Since going through this I have become a FIERCE advocate for women’s rights and abortion rights. I always was pro-choice, because I truly believe women aren’t out there in droves trying to abort babies late in pregnancy. I never thought I’d have an “abortion”, but that’s what a medicated miscarriage is classified as.

I didn’t mention this in my past post, but let me lay out how that week went.

On February 22, 2023 I started a full-time job. I am a photographer full-time, but knowing we wanted a baby, knowing the costs of IVF and how fixated I was on fertility, I wanted a distraction. I also wanted maternity leave one day. I applied for jobs and took on this job before I knew I was pregnant, but hopeful it would happen. By the time I started I knew I was pregnant.

My first day I went into the office to meet everyone in person. My interviews had been on zoom, so this would be the first time. That day was the first day I started bleeding. While I was trying to focus on the job, I was panicked about whether I was losing this baby.

As time went on, juggling a new role that was more challenging than it ought to be and juggling a guarded pregnancy was hard. At the time, was a solely remote position, at the very least so I got to work from home. I found out on Friday, March 10th that we had no heartbeat. Before starting work for the day at 8am. I came home, told my boss I got some bad news, he pressed a bit about what, and I told him family stuff. He told me to take it easy that day, I’d continue to work at my own discretion but I may not be all there.

I called my clinic and they had the doctor call me back to discuss “options”.

I had 3 options.

1. A natural miscarriage, which may or may not occur – if it did not, I’d have to consider option 2/3 anyway. It could take a while, it might not happen at all. We already knew our baby was gone for a week at that stage, so infection was also a risk the longer the tissue stayed in my body.
2. A medicated miscarriage – I’d take one medication day 1, a second medication day 2, and the miscarriage process would begin ideally within 12-24 hours.
3. A D&C (surgical removal of the pregnancy). More invasive, more concrete.

I decided on option 2. The determining factor for me was speed, I wanted it gone. I didn’t want to be pregnant anymore. I would have to wait for a D&C, until there was time in the surgeon’s schedule. It could be with very little notice. If I took medication one immediately that day, I could start the miscarriage on Saturday, with hope it would be finished by Monday so I could work again.

The clinic sent me to a very specific pharmacy in my area. This is where we learn about reproductive rights…

Abortion is legal in Canada. We are VERY lucky to be given the choice. Did I want an abortion? No. Did I need an abortion? Likely yes. Whether the baby was already gone, or whether a defect would cause them suffering, I would have chosen to forgo the natural miscarriage. In any miscarriage/abortion, it’s possible for tissue to be retained by the body, and it can cause all kinds of issues. Option 2/3 both are the most helpful at removing all the tissue. Option 1 often requires 2/3 anyway to remove it all. Sometimes 2 or 3 don’t get it all either, and another method has to be used.

Despite being legal, very few pharmacies stock the medication. Mifepristone, when used together with another medicine called Misoprostol, are used to end a pregnancy through 9-10 weeks gestation on average. It’s controversial. I had NO IDEA how hard it was to acquire, even with the doctor’s prescription and sign off. We learn new things every day.

My husband went and picked up the medication for me while I finished work for the day, and as soon as he came home I started the process.

My medicated abortion experience was hard, but predictable (thank baby jeebus). It was both the worst pain of my life and the biggest relief of my life.

Trigger warning again – graphic descriptions/loss.

I took day 1’s dose. This medication is a progesterone blocker. It stops supporting the pregnancy, in preparation for a clearing of the uterus. That was all good.

On Saturday, day 2, I took Misoprostol. I had read stories of people’s experiences on Reddit and online forums. I was scared but ready. I surrounded myself with the essentials:

• Heating pad
• Advil
• Tylenol
• Snacks
• Gatorade
• Netflix
• Adult diapers
• Bucket for vomit

I took the pill and within around 4 hours I started cramping, as expected. The cramps built up over the next two hours. Tolerable still. But medication helped. I kept a hot pack on my abdomen to ease the discomfort.

I put on the adult diaper just in case.

About 7 hours after the medication it began. Cramps continued to build into what I’ll describe as borderline contractions. I started bleeding slightly and kept checking to see if anything major was happening. Bleeding got heavier, but nothing much greater than a period.

For some, the first dose doesn’t work, and they have to take a second dose after 24 hours. I was ‘lucky’ this wasn’t the case. At 7.5 hours or so, I started having excruciating cramps/contractions. Keep in mind, I am popping advil and tylenol on regular intervals at the max dose. Let’s just say it did not take the edge off.

I went into what I assume were full on contractions. I was sweating, I couldn’t wear clothes, I put a mat down on the bathroom floor but all my body felt like it wanted to do was sit on the toilet and poop out my insides. Nothing came besides liquid blood.

