the next week, the bleeding had stopped, and physically, I was feeling good. I felt oddly sad when the bleeding stopped because I guess that was a sign that it was really over. 

The grief came in waves, but I generally felt like myself again. 

By this point, I had gone for my follow-up for an ultrasound to confirm that everything was looking good, and it was. I didn’t have the best experience with the provider I saw, which was frustrating because I had basic questions that she couldn’t answer. But it was okay. I was okay.

Two Weeks After

So, that brings us to today. 

Physically, I feel mostly normal. The grief still comes in waves, and I expect it to for a while. The most random things serve as reminders of the future that we lost. 

Currently, I am pretty stressed about what’s next. Since I have Hashimoto’s, I am worried about getting Postpartum Thyroiditis like I had in my last pregnancy. If you’re not familiar with this, it basically means the thyroid forgets how to function, causing the metabolism to slow down and everything to go out of whack. Last time, it took about six months of a fairly strict diet and lifestyle changes to correct, and I’ve had to stick with those changes ever since in order to keep everything in check. 

If this happens, the timeline for my next pregnancy will definitely be affected. However, I say that while not knowing when I’ll truly be ready again because I am left with a lot of fear of what’s next. I refused to look at the odds of loss with Hashimoto’s before this pregnancy because I simply did not want to live in fear. But now I know, and now I am scared of what that means for our future. 

It’s such a scam to deal with the postpartum stuff without a baby as a reward, right? 

We have told our parents and some of our friends what happened, but many people fairly close to us will probably learn about this baby that we will never hold from this post. If you are one of those people, please don’t be offended. It just really sucks to have to reach out with such crappy news when it was supposed to be exciting news. 

The goal was never to keep this baby a secret. It existed. It was real, even though it was so, so tiny, and its heart only beat for a super short time. 

I have a lot more thoughts on this experience that I may share one day, specifically regarding how the people close to us have shown up for us. We received a lot of love from those closest to us, but some people did not show up as I had thought they would (or should). It’s hard to take it personally because this experience is often dealt with in the dark, leading people to be confused about how to actually offer support in this kind of situation. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Even just two short weeks later, I think we’ve made it through the hardest part. Even with my apprehension about the future, I think we will be okay.