19 Week Ultrasound and 3D Images

These are some my favorite ultrasound images from the pregnancy. One good thing to come out of having so many complications is that we had a lot of ultrasounds done. I think maybe close to 20!

Sunday Evening

36 Weeks

Oh bother. Has it really been almost 7 months since I have blogged??? For shame. The truth is, I am fairly superstitious and I was afraid to write here for fear of further disrupting an already disrupted pregnancy. Knock on wood. It has been one hell of a wild ride.

In a nutshell:

On Memorial Day I started hemorrhaging; lots of blood and awful looking clots. It was absolutely terrifying. I thought I was having a miscarriage. I called the fertility clinic and luckily my doctor answered the phone (a miracle!) and he told me to lie down and NOT MOVE until I came into the clinic the next day, which amounted to 24 hours of sheer hell. When we finally went in, we got an ultrasound and THANK GOD the baby was ok. The twin was most definitely not developing anymore but we still had one viable little peanut. I often cry when I think about it...my husband and I collapsing onto each other with sheer relief and cautious joy.

And that was just the beginning.

It turns out what I had was called a Subchorionic Hematoma. I will let the experts describe it:

SCH or Subchorionic Hematoma is a gathering of blood between the membranes of the placenta and the uterus. A more technical name is the chorion. Some doctors will also just refer to it as a blood clot.

The incidence of subchorionic hemorrhage (subchorionic hematoma) is 1.3% of all pregnancies. In pregnant patients with first-trimester vaginal bleeding, the incidence increases to almost 20%. Bennett et al⁹ reported a spontaneous abortion rate of 9.3% in patients with first-trimester vaginal bleeding who had a live fetus and subchorionic hematoma. Overall, hematoma is associated with a 4-33% rate of miscarriage depending on the gestational age when the complication occurs.

Mortality/Morbidity

• The presence of sonographically detected subchorionic hemorrhage (subchorionic hematoma) increases the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, abruptio placentae, and preterm labor.
• The rate of spontaneous abortion directly varies with the size of subchorionic hematoma and the mother's age. The rate of spontaneous abortion is inversely related to gestational age. The frequency of fetal demise is higher with retroplacental hematoma than with marginal subchorionic hematoma.

Scary stuff. My hematoma was not small and was, in fact, almost the exact size of the placenta. That, coupled with the fact that I still had the extra twin sac, led my doctor to advise me, in his exact words, to do "a whole lot of nothing" for a while. A while turned into about 2 and a half months. I was basically on house arrest with very limited activity. No walking any distances (so no shopping, etc) no baths (again) or sex (still) or really much of anything. Blah.

But the truly hard part was the very tangible and real possibility that I could spontaneously abort at any time, especially if I wasn't careful. It's hard to explain just how stressful that is. You always hear how miscarriages happen because of a chromasonal defect, that it's the body's way of telling you this baby is not meant to be. What you don't often hear is that you can cause a miscarriage by, say, going grocery shopping or taking out the garbage. Holy crap. The fear can consume you and it almost swallowed me whole.

A couple of weeks later, I had to rush to the ER with more bleeding. I was told by the ER doctor that I could be having a miscarriage. That turned out not to be true, but it was awful to hear nonetheless. Soon after, I had a pretty big panic attack and realized I was getting nowhere fast with all the pressure. But with no way to reduce my stress (no exercise! no cooking! no acting gigs! no warm and frothy bubble bath! no soothing glass of red wine! no comfort sex with my husband!) I was getting increasingly tense and uneasy both emotionally and physically. I had my panic attack in my ear doctors office. I was seeing him because I had what I thought was an awful ear infection. After he talked me down from my panic ledge, he told me I MUST, come hell or high water, find a way to relieve my stress. Then he told me I didn't have an ear infection. What I had was TMJ from clenching my jaw from, you guessed it, stress.

So, how do you reduce your stress when you are stressed about having to reduce your stress? I still don't really know. But I can tell you what worked for me, at least enough not to explode. I started controlling my breathing, listening to meditative music and lighting candles. I stopped beating myself up and, most importantly I told myself and the little creature growing inside me that we would be okay. We simply would because, well, we just would.

Because I said so.

And then...

In mid August I got sick. We were up in San Francisco attempting to have the one and only get-away in a very difficult year and on Day One I started feeling crappy. Long story short, we saw a doctor who told me I probably just had a cold but took a flu swab just in case. The results wouldn't be confirmed for three days and he told us to try to enjoy our vacation in the meantime. Well, I tried but by day 3 I was tired of trying so we headed back down south. We checked into a hotel in Monterey for a night and in the morning I started bleeding. Again...terror. A crazy run to another hospital, more waiting, fear, the works.

It turns out I had a rather bad UTI which was causing me to bleed. Another enormous collapse of relief.

While we were driving away from the hospital the doctor from SF called and told me I had H1N1 as well as the regular flu. He was shocked because he had NEVER seen that before. Go figure. Pregnant women have died from the swine flu or, more accurately, from the pnenmonia they get from the swine flu due to pregnant women's limited lung capacity. I lied awake that night, restless and afraid, praying we would be alright. That night will never leave me. I am sure I will never be the same.

It took me a full month to recover from both flus and the UTI, which takes us to September and a diagnosis of....

Anemia!!

It was actually a relief to find this out because I think it had a lot to do with my weakened immune system. Once I started taking iron supplements I had a lot more energy and (knock on wood again) have not gotten sick. Phew. I started walking again and feeling good. What a relief! I started feeling like I had some measure of control over the extra weight I was gaining from inactivity. I didn't go on a diet or anything but I was able to keep from gaining much weight the whole month of September. I felt GOOD. :)

But October brought more bleeding and a three day stay in Labor and Delivery with pre-term contractions. And then another trip to L&D a week later, as well as the most painful and itchy rash covering most of my body.

HOW MUCH CAN ONE PERSON TAKE??????????????????????????????????????????????

Apparently a lot. I'm still here! Baby is still here! My marriage is not only intact but better than ever!

It has been over 2 and a half years since we started TTC, a year and a half since we began fertility treatments and almost a year since we started the IVF process. I have gone through 10 IUI's and one IVF. I have been on stimulants or natural hormones consistently since last January. In the past year, I have been through several procedures including 2 surgeries. I've had 1 trip to the emergency room and 3 trips to Labor & Delivery. I experienced the loss of a twin, a subchorionic hematoma, eczema, foliculitis, anemia, the swine flu, seasonal flu, a severe UTI, a panic attack, TMJ, restricted mobility, an ear infection and now, sciatica.

I have not been able to exercise, have sex or take a bath since January.

This Thursday, we will celebrate our 37th week of pregnancy, which means we will have reached full term. Everything else will be icing on the cake. We are having a little girl and her name is Elena. She is a trooper, a beautiful survivor. I love to feel the weight of her little body rolling under my expanded flesh. Holding her for the first time will be the sweetest moment of my life. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that day will ever come.

It's Sunday evening, December 6, 2009 and I have been lying in bed all day with an awful case of sciatica. I am in considerable pain and can barely walk. This does not make me happy but I no longer question the difficulty of this pregnancy. It seems to come with the territory. We will survive. We will be okay. More than okay. We will thrive. And how do I know this?

Because I said so, dammit.

*Knock on wood.