This really happened... *** Warning: Slightly graphic ***

...I really had a miscarriage. I wanted to write this down while it's fresh in my memory because as hard as it is, I don't want to forget it. I had little doubt when I peed on that stick that I would be pregnant. My Grandad had passed away and I knew that I was so close to him that only I would conceive a baby on the day of his death. It was a small bit of comfort to get me through his funeral knowing that I was pregnant. If it was a boy, I was going to give him the middle name of William which was Grandad's middle name.

At 7 weeks, the day after I got back from a trip to Melbourne, we had our first scan. We saw our little baby with its heartbeat. The baby measured small, only 5 weeks and 6 days and had a low heartbeat of 68bpm but it was there. That was on the Tuesday, on the Friday I freaked out and organised another scan which both my DH and the doctor talked me out of doing. The doctor said that a scan wouldn't do anything, if a miscarriage was going to happen then a scan wouldn't stop it.

I had started to feel better. I had bleeding at 4 weeks, just a tiny amount, nothing to be concerned about. It happened again at 8 weeks. I told myself that it was just because my body had been expecting to have a period. I travelled down to Bunbury with my friend Richy and my parents, we had so much fun on the way down and I made lots of jokes about being pregnant.

My Aunty Phyllis and Uncle Warren were down here with Nanna and I told Nanna in secret that I was pregnant because I still wasn't ready to tell everyone since I was only just 9 weeks. I'd planned to tell my cousin Alicia who was about 4 weeks further along in her pregnancy than me while I was down here.

That night when I went to bed, I had some bleeding. It was different to the other bleeding, still light but I just knew it was different. When I woke up at 1am, I went to the toilet and discovered that I had bleeding that was more like a period bleed. I told Mum that I needed to go to the hospital and she went and got Aunty Phyllis who is a nurse. She told her that she thought I might be having a miscarriage and Aunty Phyllis's response was "are you sure she's pregnant?" because she'd had no idea I was!

Aunty Phyllis was amazing and drove us without a second thought to the hospital. So I was bundled into the car and considered myself lucky because here in Bunbury I'm 5 minutes from the hospital as opposed to 30 minutes in Perth. I was admitted to the emergency department and the doctor did a speculum examination to check my cervix and for clots. I need to add here that I was terrified. A close friend of mine had told me about her miscarriage at 6 weeks in which she passed a clot into the toilet that she had to scoop up and take in a jar to the hospital for them to look at, it was her baby. I knew that I wasn't strong enough to do that.

After the examination the doctor told me that my cervix was closed which was a good sign and that she'd cleared out a clot that was there. She told me that I would have an ultrasound at 8am but to go home and come back if the bleeding got worse or I was feeling dizzy or cramping, etc.

We left the hospital just after 3am. I got about 40 minutes of sleep before I went to the toilet and passed quite a large clot. By this time I'd started to have cramping that was so painful I had begun to feel sick and I begged Mum to take me to the hospital again. We woke Dad and he drove us again to the hospital. I explained what happened and they said they would keep me there until my scan in the morning.

I was given two Panadeine Forte but the pain was still so intense that I was given a Morphine shot as well which allowed me to doze off and on. The doctors and nurses were absolutely fantastic, they never said to me "you're having a miscarriage", they would say "what do you know about the situation?". At one point when the day nurse, Sue, changed my pad she told me that there was about a 20 cent piece sized clot. When she came back she gently told me that the doctor had looked at it and thought that it looked like it was indeed part of the pregnancy sac. The doctor, Niamh, came and told me that I was quite probably having a miscarriage from what she'd seen and that they would need to see if there was anything left of the pregnancy on the ultrasound to see if I needed an operation to clear out the rest of the pregnancy.

8am came and went without a scan but just before 9am Sue came with a jug of water and told me I needed to drink a glass every 5-10 minutes because my scan would be at 9:30am. We worked out that it was a litre of water that I drank. By the time 9:30am rolled around, I was in agony. I had sat up on the bed and was arching my back forward. I had pain in my stomach and back that I had never felt before. I begged Mum to go ask them when my scan would be because I had to pee and I couldn't handle this pain. I told her that I needed to get off the bed and stand up because that's what had helped with the bladder pain at my previous ultrasound. A different nurse came and said they had been going to give me another shot of Morphine but I just asked her to drop the side of the bed so I could stand.

As I got off the bed I felt a gush between my legs. I told Mum that I'd either just passed a mass of blood or urine and the pain intensified to the point that I couldn't even stand upright. I was leaned over the bed in so much pain that I once again felt nauseous. The nurse told us that my scan had been moved to 10:30am because they were doing a long scan and that I could go empty my bladder and start again.

Mum and the nurse both had to help me to the toilet. I took tiny steps and was still hunched over, holding on to both of their arms. When we got to the toilet, I told Mum I needed her to come in with me. I took down my pants and told her that I needed her to check the pad because I couldn't look. I feel both relieved and guilty that I did this because Mum took one look and started crying. She told me not to look and left the room to go get Sue. I sat on the toilet and look anywhere but down, I kept repeating to myself "what has been seen cannot be unseen". I knew that I did not want to have that image in my head because I would not be able to deal with it.

Mum told me later that when she saw it, she felt a massive rush of love for "the blob on my pad" and she just thought "that's my grandchild". It turned out that I had passed the entire baby in one hit. Mum has been incredibly affected by this because my mantra was true and she can never unsee what she saw in that toilet.

I went back to my hospital bed and we started again with the water, it was so different to the first time. We went and had the scan where the ultrasound technician told me that unfortunately there was no sign at all of a pregnancy in my uterus. I was actually glad about this because I really didn't want to go under general anaesthetic to have the D&C. There was no pain in my bladder and I held my pee with no concerns, I didn't even need to go until about 15 minutes after the scan was done.

Shortly after I was wheeled back to the emergency department, I was released to go home. That was it. In a 24 hour period, I had gone from being pregnant to not being pregnant. As I was walking out of the hospital, a woman was walking in who was heavily pregnant and that hit me hard.

You might wonder why I chose to share this on such a public place as Facebook but in December a friend of mine had a miscarriage and she wrote a blog about it, I was glad I had read it because at least I had some idea of what was going to happen. Also, in recent times I have found out that there are a few friends who have been through miscarriages that I didn't know about. I thought that if people could read this, they would know what people go through when they lose a baby. Maybe it'll help you to support a friend or maybe someone on my Facebook will have a miscarriage one day and they'll know that I'm here to support them and I know what they're going through.

I don't think it really hit me about what happened until this morning when I woke up. Yesterday still seems like a bad dream and I'm crying while I type this. I feel so empty and I still can't believe that come November, I won't be holding my baby. :'(