Alright so this started when I saw this folder pop up on my phone backup. “Early_Pregnancy_Photos_Nov2023.” I was scrolling through old cloud stuff, cleaning things out, you know? Felt like a punch to the gut seeing those pics again. Needed to revisit ’em. Needed to figure out what exactly I was looking at back then.
First thing I did was grab my phone and open that folder. Boom. Pictures. Close-ups. Tissue on tissue pads. Dark red stuff mixed with what looked like clots and some weird grayish material. It looked messy and confusing, totally different from what you see in neat diagrams. Felt my stomach churn just seeing ’em again.
Making Sense of the Mess
Right, started comparing what I saw to reliable info I found online later, after things calmed down a bit:
- The Main Bit (Probably the Sac): That small, kinda round, grayish-pink thing – maybe the size of a pea or a bit bigger? That looked about right for 7 weeks. Smoother than everything else around it. Felt weirdly focused on that tiny blob.
- All the Red Stuff: Blood clots. Loads of ’em. Thick, dark red, jelly-like. Some small, some big enough to make you gasp. That’s mostly what filled the pads in the pictures. Made everything look much more dramatic than just the sac itself.
- The Other Bits: That’s where it got fuzzy. Found pics showing strands of tissue, kinda stringy or ragged bits mixed in with the blood. Hard to tell exactly what those were – maybe parts of the placenta starting to form? Docs later said it could be decidual tissue too (that’s the stuff lining the uterus). No clear “baby” shape at all, just… pieces. That was tough to look at.
- The Size Thing: Kept holding my thumb over the screen, trying to gauge. At 7 weeks, they say the embryo itself is teeny, like a blueberry. The sac holding it might be bigger, like a small grape? Seeing it against the pad gave some scale. Looked like it fit roughly in that size range, which tracked.
Why I Needed to Do This
Honestly? I took those pictures back then because the doc told me to. Said, “Bring anything that comes out.” And things came out fast and confusing. Needed something to show them since I didn’t catch anything properly to bring in a jar. Felt chaotic and scary.
Fast forward to now, finding the folder months later. The emotional crap had dulled a bit, but the confusion hadn’t. Just couldn’t shake wondering “What was that? What exactly did I lose?” Needed to put names to what I saw in those photos, even if rough ones. Needed to feel less in the dark about my own experience.
The Big Thing I Took Away: The pictures are overwhelming, messy snapshots of a brutal moment. They show the physical stuff – mainly the sac and the blood – but most importantly, they show why you absolutely need a doc to look at this stuff. Pictures alone? They just can’t tell the whole story. Seeing the grayish sac confirmed tissue passed, which mattered for medical follow-up. But those random bits? Trying to ID each one from a photo? Pure guesswork. Medical testing is the only way to really know anything for sure.
Important Stuff I Learned Looking Back:
- Docs look for confirmation that the pregnancy tissue (mainly the sac) actually passed. Those close-ups helped them confirm that happened for me.
- The sheer amount of blood and clots freaked me out then and freaked me out again now. Docs later told me what counts as “too much” – wish I’d known the thresholds back when I snapped those pics.
- Feeling lost about the photos proves it’s too much for anyone to figure out alone. You NEED professional help to understand any of this.
Revisiting those photos was rough. Like picking at a scab. But naming the blood clots, recognizing the sac size, admitting I couldn’t ID the rest – it finally gave me a shaky sense of closure on the purely “what was in the picture” question. Doesn’t fix the loss, but dimmed that nagging “What was it?” question enough to put the folder back in the archive.
