5th June 2018.. my world turned grey

Please forgive me, I know I'm going to ramble.. I just have so much running through my head and no idea where else to put it all.

I'm 40, my husband is 31. We are a blended family - I have 5 children from my previous marriage and he has a daughter from his. We have been together since 2015. Last July after much thought and research we decided to start trying for our baby together. After a lot of frustration and on our 11th cycle we finally got our bfp Friday 13th April 2018 and our little squiggles due date was Christmas eve 2018. Completely overjoyed! We waited to tell the children until I had seen the midwife the first time at 8 weeks, and also told our close families around then too.

Having already had four successful pregnancies I was familiar with the symptoms I should be experiencing through early pregnancy, so I was a little concerned that the only symptoms I had were slightly sore breasts in the evening, bloating and waking early every morning. I told my husband about my concerns and he felt it was just because it was a new pregnancy, different genes, every pregnancy being different etc.

We got a heartbeat doppler when I was 9.5 weeks along and tried without success to find our baby's heartbeat. I was a little concerned, but after looking on the internet he found that it wasn't uncommon to not find the heartbeat on a home Doppler until closer to 11 weeks, so we dismissed it.

Sunday 3rd June 2018 around lunchtime I had a small amount of red bleeding, just when I wiped, lasted for 3 wipes. No pain, no cramps. I put it down to a common early pregnancy bleed and resigned myself to call the midwife the following day. I had a little more red bleeding that evening and again the following day.

I called the midwife on Monday 4th June, I had also had a little more red bleeding, again only when I wiped and my lower back was now sore. She didn't seem overly concerned but booked me in at the EPU the following day for a scan.

This would be the first time we would see our baby, we should have been incredibly excited, but we were nervous.

Tuesday June 5th at 2.30pm we were scanned. The sonographer tried an abdominal scan and couldn't see our baby, so asked if she could do an internal scan. I knew at this point that our baby was no more. Following the internal scan she showed us our baby, they'd stopped growing around the 5/6 week mark, there was no heartbeat the little blob on the screen hadn't even gotten to the point where the baby shape could be defined and the gestational sac was irregularly shaped so the pregnancy wouldn't have been viable anyway 😢

I am as of now waiting for my body to expel my baby. We have to go back next Friday for the, to check whether this has happened and if not then I will be medically/surgically managed. We are heartbroken. Never got to hear their heartbeat, or see them wriggle around, feel them move or hold them close. I have no idea how to get through this I keep thinking I should've known, I should've trusted my instinct when I didn't feel the whole plethora of symptoms and couldn't find the heartbeat. I'm looking into my husbands eyes and I see all of his pain, though hestrying so hard to hide it for the children and to be strong for me... this sucks far worse than anything I've ever experienced. I want to tell him it'll all be ok, we will heal, we will come back from this, but I feel so broken. I know we want a child together more than anything, and I know we will try again. But, I want our squiggle . I don't want to have to try again, I should be planning for our baby being born at Christmas.

Then the uncertainties... I am now bleeding with a lot of cramps, I'm assuming as baby was so small when they stopped growing that I may not notice when they go.. how long until my baby goes? What if they don't go on their own and I have to have a d&c;, what kind of effect can that have on us trying again? When can we try again? What can I expect actually physically miscarrying? Am I more likely to miscarry again? When will the world stop being foggy and my heart stop aching?

I'm sorry, I know it's an essay :s