How it all went down (Part 5)

February 12th 2010

13 weeks and 5 days. Opening night of the Vancouver Olympics. This may or may not be the day that things went from "likely to be okay" to "very likely to not be okay". I will never know for sure. I woke up this morning, and immediately felt like I was about to gush blood again. Went to the washroom and what came out was mainly brackish brown old looking blood...but it was quite watery. At the time I was like "oh good the clot is bleeding out just like Dr. R. said it would". In retrospect however, this may have been when my amniotic sac broke. It kind of amazes me now that I never considered that possibility...but I was so focused on the idea that these big gushes of blood (and possibly fluid at this point) would result in A) a miscarriage or B) not a miscarriage. Since after this we continued to hear a heartbeat on our home doppler, then ergo things were fine. Basically what happened to Aidan was sort of an in between. He kept growing and developing...but his surroundings wouldn't permit him to live outside the uterus.

We don't know for sure if I had ruptured membranes, although with the failure to develop ANY amniotic fluid build-up over a period of weeks makes it somewhat likely. If my placenta looked normal, then pPROM (preterm premature rupture of membranes) would definitely be our front running contender of "what went wrong". But, we also have the added complication of a very odd, blood clot filled, placenta. Could it have been malfunctioning enough to not permit amniotic fluid to be retained or built? If so, then maybe today was just another day in my pregnancy and my membranes never ruptured...but we'll likely never know. We are still waiting to get the placental pathology and Aidan's autopsy back...so I will have to update at a later date as to what my doctors think was the "most" likely cause. I'm not counting on getting many more answers.

If in fact I did rupture at this point in my pregnancy, I'm glad I didn't know about it. If I had, I would have gone in for a check up, the doctors may have seen very little fluid surrounding my poor little Aidan. They would have advised me at that time to terminate, scaring me with the possibility of infection. We would have likely done it at that point...the risks of infection with ruptured membranes are high and not something to take lightly...especially with my heart defect. So, thankfully we continued on for 27 more days after this in relative surety that we were going to have a baby...and it was bliss. If I can be glad for nothing else, I'm glad I got to see my Aidan. I'm glad we got to know what he looked like, and that I can make it to (at least) 23 weeks of pregnancy without my heart failing on me. Those are my consolation prizes.