I sat on the floor again, for about 45 minutes. It ramped up. It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life. Worse than the banana bike seat up the hooha at age 12, worse than a dental abscess that triggered my trigeminal nerve, worse than any IVF injection, any skinned knees or any period I have ever had. Worse than the car accidents and sprains. I sat doing cat-cow on the floor for what seemed like eternity, mooing like a damn cow (seriously). I pushed and pushed and nothing came, until suddenly I felt a gush, a release. The contractions returned to cramps, and there it was.

That thing I fought so hard to grow. That 30 thousand dollar piece of tissue. The visible gestational sac, about 3 inches long. Luckily, no fetus was visible, but I assume it was present in a few pieces of the tissue that were expelled (a few different things came out with different consistencies/colour). I knew from reading about the process, and what parts needed to be accounted for, that my miscarriage was done.

I went to bed, kept popping the pills and applying the heat. The next day I recovered in bed, my body was exhausted, like I had run a marathon. The hormones were FIERCE. Coming off the high hormones of pregnancy, and slowly losing them over the coming weeks was a trip. I felt waves of depression, which almost seemed like postpartum depression in hindsight, comparing this to what my mama friends have told me post birth.

I returned to work on Tuesday, taking Monday off because I just didn’t care anymore.

Slowly my thoughts began to look forward at what was next. We still had a normal embryo on ice, so all was not lost. The fighter could continue to fight when the time was right. We still had a shot.

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The hardest part of IVF is the waiting game. The complete unknown and it feels like every appointment is one where you’ll hold your breath. Maybe for 10 mins, maybe for 2 weeks. The lack of control you have over your actual body and its responses can be very frustrating and discouraging. It takes a lot of getting used to, especially for control freak me.

We went into the clinic locally this time. And this was the first time until now that we had actually seen our doctor’s face. We had only spoken to him twice in 6 months. A different doctor did the last transfer and our retrieval.

The local clinic where we live is lacklustre. For how much money you toss into IVF out of pocket, you’d expect more from the digs. It felt like going into an abandoned office building when we ventured into this part of our clinic. Until now, I had only been in the monitoring rooms – also lacklustre but pretty generic with dim lighting so not as shocking.

This transfer threw me for a loop initially. We walked into a waiting area, and I had asked for Ativan again because I didn’t know how my body would react to the catheter. Better safe than risking major uterus cramping. I went in early like they asked but they never passed the message along that I was waiting to take the medication in office (thanks receptionist). So they pushed our transfer back 20 minutes and bumped the next person into our spot. The kicker… they had the same birthday as me. Flash back to the 800 times they verify your embryo is yours using the birthday. Well, I got super worried they’d mix us up due to the schedule change, and the same birthday. Stress isn’t fun when you’re about to meet your embryo. I reiterated that I was worried about a mix up to every single person I spoke to after that. All I can say is speak up! Advocate, advocate, advocate.

The meds kicked in and I got changed into my pantsless getup while my husband donned his white space suit and we were escorted into the transfer room. This time, instead of an operating room it was a cramped clinic office with barely any room to roll the equipment around. The radio was playing in the background. We met the doctor and in no time it was done. I didn’t feel much besides the speculum. We got our little ultrasound photo, I got dressed and we departed.

My husband went back to work for the day and I took it easy. It was February 1, 2023.

I’ll get into more about chronic testing and testing culture one day, but let’s just say until now I was more than slightly OCD about testing. February marked 13 months of trying. 13 months of two week waits, testing, disappointment. It had been 9 months since my chemical pregnancy. Since my last positive test. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to wait SEVEN days before I caved and got the urge to test.

On day 6 I started feeling some stuff, but after so many failed months of trying and ghost symptoms for absolutely no reason, I learned I couldn’t trust my body to indicate either way. I did get some pretty awful back pain on day 6, which would be the equivalent of 11dpo for those trying unassisted. The pain persisted and I had a gut feeling. I couldn’t wait any longer. Not even the two days until my beta blood work.

It was positive!!!! And not super faintly positive squinter like before. It was actually positive. I was soooo very cautious because I knew how much my heart broke last time around. I probably took 10 tests that day. All. Were. Positive. I was pregnant. It worked.

My beta blood work was scheduled for day 9, but I couldn’t wait so I went on day 8. It was within the minimum levels they had hoped for (they look for 50 on day 9, I was 46 on day 8). I went back two days after that and it had more than doubled to 108. Heck yessss!

I continued testing a couple of times a day, eventually upgrading from my crappy Amazon pee sticks to the fancy first response tests. I tracked my progression day to day to make sure my levels were getting darker, and they did continually.

I was so cautious. Could this really be happening? My brain and heart couldn’t believe it but my eyes were seeing it. I got a “dye stealer” on day 12 after transfer (when the test line is darker than the control line). This eased my mind substantially.

