So much blood: what I was doing the day that Trump was elected.

Warning: this contains graphic and intimate descriptions of miscarriage.

I’ve just had a miscarriage. I found out I’d lost my baby when it should have been 9 weeks old. It had stopped growing at 7. I opted for a natural miscarriage, having read all the guidance online and spoken to my sister and friends who’d been through it. I could deal with it, I thought. Women do it every day.

I was wrong.

I’m sharing my experience here in the hope that it can prepare others for what they are about to go through, and help partners to understand what is going on. Of course there is a lot of advice online about what to expect. The problem is that, when it comes to miscarriage, pregnancy and the complications associated with these things, every experience is unique. No website or health service could give generic advice that will give you the level of detail that you need. When I was pregnant, I want to know what would happen to me in detail. Not just vague trimester-by-trimester ‘how your body’ will change, but every detail of what was happening to me, to my skin, to my hair, to my insides, to my hormones. I wanted to know what was ‘normal.’ The only way to know this was to read, read, read the millions of accounts from other women in the countless forums where we share some of our most intimate, painful, tragic or joyful experiences with complete strangers.

So here is my contribution to the anthology of female experience. It’s not pleasant, but it might help.

I started bleeding on a Sunday night. Not much, but enough to know it was starting. By Tuesday afternoon it was pouring out. I gave up on sanitary pads and just sat on the toilet, a blanket over my knees and two rolls of toilet paper lined up beside me.

I was shocked by the amount of blood. It just kept coming, a quick and constant drip, drip, drip. Then I would feel another clot coming, a thickness sliding down inside me, then dropping out with a deep splash into the red water of the toilet bowl. And it really was red, I’ve never seen blood that red before. Bright red, like the fake blood you get for Halloween costumes, not the darker, venous blood that you usually see when you cut yourself. I’ve seen a lot of blood before — at my regular donation, when it is neatly packed into its pint bag, hanging on a peg beside me; and at the births of my two children, when it was mixed with all the other fluids and mess of childbirth, but when I was distracted by the hot little person that was lying on my chest as the midwives whisked away the worst of the bloody sheets.

This was different. It was enormous. I wiped and flushed, wiped and flushed, trying to keep some semblance of cleanliness. After each flush, I washed my hands. There was so much blood on them that the water in the sink turned red. I felt like Lady Macbeth; I couldn’t get it off. The water in the toilet bowl was still red, even after I’d flushed it.

Eventually, I got sore and cold sitting on the toilet. I put in a new pad, wrapped a huge towel around my crotch like a nappy, and waddled to my bed. Lying down, I immediately felt a gush of warm blood seeping into the wholly inadequate pad, into the rolls of towel. Then something else, something thick, moving down my vagina. It stayed there, held by gravity as I lay flat. I was in bed now, warm, so I stayed for a while, read my book, tried to ignore the quiet expulsion that was taking place in my body. But there was too much, I could feel the liquid on my legs, making the towel heavy. I got up, sprinted the three steps to the toilet. Another gush of great, jelly-like clots and what seemed like another pint of blood. Wipe, flush, wash.

The towel was soaked in blood. Bright red on green. The bed sheets were soaked. It had gone right through the layers of towel and into our white sheets. Stupid me, I should have found some plastic bags to lie on. A bin bag, maybe. How comforting.

So I stayed on the toilet, thankful that my cramps weren’t too bad, and reading forum after forum of women describing their miscarriage, how long it lasted, how much blood they lost. It seemed like this was ‘normal.’ Normal for a woman to sit on a toilet for hours, her insides oozing out into the sewers, wondering how much blood you can lose before it gets serious.

At 5 o’clock, I needed to pick up my kids. I’d told my husband not to come home early, that I felt ok, that this was all ‘normal.’ I’d read some advice from a woman who said she replaced the useless panty liners with her kid’s night nappies — anyone who has used nappies will know they contain some terrifyingly absorbent material that can take a full 12 hours of toddler pee without leakage.

I ripped open the sides of the nappy and placed them carefully in my biggest pair of pants. I put on some black leggings, then a pair of black trousers over the top. I wore a long coat, in case there was any leakage. I walked carefully out to the car, and lay a towel on the seat before I sat down.

