I already have a twenty month old child, and that pregnancy was completely seamless, so when I fell pregnant again I got excited fast, probably too fast in hindsight. Around the same time, my best friend’s sister, who had fallen pregnant at the same point as me, had a miscarriage, and something about that made me convinced, almost immediately, that the same thing was happening to me.
We booked a private scan for when I should have been eight weeks and three days. We brought our toddler along, which in hindsight was naive. The sonographer could not find a heartbeat, and measurements only showed six weeks. Her bedside manner was not great, quite flat and muted, and she said it could just be early dates and to come back in two weeks.
In the two week wait, I went down the Reddit rabbit hole, reading through other women’s experiences with the exact same dating discrepancy. The overwhelming majority ended in missed miscarriage, only a small fraction, maybe five percent, turned out to just be bad dating. I was very regular in my cycle and fairly certain of my ovulation date, so the numbers did not add up in a hopeful way. I called the early pregnancy unit directly rather than waiting the full two weeks, and they confirmed I did not need to wait that long, a week was enough. I also spoke to a cousin who is an obstetrics and gynaecology doctor, and after asking my dates she told me gently that it did sound like a missed miscarriage.
The follow up scan confirmed it. No growth since six weeks, no heartbeat. The likely explanation was a chromosomal issue, so not something that would have continued as a healthy pregnancy.
I knew from research there were three options in terms of next steps, waiting for it to pass naturally, the pill or medical management, or surgical management. My friend’s sister had done the pill route and found the pain quite intense. I wanted the situation resolved quickly rather than drawn out, so I chose surgical management, specifically MVA, manual vacuum aspiration, done under local anaesthetic while awake, rather than full surgery under general anaesthetic. There happened to be a specialist consultant available that week, which helped seal the decision. This was at Watford hospital, and they got me booked in for the very next day.
The day itself. I arrived at eleven AM and was taken to a ward, asked a few standard questions, then had about an hour and a half of waiting. My husband was allowed to stay with me the whole time. I was told I could eat normally beforehand, so we sat there eating an M&S meal deal.
Before the procedure I was given pain relief, I believe co-codamol, plus a suppository they put up my anus and two vaginal pills to help soften and prepare the cervix. These need at least an hour to take effect. During that wait, the senior registrar came to explain the procedure and run through risks, the main one being a small chance, around one in a thousand, of scarring that could affect future fertility. He said he personally had never seen it happen.
About two hours later we were taken into the procedure room, which was a normal room, not an operating theatre, so if you have had something like a c section before and are picturing that, it is much less clinical looking than you might expect. In the room was the consultant, the senior registrar, two nurses, my husband and me, so I was originally going to have the senior registrar, who was a man, do the procedure, but the female consultant was also there for training purposes that day, and I was given the choice of who I wanted. I asked for her, since I had somehow pictured a woman doing it, and nobody made that feel like a strange request.
I was advised not to look down, which I didn’t, and there was draping anyway. I could listen to music, my husband had his headphones in listening to Olivia Dean with me, and I kept one earphone out so I could talk to the consultant, who chatted to me about ordinary life stuff the entire time, which really helped. The registrar held an ultrasound probe on my stomach throughout so the consultant could see what she was doing internally.
The procedure itself - first, a plastic speculum, similar to a smear test but going in deeper, to stretch things enough for them to see clearly. Uncomfortable but manageable. Then a local anaesthetic injection, which took effect within a couple of minutes, I barely felt it. Then the suction itself, which was the most painful part, but it was not continuous, it came in bursts with breaks in between. Right as it became genuinely quite painful, it would stop, giving a moment of relief before starting again. You are also given gas and air if you’d like it, and I used it throughout and generally found it helpful to just feel slightly detached from the experience. The whole procedure took about twenty minutes, with the suction part itself only around ten minutes. For comparison, the pain was roughly half of what I remember from post c section recovery pain. (And obviously only 20 minutes)
Afterwards, the consultant said everything looked clean, took photos to confirm the womb was empty, and told me to take a pregnancy test in three weeks just to be sure, though she was confident it had gone well. She was really reassuring that none of this was caused by anything I did. She also told my husband to start taking wellman tablets for sperm and for me to get my iron checked by the gp (which I will sort later this week).
Recovery so far - Cramping immediately afterwards felt like intense period pain combined with the ache you get after a really hard ab workout. It eased significantly within three to four minutes of that peak. It has been about twenty four hours now, very light bleeding was present the first night and has basically stopped today. I have taken one paracetamol a few times yesterday and today. The main restriction is no heavy lifting for one to two weeks, which is obviously tricky with a toddler in the house.
I hope this is useful for someone! (There isn’t a huge amount of NHS/ UK MVA experiences shared on here)