Yesterday we could read on the blog of The Birth is Ours a story that surely will not leave anyone indifferent. Imagine that you are pregnant and that in a routine check they tell you that you have a "abortion held", or what is the same, a fetus inside you that has stopped progressing, growing, and will not do it anymore, because it has no life. "Come tomorrow and we make you a curettage," they tell you. What to do? It seems the most logical thing, if your baby doesn't live anymore, if it doesn't have a heartbeat, isn't that what you have to do, go get it removed? And you decide that no, that you will not go, that you prefer to wait and do what is known as "expectant behavior": wait for the body to eject all the pregnancy that does not go on.
You are bleeding, you think that the body is doing what it has to do, throw out the life that will not be, and when after the days you stop bleeding you go to the doctor to see if everything has been expelled or there are still remains. And then the unexpected happens, they tell you that the fetus is still there, that nothing has been expelled and that there is a beat, that pregnancy goes on and that everything is going well!
How is it possible?
Because in the same way that there are diagnostic failures in adult pathology, there are diagnostic failures in pregnancies. But what a fault! Terrible, because if the curettage had been carried out, the fetus would then have died. The only thing is that no one would have heard about it: the parents would not know that their baby would have died in the intervention.
In this case, what happened is that he went to the doctor in the 10th week of pregnancy, and when days later they confirmed that he had beaten, they actually saw that I was less days. That's why it hadn't beaten yet. That is why they told him that he had suffered a "retained abortion."
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Many, sure, because this story is not the first time it happens. In the comments to that post, in fact, a woman explains that the same thing happened to her and a second one says that she knows someone who lived something similar. The mom who lived it is Ilka, which says the following:
It happened to me in my first pregnancy that I had been looking for for two years. It was in a university clinic in Germany where they diagnosed the death of the embryo and where they put pressure on us until we agreed to curettage. I did not go and had a healthy and wonderful son. Then I met two more women with similar stories ...
And a mom who doesn't leave her name explains this, about "expectant behavior":
I had a bad experience about it. I was 6 or 7 weeks old and the heartbeat was weak. They gave me an appointment the following week. The ultrasound had not beat. My tears skipped. The doctor told her assistant to meet me for a curettage the next morning. I reacted and told him that he preferred to wait. Then he frowned and said sharply to me something like, "Don't you believe me? He's dead, there's no heartbeat, and he won't have it again." I kindly told him that he believed her but that he preferred to wait, that he had already had another spontaneous abortion a few months ago and no curettage was needed. Then he almost started yelling at me and practically telling me that I would die if they didn't make me a curettage NOW. I thought that if I had not gone to that appointment I would still not know it since I was not bleeding, so it would not be so serious since if I had gone for social security (it was a private clinic) I would not have done any ultrasound yet and not we would know ... I told him that I would ask for a second opinion with another doctor. He told me that he did not know what he was doing, had looked at my file and told me that my previous abortion was 6 weeks, that he was older and it would hurt a lot more, that he would have unbearable pain. I told him that I didn't care, I had already given birth to a term child without anesthesia and they had also given me a curettage before, I knew what we were talking about, I was not going to convince myself with the trick of the fear of pain ... Total, just find out After the death of my son, I had to argue with the doctor while I dried my tears. I requested an appointment with another doctor with whom I was given three days. But the night of the second day I had a completely painless miscarriage to my surprise (the previous one had been painful both physically and emotionally). In my hand I had the amniotic sac intact, with that little heart that had stopped beating but was still my beloved son. We could say goodbye and I buried him under a beautiful flower in my house ...
But is it not dangerous to do nothing?
Surely many of you ask yourself this question: is it not dangerous to say no? Isn't it dangerous not to make you a curettage? Well no, and now we explain it. We are so used to this way of proceeding that doing nothing seems to us foolishness, even if we don't know why. Why is a curettage supposed to be better? According to the professionals, because this is how you remove the embryo and the remains of pregnancy before and there is less risk of bleeding and infection. And there is probably enough associate of "the sooner you delete it, the sooner you forget."
But no, an abortion is never forgotten, and erase it as soon as possible will not improve anything ... in fact, it can even make everything worse because the loss becomes more traumatic. As you just read the mother who did not leave her name, she could say goodbye at home, in privacy. If you take a curettage there is no possibility, nor probably motivation, to make a farewell in conditions.
And saying goodbye is very important because, as we have said on other occasions, not only does a baby leave a few weeks of gestation, but the whole life that you had already imagined with him, all expectations, all illusions, and all the love you had reserved for him. And all that together is a lot that goes suddenly.
According to science, it should be the woman who decides what to do
A review of studies published by WHO as early as 2006 spoke of curettage in comparison to "expectant behavior," also known as "expectant abortion management." In that review they saw that Only 10% of women who chose not to do anything required surgical curettage. They also saw that another 11% ended up practicing a curettage by decision of the mothers, who could not wait for the opportune time for the spontaneous abortion, adding among them 21% of women who had to go through the operating room , compared to the logical 100% of those who underwent a curettage as the first option.
When knowing the consequences, they saw that 2% of the women who were given a curettage had to repeat to extract some remains that were left. 1% of those who did nothing suffered a pelvic infection after spontaneous abortion, however, in the group of women with curettage the percentage of infection rose to 3%. As for the bleeding, women in the "expectant management" group bled more days than those who underwent curettage.
Given these results, the authors concluded the following:
Neither method is better than the other. Therefore, the preference of women should play a leading role in decision-making regarding the method that is preferred to follow.
Come on, if a woman does nothing she has less risk of infection although it will bleed more days because the body is expelling the remains little by little. It may be a matter of days or it may be a matter of weeks, and that is why some women prefer to undergo curettage, which is faster.
What is better? Well, seeing the likelihood of having an unnecessary curettage, the truth, I would opt for expectant driving. Wait for the body to do its job and meanwhile be aware of the warning signs: fever, bleeding that is increasing or bad smell of blood, which would be possible signs of infection, although, as we said, it only happens in 1% of cases. After the days, go to the doctor again to see if everything went well and there is no rest.
Photos | iStock
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