Once you have a confirmed pregnancy loss, there can be a lot of assumption on the doctor’s part. I found myself unsure of which questions to ask until I was in certain situations that I never imagined I would find myself in.
For starters, I always thought miscarriages were instantaneous. One moment you were pregnant, and then one moment you went to the bathroom and there was blood in the toilet bowl. Not only did I learn that miscarriages were not instantaneous, but they could take weeks to complete. My first doctor did not tell me this.
When I was 7 weeks pregnant, the doctor confirmed my pregnancy loss. She said, "go home, try to rest, and let it happen naturally.” She did not prep me for how long “natural” would take. A few days later, I started spotting. Very lightly, but I thought, this must be it. I’m having a miscarriage. I wasn’t. My doctor called me in and confirmed on the ultrasound that not only was I not yet having a miscarriage, but a blood test showed my hCG levels were rising - not rapidly, but still rising.
The hCG hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin, is a hormone produced during pregnancy. It is produced by the placenta during pregnancy, and it helps thicken the uterine lining to support the embryo. Your hCG level, particularly in early pregnancy, is expected to double every day or two. But do you think my doctor told me this? Or do you think I learned this after doing my own Google searches?
My doctor did not tell me that I might be waiting two weeks for the miscarriage to complete. After two weeks, I felt crazy. I was walking around with a dead fetus in my uterus, unwilling to leave the womb, but unwilling to cling to life. The constant check-in of wondering if today was the day the miscarriage would happen. The impending doom of it all, but without any sort of timeline. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, and I definitely struggled working. When I shared my crazed state with my doctor, she prescribed Misoprostol, or Cytotec. Cytotec is a drug that you insert vaginally to induce a miscarriage. It is now being contested with recent changes in Roe v. Wade.
All the doctor shared with me was to insert four pills vaginally, and within 4-6 hours, the miscarriage would occur. She did not share with me that I would have intense cramping, or that I might want to take the day off work. It even came as a shock to me that I would be inducing my own miscarriage. What if I messed up? What if I didn’t put the pills in far enough? What if I messed this up and this didn’t work, and then I only had half a miscarriage, and then my whole body would be a wreck?