I’ve never had to deal with this, and I can imagine it would be hard to hear, but this seems more like a tech wanting to show the mother that everything is clear, alleviating any worries about missed miscarriage. I’m sure tone plays a big part, and if this was said with even the slightest bit of snark, it’d be rude and careless. OP, so sorry for your loss.

I HAVE been there. More times than I want to remember.

And idiot U/S tech? The mom did NOT need you to highlight that, thanks. She is all too aware, I promise you. Nothing feels as empty as empty arms or an empty womb.

Don’t you think her heart’s breaking enough?

This is why I didn’t go to the dr when I experienced a miscarriage. The last thing I wanted to do was be terrorized with an empty ultrasound screen. I just needed to hold my 1 year old and husband close and avoid the world.

I am there right now and that is the exact reason I have not even called my OB office yet.
The last thing in the world any grieving mother needs is people like this “treating” them.

OP I am so sorry, and I am with you in heart.

I would be curious to know the tone behind this comment. Odds are it really came across as ugly, seeing as how it’s been submitted to this site, but I don’t know… it sounds like the tech might have just been trying to walk the mother through what she was looking at? If it was done in the right spirit, I would have appreciated hearing this. I’ll be curious to hear the full story when the pink link is posted.

Either way, OP, I am so sorry for your loss.

OP I am so sorry – both for your loss and because your emotional pain was made worse by the medical professionals…who really have inadequate training for how to deal with a patient in normal circumstances, let alone something as sensitive as this.

I have found, unfortunately, that U/S techs (or ‘sonographers’ as my OB insisted on correcting me to when I was making a complaint about one!) really shouldn’t be allowed near patients…it must be the machine, as I’ve known heard some thoughtless comments from OBs and midwives when they’ve had the ‘magic wand’ in their hands! May be it allows them to distance themselves, as they don’t touch skin, just move the gadget and look at a screen, like some weird computer games…forgetting it is very real to the patient!

I have to admit, for one of my miscarriages, I would have welcomed a scan to show me my dead baby (or lack of, if that was the case), I’d had a late missed miscarriage for one of my twins, but kept convincing myself the baby was okay. I begged midwives and my OB to let me have a scan and see for myself, but was refused for remainder of the pregnancy. However, that started a month *after* the scan that discovered one baby had died…I really don’t think I would have been emotionally ready at that scan, having just been told, so again it’s the context, tone, timing…so many things have to be taken into account.

Us pregnant ladies are really not easy to deal with! We are all individuals and our needs and wants are different, plus our pregnancies progress in different ways and we really can’t be handled the same way as each other. Unfortunately, the medical profession insists on trying to treat everyone with a ‘one size fits all’ attitude. I have never known 2 people to react the same way to death, nor grieve in the same way. Despite having lost babies at different points of pregnancy, from early, late and missed miscarriages through to a still-birth, I would *never* tell a grieving mum I knew exactly how she felt, as I really don’t. I can relate to how she feels, I understand her feelings, I appreciate, to a degree, what she is going through…but I cannot know exactly what she is feeling or going through.

I was told by both OBs and midwives the maternity and antenatal deal with life not death…but, unfortunately, that isn’t the reality. Few of us fall pregnant as soon as we want to. Many have very early losses, (I was quoted 1 in 4 confirmed pregnancies end in an early miscarriage, but not sure how true that is), then the, thankfully, less frequent late miscarriages and still-births. Oh how. My heart wishes death was not a part of pregnancy and birth, but it is. And it’s about time the hospitals and staff were trained (preferably by the real professionals – those that have been through it) as to how to deal with us in a gentle and sincere manner.

Rant over!

There’s where your heart would have been, Sonographer.

I’m so sorry for your loss, Mama. **hugs**

For anyone who wonder if there were maybe something in the tone on this one that sounded bad… This didn’t need “tone” to be horrible.

Not the OP here, just someone who’s dealt with more idiots during/after miscarriage than she’d like to remember.

If the tech wanted to reassure the mother that no tissue was retained…they are welcome to do that. But an empty uterus on an ultrasound screen looks like a black hole. Feels like a black hole. There is NO DOUBT “where the baby would have been”. Instead, this heartless automaton took the mother on the penny tour of her own body, highlighting her loss without giving her any comfort that, at least she doesn’t have to have a D&C, etc. or at least she doesn’t have to worry about infection, or whatever.

OP, I’ve seen this screen. It’s horrible. I’m so sorry the tech managed to make a horrific experience worse.

After my miscarriage, I actually wanted to know where the fetus and placenta would have been and stuff like that. I was curious about it, even through the grief. Don’t kill the sonographer . . . some moms WANT to know.