After my first miscarriage, my doctor told me that they are a common occurrence and that one miscarriage was nothing to worry about, especially since I had already been pregnant before and carried past the first trimester. So we believed it was a one-time occurrence and began trying again a few months later.

Once again, we became pregnant after only a few months of trying. You could say we were lucky because many people struggle to even become pregnant but given our history, I’m not sure that’s the right word to use for it.  We again found out at our first ultrasound appointment that it was another miscarriage. This time the doctor called it a blighted ovum. We had an empty gestational sac. What this meant was that although the sac kept growing and developing, the embryo stopped developing early and it was not visible inside the gestational sac. There was no possibility for a viable pregnancy. With this loss, I was in complete denial. I found several posts on online forums talking about how women were diagnosed with an empty gestational sac called a blighted ovum but found their baby inside the sac healthy and fine weeks later. An excellent site with real stories of hope called misdiagnosedmiscarraige.com became my salvation in those weeks and I really believed we would see my baby healthy and fine in a few weeks time. After all, there are real and inspiring stories on that website of this happening but sadly, that was not the case for us. We had two followup ultrasounds weeks later and they both showed the same thing, a small gestational sac measuring about 5 ½ weeks with no embryo inside the sac.

I had such a hard time accepting this third loss that I waited a while to see if nature would take it’s course. At 10 weeks there was no sign of the miscarriage happening on it’s own and I wanted to move on but I didn’t want to have another D & C so I took the medication Misoprostol to help speed things along. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work and I had to take a second dose. It took months for my hormones to come down to normal and we found out 6 months later that the products of conception, the lovely medical term our doctor used for the retained fetal tissue, hadn’t completely cleared out and I had to have a hysteroscopy to investigate and remove the remaining tissues. Needless to say, I regretted not having another D & C. I would have been able to move on much quicker if I had. Although it was necessary and informative, the hysteroscopy was a very unpleasant procedure. We essentially had a telescopic view of my uterus and I got so cold during the procedure that my teeth were chattering. I think I was in shock a bit from the whole ordeal, but it didn’t take very long and finally 8 months later, my second miscarriage was finally over.

LMP – March 16, 2012
Misoprostol Medication – May 13, 2012
Hysteroscopy – November 20, 2012
Due date – December 20^, 2012