I think where I left off last time, I wrote that I had a pretty good day on Monday and a harder day on Tuesday.
The rest of my week was also kind of a mixed bag.
I had some good outings and enjoyed walking more outside as it's getting gradually nicer. I walked to McDonald's for a Shamrock Shake, taught dance, ventured to Half-Price Books to get rid of old books and pick up a few new, and went out to a nice dinner with my family.
I also started trying my hand at digital scrapbooking for the first time, which has been fun. I have thousands pictures from our year and a half living in France- so there's no way I could document it all by hand. It's fun to get started on that massive project.
One of the tougher parts of my week was my doctor's appointment on Wednesday. This was my first check-up since leaving the hospital, and I had been dreading it.
Here are some things I hated about it-
1. This appointment was originally scheduled as my 24 week check-up, and I kept thinking about that. Instead it was a 3 week postpartum check-up.
It was also hard to even see this doctor again. She's the one I was seeing for my pregnancy check-ups and she's also the one I saw in the ER who first gave me the bad news.
2. Probably the worst part of the experience was seeing multiple pregnant women in the waiting room. Despite trying my best not to look at anyone or dwell on it, I started tearing up at the check-in desk. I know I eventually need to be able to live in the world and accept that pregnant women exist... but at the moment I can't imagine putting myself in a situation (obviously unless it's necessary like a doctor's appointment) where I would see anyone that's pregnant or even talk to or about anyone that is. It puts me in a very dark mood.
3. The fact that there are no answers and not a lot of solutions moving forward. Basically, they don't have any idea why this happened. That kills me, because in my mind it will be harder to prevent something like this in the future if they don't know the cause.
That leads me to the next part of my ramblings... my (non-expert medical opinions) about why this may have happened.
-Incompetent cervix. This is the only one of my ideas that was suggested by my doctors and not my own mind or the internet lol.
I guess the normal cervix length is between 3-5cm. At my 20 week appointment, mine was 2.4cm. I was told at the time that it wasn't concerning unless it was less than 2cm. They were going to check it again at 22 weeks, but of course by that time it was already over. However, even after my water broke and I went to the ER... they said my cervix didn't look shorter or thinner. So my doctors don't think that this should have happened based on my cervix length- but it's the only thing about my pregnancy that was slightly abnormal, so maybe.
-The fact that my severe nausea had recently lessened. Let me explain.
Until about 19/20 weeks, I could basically do no physical activity. I felt nauseous and struggled not to gag every single time I stood up and moved around. So between October-January... I did not exercise, do any deep cleaning, or even really go on walks. I couldn't even walk around the grocery store.
But... at 19 weeks, the medication I was taking actually started to help. I was still nauseous every day, but started feeling a lot better. This was obviously exciting because I missed being able get off the couch. I started doing Zumba once a week, going on long walks, cooking more, and cleaning things that had been neglected over the last few months. I was on my feet so much more.
So my thought is that if I did have a problem with an incompetent cervix, it was perhaps exacerbated by me starting to be a lot more active. It would explain the timing. My doctor doesn't like this idea because she doesn't want me to blame myself.
-Covid. I had it in November when I was 8-9 weeks pregnant.
This is kind of a long shot, but you never know. I was hardly sick. I just had a low fever and bad headache for one day, and then had a mildly stuffy nose and felt a little extra tired for about a week.
The only thing that makes me question if this impacted anything is that I had some bleeding while I had Covid. There was one day when I bled a lot (and freaked out, because I couldn't go get checked to see if the baby was okay because I was contagious), and then I spotted for about a month afterwards. None of my doctors thought this was worrying at all, because when I was able to go in the baby looked fine and it can be normal to have spotting in the first trimester.
I just wonder if someday they will prove that Covid can negatively affect pregnancies. There have been some reports of an increased rate of preterm birth, but lots of other women have had it and had no problems. In some ways I would be relieved if they do prove this caused what happened, because this situation would be unlikely to happen again. I would however feel super guilty because I considered not working this year because of the danger of Covid, but I decided to work anyways and that's how I got it.
-IVF. I've seen some people suggest that doing IVF makes it more likely to have an incompetent cervix.
The egg retrieval is considered a minor surgery. I did two of them pretty much back to back in July and September. Since it's not a majorly invasive procedure, it's unlikely that it would influence anything... but my body has been through a lot this year.
The IVF medications in both July and September were pretty hard on the body, plus the two egg retrievals, the two transfers, the early miscarriage in August, and getting pregnant again in October. It was a lot to go through in a short amount of time- combined with a LOT of stress. I have to wonder if all of that could have had an affect. The good news is that next time, we only have to do a transfer and not all of the other stuff.
-Nutrition problems.
I'm already a picky eater, and with the nausea I was eating an even less varied diet than usual. My doctor has said multiple times that this was not an issue because the baby was growing normally and was actually in the 90th percentile for size... so clearly he was getting enough nutrients. But this is something I'm planning on asking about- just to see if there's any testing they can do for vitamin deficiencies or vitamins I could take next time beyond a prenatal.
-The shape of my uterus.
This is another long-shot, but something I'll ask to have looked into before trying IVF again. Last year I had a hysteroscopy (a procedure where they insert a camera into the uterus to check things out). I'm pretty sure the doctor mentioned that my uterus was slightly heart-shaped (it's supposed to be pear shaped). She said it was slight and wouldn't cause any problems. But now that the worst happened... it's worth looking into again. During my many hours of frantic stress Googling, this is something that can cause incompetent cervix and preterm labor.
Who knows... what happened could have been caused by one of these things, a combination, or none of these things. I'm just really hoping that if it's anything that can be treated that it will be discovered and a solution will be found.
I wanted to get my thoughts out because I've been obsessing over this. I see a high-risk OB in 3 weeks and I want to be prepared to ask a lot of questions.
I can't survive this happening again.
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