So, the good news is that everything with the pregnancy is going great. We had an ultrasound today at just under 11.5 weeks. The baby is measuring right on track. We got to hear the heartbeat for the first time, which was very cool. We love seeing our little miracle as much as we can!!
So, onto the rest of the story....As a warning, there is definitely a certain level of TMI coming up.
It all began during the last week of June. One day I discovered that I was bleeding, it was more than spotting, but not a huge amount, but it was bright red. So I called the clinc, but since CCRM is so big it can take them several hours to get back to us. I decided to also call my gynecologist because I was so worried I didn't want to wait. Luckily, the Dr was able to fit us right in. I had a physical exam and an ultrasound. My cervix was closed, which was great news, but they did see blood in there. The ultrasound wasn't able to show much because I wasn't even 6 weeks yet, but we did see the gestational sack, and since we only transferred one embryo this meant that they could probably rule out an ectopic. We got the best news that we could at that point in time, but of course we were still freaking out. On the way home from the Dr's, CCRM finally called. They wanted us to come up the next morning for another HCG pregnancy test, and to check my Estrogen and Progesterone levels. We did that, everything came back how it should, so I was put on an antibiotic and was told to take it easy. So a few days passed, and in the middle of the night the bright red bleeding started again. Only this time there was much more, and I was also passing clots. So I called CCRM once again and left a message knowing they would get it right when they opened the phones at 8am. This time they called me back pretty fast, and we were up in Denver a few hours later. So once again they drew my blood to check my Estrogen and Progesterone, and I got another ultrasound. A few days had passed since the last bleed, so this ultrasound was a little more interesting. We still couldn't see too much, but they were able to diagnose me with a Subchorionic Hematoma, SCH for short. This is basically a tear that accumulates blood between the sack, and the uterus. When the embryo implants, sometimes the embryo can tear away just a little and blood starts to accumulate in the tear. Some people bleed, some people don't, I'm a bleeder. Not much is know about these, and they find that they are more common in IVF pregnancies, though they don't know why. A SCH can lead to further complications, but 9 times out of 10 they eventually resolve themselves in 1-6 weeks. Mine isn't alarmingly big or anything, in fact it's considered to be pretty small, but it does like to actively bleed. So at this point I was put on bed rest, because bed rest is the only way to treat these. Our bodies just need to heal on their own. So since then I still have had other bleeds, I had one about a month ago that was so heavy and lasted all day long, I was so worried that I was miscarrying, it was so heavy, and it lasted so much longer than usual. But once again, it was just my SCH acting up, which was such a relief. With the ultrasound today the SCH was quite a bit smaller, and was down close to the cervix which they said explained all of the brown spotting I've had lately. I haven't had a bright red bleed in 2.5 weeks, just brown off and on. Since the bleed is healing, we may start to reassess the bed rest situation, maybe I can go out and at least eat meals at the table? It's hard because obviously what we're doing seems to be helping, so we just don't want me to take on too much too soon still.
I hope to be blogging more, for me typing from bed has proven to be a little harder than I thought it would be, but I do want to be better about keeping everyone updated. I have also been horrible about catching up on my blog reading lost, so I also hope to get better with that as well.
I hope everyone has an awesome weekend!
XOXO
