Pregnant woman loses her baby after coronavirus crisis prevented ultrasound at hospital

"I had a bump.… I had a baby bump," said Linda King, 24. "This baby was still inside of me but it just wasn't alive." Linda had to go to a private clinic in St. John's before finding out the terrible news.

King's first gynecology appointment revealed that she was around eight weeks pregnant with her second child however she started to become stomach-sick soon after. King had a hard time keeping food down, to the point where she wouldn't ear for several days in a row. This prompted her to visit the Carbonear General Hospital at the beginning of March.

"They gave me a prescription for anti-nausea medication and sent me on my way but they never did any blood work, or an ultrasound, or checked the baby's heartbeat," said King.

King felt as though something wasn't right and decided to see her gynecologist for a second opinion but again, the pandemic saw that her appointment would be delayed.

"I was asking for an appointment because I was so sick but I guess there was a long waiting list to get in. There were other people besides me and I had to wait my turn."

When it came time for her to have a dating ultrasound, an appointment which allows the mother to know what date to expect the birth of the baby, around the 12 weeks in, again her appointment was cancelled because it was deemed to be non-essential.

Instead King was told to wait for a letter in the mail that would provide a date for her 20-week anatomy scan, a procedure that will determine the health of the baby.

"I have a doppler where you can listen to the baby's heartbeat," said King. "Usually at 16 weeks-ish it can be hard to find the baby's heartbeat but I found [my son's] early so I kinda knew something wasn't right when I knew I couldn't find the baby's heartbeat."

The Athena Clinic in St. John's continued to offer ultrasounds throughout the pandemic and King opted to go there where she was given an appointment on the same day that she called, well worth the one hour drive into the city.

"That's when they gave me the bad news," said King. "The baby had been gone for quite some while and I had no idea."

The clinic notified her that the baby was a miscarriage. The clinic gave King options for a procedure to deal with the miscarriage but she decided to have it done closer to home.

Once home, the wait to have the fetus removed in Cabonear was two weeks.

"I just wanted to get it over with, get it done. I didn't want to carry her around with me," said King. "Someone should have helped me and guided me along instead of sending me home."

"It was very frustrating knowing I never got the proper health care I should have got," she said.

King said the experience has shaken her faith in the health-care system and now asks that her provincial government reconsider what they deem to be essential. "I was pregnant, at this time I was 16 weeks, I should have at least seen the baby or had some blood work done when I went to the emergency room to figure out if everything was all right, and I didn't."

"There are so many sick people and pregnant women who can't get in to see their doctor and I don't think this ultrasound should have been cancelled," she said.

One of the hardest parts for King is knowing that the information that it was a miscarriage could have been given to her much sooner.

"I just want to see change in how the health-care system is treating everybody just COVID-19. Everybody should be taken seriously, especially when you think something is wrong."