Pregnancy #7April 30, 2006 3:52 pm
I’m fucking spotting. Its bright red.
Please, please, please, please … just no … please.
Pregnancy #7April 22, 2006 11:44 am
We had a consultation with our high risk obstetrician yesterday - I’ll call her Miss (we’re in the UK surgeons are Mr or Miss) BTDT, because she has - her obstetric history is pretty similar to mine. She was fantastic, it was worth the 2 hours wait (I can’t even begin to go into how awful the waiting room was but it included - junkies, pg teens & their social workers, hundreds of snotty unsupervised kids rampaging around & multitudes of the unwashed British public); she know Mr T, she’s worked with Lesley Reagan & Raj Rai, she understands about pregnancy loss & infertility.
She started off by saying that we probably can’t remember what it is like to have a successful pregnancy (true) and that her aims were to get the baby here safe and well but also to try and protect my mental & emotional well being whatever the outcome. To that end I’ll see her every 4 weeks for the time being, & the midwife in between each appointment. She also happy to send me for scans every 2 weeks for as long as I feel I need it.
We talked about the meds for ages - her feeling is that I should stay on heparin until the birth. I am in a bit of a grey area & if I wanted to stop she’d support me, but she doesn’t believe continuing will do harm whereas stopping may do. The plan at the moment is to continue until 18 weeks & reassess then. I expect that I’ll end up on throughout pregnancy which means that I’m edging closer to a planned section rather than a VBAC (I had a large post partum haemorrhage with C & I want to have the option of an epidural (I want to avoid narcotic pain relief since we’re likely to have a somewhat impaired baby as a result of the ABO incompatibility), I can’t be induced because of the previous section and planning a section would give us more control over the anticoagulation). I told her that I feel completely overwhelmed by making plans that far ahead (not to mention giving fate the finger which is never wise) - so we’re putting it on the back burner until 18-20 weeks when we’ll meet again this time with her, my midwife & anaesthetist.
She offered to scan me there & then, which was fab because S hadn’t been able to come to the last one. Unfortunately she had the crappiest scanner of all time, no TV probe & I had an incredibly full bladder. It gave me a good appreciation of quite how retroverted my uterus is - we could see bladder, the tiniest bit of uterus, maybe a baby foot & the rest was buried somewhere around my kidneys (well not really but you get the impression). The placenta is completely anterior (another thing putting me off the VBAC, anterior placenta often means OP baby - I really don’t want another long, agonising OP labour (with quite probably another PROM making it so much worse)) so when she tried with the doppler all we could hear was placenta. I tried again when we got home (with an empty bladder), babe is tucked up between my femoral artery & the placenta but I did get a minute or two of beautiful 150bmp heart beat.
So that’s it, lots of decisions that I don’t have to make yet, another scan on 5th of May & for now I’m left to my nausea.
Pregnancy #7April 19, 2006 8:37 pm
We’re still in the game, it (he? she? baby?) is there & alive (’alive & kicking’ as the sonographer said seconds after starting the scan), it wouldn’t keep still.
They’ve rather arbitrarily brought my due date forward to the 24th, which makes me 13 weeks and a day today (just like that!) - baby is well over a week ahead.
I listen to the heart beating with my doppler and start to think ‘Could this happen? Could it really happen?’
1000 miles., Pregnancy #7April 15, 2006 10:51 am
I’m still here, hanging on by my finger trips & swinging over the crevice (as my gynaecologist puts it). Apparently I’m 1 in 800,000 or so and each successive ‘adverse outcome’ makes others more likely. I’ve had two complete recurrent miscarriage panels drawn this pregnancy - one at 6 weeks one at 10 - all completely normal, nothing even borderline. No thrombophilia, no APS, we’re both ‘apparently normal’ chromosomally, progesterone/testosterone/prolactin levels are all normal. My notes from the last IVF cycle have been reviewed, they don’t believe there’s an egg quality issues, PCOS has been ruled out. I even repeated the NKs … normal. I’m normal but unlucky.
As a concession to ‘our lack of knowledge’ I’m staying on the heparin until 14 weeks (I’ve been off the prednisolone since 11 weeks) and aspirin (150mg) throughout the pregnancy. She (gynae) made some interesting points about the effect of multiple losses on fertility and subsequent pregnancies - not the ‘just relax’ type but she pointed out that a long period of infertility after multiple loses isn’t unusual. No one knows why or what the mechanism is but it is as if the body just gives up - she feels that if we hadn’t ‘forced’ the issue with the IVF cycle it would be unlikely that this pregnancy would have happened. She reiterated what Lesley Reagan & the m/c centre in Canada had found that for us unexplained recurrent losers a very high levels of involvement and monitoring (betas/scans etc) can improve outcome dramatically.
I’m seeing the high risk obstetrician next week, I’m trying to put together a list of concerns - other than the obvious I’m fucking terrified & all that’s going to make me feel better is a guarantee of a live baby - this being the NHS it is unlikely that they’ll be offering much. What I’m worried about:
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clefting (from the steroids)
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placental insufficiency & IUGR
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pre eclampsia - my BP has been okay this time but I’m already getting some foot swelling
-
my cervix & PROM
Of course this still maybe a completely academic exercise - I have another scan on Tuesday.