When I arrived at nursery, I could already feel the nappy filling up with blood and ooze. I went into my son’s classroom, hugged him, chatted to the teachers. Soak, soak, act normal. I felt a little woozy, but carried on to my daughter’s classroom. She ran to me, jumped into my arms. I kissed her and put her down as her teacher gave me a run-down of her day. As she was talking, I started to feel dizzy. Nausea clawed over me, climbing up my throat, while my skin started to boil with sweat. I knew I had seconds before this turned into a disaster, a collapse in front of my children, everyone’s children, the staff, the other parents. I interrupted the teacher, a young woman, probably not even 20. “I’m sorry, I don’t feel well, I need to sit down.” I dropped to the nearest surface, the kids’ art table. The teacher, just a girl, immediately knelt and tried to calm me. She didn’t panic, she offered me water and food. She asked her colleague to take my kids, who were trying to talk to me, as I sat with my head in my heads, trying desperately not to vomit. I couldn’t speak, I could hardly see. All around me, the staff moved into action. They opened the door, letting in the freezing November air. They brought me a bowl. They brought a chair, which I couldn’t move into. They took the kids into another room, ushered the parents away. They didn’t push me to explain, but I had to, I knew I had to tell them, I needed help.

I looked at this girl, so calm, so concerned. “I’m sorry, I had a miscarriage. I lost a lot of blood.”

They called a paramedic. No fuss, just done. They asked if there was anyone else who could pick up the children. When you have kids, practicalities become everything. Nothing happens without the extra complication of making sure your kids are ok, safe, not frightened. Car seats need to be in the right place, comforters need to be in the right bags, instructions about food, nappies, beds, need to be issued. My husband was stuck on a train. I was able to call my cousin, who came immediately to take the kids home and keep them happy until their dad arrived. I had to explain that our house key was difficult — you have to turn it this way and that before the door opens. The remote on the car key doesn’t work — you have to open it by putting the key in the door. And how to turn the heating on, as the house would be freezing.

My blood pressure is dropping. The paramedic can’t get an ambulance, so he will drive me to hospital in his emergency car.

I say goodbye to the kids. My son is alarmed — he’s seen a paramedic before, when he ended up going to hospital in an ambulance with a bad chest infection. He won’t take my hand, he won’t speak to me. He thinks I’m going in a police car.

When I get up from the table, I am sure I see a blood stain where I’ve been sitting. The table where the children eat their snacks. But the paramedic is telling me to move, quickly, before I collapse. He holds onto my coat the way that a lion holds onto her cub, gripping me at the neck. He is fantastic. On the drive to the hospital, he shares a very personal experience of miscarriage, and explains that the unit I’m going to helped him and his wife on far too many occasions. He is a kind person, he knows that, for me, this is new, and scary, and not everyday.

He negotiates my way through the busy ER and straight up to the Early Pregnancy unit. I’m given a bed to lie on, and some blankets as I’m shivering with cold in a hot room. I wait three hours to see the doctor. My phone is running out of batteries, so I can only send messages to my family, all desperate for updates. Every so often, I get up and ask for a new pad. I shuffle to the bathroom, sit on the toilet just in time for another great gush of blood and jelly. I’m sure that one of those clots was my baby, lost in its sac, disappearing into pipes and sewage.

The doctor examines me. A speculum, my vagina wrenched open, swabs inserted. She pulls out a large clot, shows it to the nurse. She tells me that I will need a scan in the morning, to see what’s still in there. I am not allowed to eat or drink, in case I need am operation. I haven’t eaten since 1.30pm, and it’s now almost midnight. They put me on a drip. They have already changed my sheets, which were bright with blood. A lovely nurse brings me a phone charger, but it’s too late to call my husband. I know he’ll be woken at 5 by my daughter, and he needs to sleep. I drift off.

Just after 4, I wake up. My phone is charged. I check the news. Trump has taken Ohio, Florida. I think I’m dreaming. I hope I’m dreaming. I go back to sleep.

At 6.45 the nurse comes to take my blood pressure. I can hear the woman in the next bed asking who won the election; I check my phone. I can’t believe it. I feel sick. Here is a man who thinks (sorry, ‘thought’) that women should be punished for having abortions. Here is a man who knows nothing about what it is like to be a woman. I think about what is happening to my body, and how horrible it must be to be in a situation where you feel that you need to choose to do this, voluntarily. Perhaps some women make the decision lightly; I suspect most don’t. He thinks that he has the right to dictate what happens to a woman’s body, and to punish a woman for making a decision about her own body, and her own life. He has no ideas of the things that happen to us.

