Miscarriages - your questions answered

l-sonyasrose: One of our posts on the board the other day has triggered this question. Karen said this "I don't know if you remember but I lost my baby boy Gabriel at 18 weeks due to a faulty placenta. Well my problem is this... Most nights I wake up suddenly feeling 'movement' in my tummy. It's not just little flutters it feels like there is a party going on in there! It feels like when I was heavily pregnant with DS and DD, lurches and rolls and proper kicks. Each time it wakes me it breaks my heart, I just don't know why this is happening. It happened a few months after I had my early m/c at 9 weeks last year but not as often. It is making me so miserable otherwise I am just about accepting my loss but this is making things worse because for a split second I forget he is no longer there." Is there something that is going on inside us after we have lost our babies that could cause these feelings (shrinking, etc), or is it just something that we are imagining?
Dr Gillian Lockwood: I saw Karen's message and wasn't quite sure how to answer. Certainly, I have had patients who have reported similar heartbreaking feelings after losing a pregnancy quite late on. The uterus shrinks back to its normal size quite quickly after delivery, but the pattern of bowel activity can be altered for some time. Some women have told me that they have these feelings of kicks and flutterings after a successful pregnancy and delivery too! I think the clue lies with Karen saying that the feelings 'wake her up'. I think she is dreaming and her sub-conscious mind is 're-running' the tape of the lost pregnancy as a way of coming to terms with it.