Now, the hardest wait of all – the 7 week ultrasound. 3 weeks of torture were ahead of us. I repeated cheesy mantras such as “my body accepts this pregnancy”, kept my feet warm and stopped eating foods I wasn’t allowed in pregnancy. I reminded myself every hour of every day that I was still pregnant and we were so very lucky. I stocked up on pregnancy books, just in case. I ordered a pregnancy pillow and welcomed my first small bouts of nausea. I also got to continue those wonderful suppositories and PIO injections.

This was finally happening.

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I was in absolute bliss for 5 days. Happy as a pig in shit if you will.

Before all of this started I had seen a walk-in clinic doctor to get some blood work done, just to make sure my nutrients were in order. Nothing super fancy or fertility specific, but Iron, Thyroid etc. She told me at that appointment that her sister had gotten spontaneously pregnant at 39 and again at 41. I was relived. She said I was not “old” in fertility terms. Living in a city where there’s a 10+ year wait for a family doctor, I was thrilled when she invited me back ‘when I got pregnant’ to confirm the pregnancy.

Needless to say I called her office immediately. I made an appointment and I went in just 4 days after the positive test. I peed in a cup and they did the test – really a crappier version of the home tests I was doing. I waited for 10 minutes and they came to tell me they couldn’t confirm the pregnancy. I asked, “How?!”, I was just testing at home and it showed fine. Clearly something was wrong. So she sent me for betas.

For those new to that term, hCG Betas are a blood test that measures human chorionic gonadotropin hormone, basically confirming pregnancy and viability based on the gestational age. You want a certain number by a certain day post ovulation for viability. People that get pregnant spontaneously do not usually have to do this. It’s more of a test to ease the mind. There is what they call a “qualitative” beta, which is a yes or no that you’re pregnant, and a “quantitative” test which gives you a measure of hCG hormone. I had the latter.

My beta came back 23. I was pregnant, but I was “not pregnant enough”. By the date of ovulation – which I knew because I am a psychopathic tester, it should have been over 50. hCG should approximately double every 48 hours, so they send you for a second blood test two days later. My second beta was 17. It was then confirmed that this was a late chemical pregnancy.

Here’s a little crash course for those who haven’t been through this:
– A chemical pregnancy is when an embryo tries or does implant, however it doesn’t stick or implant properly, resulting in a positive test that fades out over time, up to 5 weeks of “pregnancy”. It is also considered an early miscarriage by many professionals.
– Pregnancy is calculated from the start of your cycle, so first day of your period would be day 1. This is a bit confusing, but it allows you to more accurately date a pregnancy that progresses based on approximately how long the eggs take to mature before ovulation.
– Ovulation occurs approximately 14-21 days after your period day 1, this varies depending on the person. If you get pregnant, 14 days would be 2 weeks pregnant. It’s weird but it’s how they do it.
– After ovulation, we have what is called the Luteal Phase. This is a period where progesterone – a hormone created by your body – ramps up to support a potential embryo implanting. Most luteal phases last approximately 14 days. Some are less, some are more. Anything below 9 days is considered a short phase and often needs supplementation. This can also prevent healthy pregnancy from occuring.

When I got my news of my chemical pregnancy, I was 4 weeks 6 days (one day shy of the clinical guideline for a “miscarriage”). My HCG didn’t drop until later, so I still consider this my first loss.

Pregnancy loss is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. In Canada, it is believed that up to 25% of pregnancies result in miscarriage. That’s 1 in 4 pregnancies. I had NO idea the stats were this high before going into it all. I didn’t even think to myself that this pregnancy may not work out.

After a week or so the hCG was gone from my system. I wasn’t able to see it on a test after just a couple of days as most tests don’t pick up anything under 20 mIU/mL.

What people don’t often talk about is how this FEELS. Yes it happened, yes it sucks. But how did it feel?

Telling my husband I had a positive test had me ecstatic. My husband is not a reactor… as in he barely cracks a smile when he’s happy. His response was “cool” or “nice”. But he didn’t bat an eyelash when I started making a list of baby registry items, or started looking at baby names. In just 5 days I was making plans.

To both learn that a pregnancy is not viable, and learn how common it was in such a short time was devastating. It’s not that i grieved the loss of a “baby” per say (some consider it a baby and that’s fine too), for me I grieved the loss of hope, of a future I had imagined, of my life progressing into a different season. I was ready for it and it got taken from me. It was like being on a plane, moving to another country, and being pulled off the plane and told that your visa has been revoked. You won’t be going after all. You’ll be stuck in limbo, or where you’ve been all along for the foreseeable future. The future you’ve planned for and hoped for won’t be happening.

My heart broke.

It took a few days for me to consider moving forward. We got pregnant in 4.5 months after trying, which at 37 was not too shabby. Surely we would do it again. So we started off on our timed intercourse journey again.

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