I decide not to read the news. I can’t bear it. I don’t blame people for voting for an alternative. I’m just disturbed that the country is so fucked that the only alternative is a lying, racist, barrel of narcissism and self-importance. I’m Scottish, I saw what he did to the communities of the North East, where he lied and bullied his way through their quiet lives in order to build a bloody golf resort. A microcosm of what he could do to a whole country, where his rhetoric has already stirred up a vicious sentiment of hatred, separatism and stereotyping. I can’t think about it.

I’m taken for a scan. The embryo is still there, the sac elongated, ready to come out. The nurse explains my options — wait for it to come out naturally, but that’s not really an option as I’ve lost so much blood already. Take some pills to bring on the rest of the miscarriage. But that’s not really an option either. Undergo a short procedure under local anaesthetic, where the doctor will ‘use aspiration to remove the remains of the pregnancy’ i.e. he will suck out the embryo with a tiny vacuum. Or I can go under general anaesthetic for a similar operation to ‘evacuate the uterus.’ I’ve never been under general anaesthetic before and it terrifies me. I’ve always hated being out of control of my body, and more so since I’ve had children. I don’t want to be cut off from them, even for a minute.

I go for the local anaesthetic. There will some pain — they have to make four small injections into my cervix. It’s hard to imagine the pain of something you’ve never really seen, though I’m more familiar with my cervix than I was before my pregnancies. Then there might be some cramps, like bad period pain. I ask if it’s as bad as a contraction. Apparently not, which means I can handle it. Labour contractions have become my pain threshold. If I can handle that, then I can handle anything. When I was giving birth to my son, I wanted to make myself stop breathing, so I would die, or at least pass out. It was the only way I could think of to stop the immense pain. And I kept reminding myself that women do this every minute of every day. It can’t be that bad. I’ve learnt that women just have to deal with this shit that happens to their bodies, we get on, and some of us are lucky that we have the option of drugs (which I took with great enthusiasm in my second labour).

My husband arrives just in time for the operation. It’s the first time I’ve cried. I realise I’m frightened. They put me in stirrups, and raise the bed up so that my legs are around the doctor’s head, my open, bloodied vagina in his face. The injections aren’t too bad. I don’t want to use the gas and air for pain relief, and I know it will make me vomit. The doctor pokes around, then does three quick sucks with the vacuum. “Well done, you did really well,” he says. I did nothing, I just lay there. It wasn’t painful, it was just uncomfortable. I suddenly felt how open I was, that he could stick something in there and scrape around, and I could feel it right up in my belly. I suppose that’s the same with any operation — you suddenly realise that your insides are just a collection of bags and tubes, sitting under a thin layer of muscles and fat and skin. I felt accessible, accessed.

They kept me in for an hour to check I was ok. I could eat. I had some tea and the best cheap white toast and crappy butter I’d ever eaten. They took out the drip. My husband walked me carefully to the car. I was woozy, tired, weak. He ran into a shop to get some supplies — soup, chocolate.

The worst was over, but there was still the mess to clean up. I stood in the shower, teasing blood out of matted pubic hair. My husband examined my clothes, soaked and now dried in blood, and put them into the machine with the towel. He had washed the sheets last night, and now lay them out to treat with stain remover. I insisted he let me take out the bags from the small bins in the toilets, usually full of nappies, now full of sanitary pads. He’d already cleaned the loo and the sink, the blood that I hadn’t been able to contain.

We ate steak for dinner, to get my iron levels up. I was too weak to take the kids to nursery this morning, and I have to sit down after I’ve climbed the stairs, but I feel ok. I’m just shocked. Shocked by the physicalness of it all, the scale of the expulsion, the blood, the invasion of my body. Shocked that so many women go through this, many more than once, and many without help, without Google, without the support of their partner.

We’re not too sad anymore. Unlike so many other parents, this is not the beginning of a long and uncertain journey of hospital visits, scans, expensive attempts to conceive. We have two children; I’ve had two healthy pregnancies. I may conceive again, I may not. This one wasn’t meant to be. I’m ok with that, but, once again, I feel so keenly that women are expected to get on with these things, quietly and without fuss. It’s horrendous, it’s visceral, it’s draining. I feel like I’m taking a deep breath after a too-deep dive into dark water. I don’t know how I could cope with this again. But I might have to, and I will have to, as these are the things that happen to us, and this is how we go on. I hope that the new President takes a moment to consider what it is actually like to not be him, just for a minute.