How it all went down (Part Deux)

Alright, here is the rest of the story continued. We'll see if I can't finish we might need a part 'trois'.

December 21st 2009 - January 12th 2010
So this was a nice part of my pregnancy I suppose...sort of. I started feeling the general queasiness that signals you are pregnant. I had the 'dry heaves' a lot. Fortunately I only threw up about 5-6 times in total during my pregnancy. I know there are many pregnant women out there who throw up like ALL the time, so I considered myself lucky that I wasn't one of them.

However, I did continue to have spotting off and on. It was really nerve racking. I tried to reassure myself that "if you were really miscarrying there would be a TON more blood...this is really nothing". Plus all the pregnancy books, magazines, websites state that while it's not USUAL to spot during a pregnancy, it by no means indicates that you are going to miscarry...so I tried to get on with it and not worry.

I, however, did get really sick just after the start of January. One of the worst colds I've ever had. I had one of those awful coughs that causes you to feel like your ribs are breaking and that breathing is a chore. Nurse me knows it's impossible, but I actually worried "am I going to cough the baby out?" My cold likely had NOTHING to do with what followed...but whenever things go wrong it's human nature to look back and wonder what caused it. I wish I hadn't been sick before this all started.

January 13th 2010
I've basically slept all day because I have to go in for a night shift. It's my first shift back after being off with my cold. It's about 4pm and I'm in shower, doing my thing, when all of a sudden I feel 'odd'...it feels like I've started my period. Wait a second...I'm pregnant...I'm not supposed to have a period. I look down and sure enough there is blood running down my leg and turning the water red. I quickly hose myself off and jump out of the shower grabing a towel as I run to the top of the stairs and yell for Brian who is sleeping in the basement (he's home sick too...thank goodness or I would have to call him from work). Once rousing him from his nap, I'm shaking and crying and getting on the phone to work to tell them I can't come in. I mange to blurt out to the nurse in charge that I'm having a miscarriage. After that we jump into the car and head to our local hospital.

I will skip all the boring details, because, come on, we all know hospitals are the MOST boring/terrifying places on earth. I have come out of this with a better appreciation of how horrific waiting for news is, when you know there could be something really wrong. Finally after hours, a nice young resident rolls the portable ultrasound machine into the room and after saying "I'm not very good with this thing, but let's try to find your baby"...he immediately finds our little peanut on the screen. I'm now 9 weeks + 4 days, and it's amazing how much peanut has changed since our last ultrasound at 6 weeks + 1 day. Peanut (or Aidan as we now know) actually resembles his nickname, he looks like a peanut...with arms and legs. I'm so relieved to see him there, but the resident informs us that we should book an outpatient ultrasound for tomorrow to figure out where the bleeding is coming from.

Thankfully by this time, its been hours since I started bleeding and it's starting to slow to a stop. There is actually less blood that I had originally feared. We go home and try to get some sleep unaware of the roller-coster ride we've just jumped on.

January 14th 2010
Having an ultrasound booked as an outpatient takes pretty much as long as the wait yesterday. First we wait for the ultrasound, then we have to wait for the results. Hours later we find out I have a 'small' subchorionic hemorrhage (SCH) which is measuring 2cm x 0.9cm x 1.7cm. Pretty much as large as Aidan is at this point. What is a subchorionic hemorrhage you ask? Well you're on the Internet so you could look it up for yourself, but the simple explanation is that it's bleeding that occurs between the uterine wall and the chorionic membrane (the sac that the baby is in). If large and in the right position, SCHs can cause vaginal bleeding, or sometimes if small they are only detected on ultrasound. If an SCH gets really large it can affect the attachment of the developing placenta or cause premature rupture of membranes, basically putting the pregnancy at a high risk of miscarriage.

We only looked this up for ourselves afterwards however, so we heard it for the first time when the ER doctor states that although he "can't promise" these SCHs often "resolve themselves". I ask if I should be on bed rest. I have a job in which I need to stand for hours a day...is that the best thing at this point? He says standing shouldn't affect it one way or the other and writes me a note to cover the two days of work I've been off. We go home feeling like we've dodged a bullet...wish that we had. I often wonder if I'd been on bed rest at this point, would things have improved? Did the following week that I spent doing my usual thing make everything worse? Probably not...but we'll never know.

Okay this is turning out to be WAY longer than I had originally thought. I want to do Aidan's pregnancy story justice, so I think it's going to become an opus instead of just a posting or two. Will continue more later.