God, this is hard to talk about
It was really a very hard week for me
and I was trying to be optimistic...
("Payday" intro sting)
Hey guys, it's Angel, and welcome back to my channel
Today, I'm gonna just do a quick bumpdate
to go over how my appointment went with my maternal fetal medicine doctor,
and I just want to kind of briefly go over the story about the first trimester
I know I've mentioned that in a few videos now
And I just kind of want to get that out of the way and finally tell you what happened
so I can leave that behind me,
and look forward to the rest of this pregnancy and his birth
so I think I will start with the first trimester story so that I can just get that out of the way especially since that's
from the past and then we can talk about how my appointment just went and show you how my bump is growing
and all of that
so I think I might have mentioned in previous videos
basically the reason why I announced my pregnancy so late into pregnancy this time
I was into my second trimester
that's because we just had a lot going on
I just had a feeling something was wrong
I mean that started even from the get-go
as soon as I found out I was pregnant
The day that I took the test and found out I was pregnant I was already bleeding
and I've never bled that early
with my first two pregnancies
I usually was fine until five weeks with them
So it really worried me that I was bleeding so early on I was also charting
And I had I was taking my temperature for my charts and my temperature was lower than I had ever been with pregnancy before
It had dipped below the cover line and was also barely above it even when it wasn't below it
And it just the temps just didn't look promising to me
And I know that you kind of take that with a grain of salt. It doesn't mean much but
It was just so different from my previous two pregnancies
and when I went to Urgent Care,
Because of the bleeding, my levels were really low.
Now granted, I was also extremely early
I found out nine days after ovulation that I was pregnant,
so my HCG was 32,
well obviously it was just because it was very early
But it's kind of hard to say that early on if it means that it's just early or if something is amiss
I was also having symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy
It hurt really bad just on the one side and that really worried her and she wanted to do an ultrasound to rule out ectopic
but I would have had to wait for an additional three hours for the
ultrasound tech on duty to be available to do it and at this point I had already been there for
about three hours or so
With the two kids by myself and Justin didn't even know I was pregnant yet
I didn't want to have to tell him that way I wanted to surprise him and tell him in a special way
Which I did end up doing, and I could put that in the iCard and in the description.
I totally tricked him
He totally didn't see it coming
I really wanted him to be surprised
And I knew that I was so early that they wouldn't be able to see anything either way anyway
So I knew it would just be a waste of time so at that point
I just left AMA so that I could go home
And you know they gave me the instructions on what to look for what to come back for
And I was you know left feeling cautiously optimistic
that things were gonna be okay
Now a couple more weeks went by and I continued to still have pain on one side
And it just really was freaking me out. Especially since one of my friends did have an ectopic pregnancy
That ruptured her tube, and I was really scared of that happening to me
So I called my regular doctor [he] got me in to do an ultrasound
And tried to rule that out I got that done
I think I was six weeks five days somewhere around there and lo and behold,
There he was where he was supposed to be with his heart beating away
So I was such a relief to see that it was not ectopic and as far as we knew was a viable and healthy pregnancy
So I left that appointment feeling really hopeful that things are gonna be okay
Because I knew that once you see the heartbeat the risk of losing the baby goes down by a lot
a little less than two weeks later, I was about eight and a half weeks pregnant
And I got up in the morning, and I went to the bathroom
and there was a lot of red blood like a lot
..And... I have had bleeding with all of my pregnancies
I had it at five weeks and around eight weeks with both Caledon and Kerrigan
then also had it around 12 weeks with Cal, and
It's always scary. It never gets easy, but I had never had
So much
And I have never had it be quite so bright red either. I mean honestly
I mean, honestly, I was like half asleep my first thought was like
'Oh, I started my period' like that's what it looks like you know, sorry for the TMI
But..I just kept wiping and wiping and wiping just was a lot and
Then I realized, 'wait a second, I'm pregnant,' and I just started crying and I went downstairs
And I was just crying, and Justin's like, "what's wrong?"
So again, I went to Urgent Care. He watched the kids I went by myself
And...they wouldn't do an ultrasound. They were like well
"You already had an ultrasound, we already saw it's in your uterus..."
"...So we're just not gonna do it" and that just really made me upset
Especially once you are that far in pregnancy,
and ultrasound is the best way for them to see if the pregnancy is viable or not
It's just the most reliable way once you can see a heartbeat. She wouldn't do it
She did a pelvic exam my cervix was closed
So that was a good sign, but she said that my cervix was very friable,
It was very irritated, and she did the blood draw for the HCG
And she said it looked good because I'm still trending upwards from you know the last time that that was drawn
I went to get the second draw two days later and a couple of days after that,
my doctor personally called me
And the thing about the Naval Hospital is they usually have a nurse call you the one and only time that my
Literal doctor called me personally was when he called to tell me that I had ankylosing spondylitis
Because that wasn't very good news. He said that
the levels had dropped and
He said you know this could just mean that... God, I'm like.. I know that it's a good outcome
And it's still emotional for me. He said that it could mean that
it's just you know everything's normal and
Sometimes in pregnancy, your levels just start kind of dropping.
They kind of plateau and then start dropping a little and that's normal, but granted that
Generally doesn't happen till a little bit later, or he you know something could be wrong
he wasn't really sure so he wanted me to have an ultrasound with radiology, so I
Called radiology, and they literally couldn't get me in for like a full week
So then I'm just like
Panicking and crying and I was calling around trying to find any way that I could be seen sooner and there was just no way
And that same day that radiology could have got me in was when I was finally gonna have my OB
Appointment which I knew would include an ultrasound anyway
So I just went ahead and went to that instead
One of my friends watched both the kids for me and Justins work actually let him off early to go with me
So that we could go together
And I wouldn't have to be by myself,
or have the kids be there to witness that, in case something was wrong
I researched the heck out of it during that week
And it seemed like most people if they had just a normal drop for no reason
It was more like 10, 12, 14 weeks. Not eight
It was really a very hard week for me, and I was trying to be optimistic
But I had never ever had my levels drop before I'd never not had an ultrasound to reassure me so
to be completely
unaware because I hadn't had an ultrasound you know for a few weeks before and
I just felt like I was gonna get blindsided so
We went to the appointment and before the doctor started. He said
So your levels dropped so
We don't know what we're gonna see today
Like he was trying to prepare us for worst at this point
I was just about 10 weeks, and so he wanted to try to start with the trans abdominal ultrasound first
so he put that on and we were looking and
God, this is hard to talk about
It looked like...
The baby was not alive
we couldn't see the heart beating and
it didn't look like the baby was moving
It looked to be about the size that it should be
But nothing what's happening and so
It just my heart has dropped, and so did Justin, I could see it all over his face
So he's like okay wait, let me try the transvaginal
Then he turned the screen away from us so that we couldn't see
And when he started that he was kind of sitting there looking for a minute
and it just it felt like an eternity like it couldn't have been more than like literally a minute, but it felt so long
and just...
I just thought that was it and Justin told me after he was like. I thought that was it
I thought that was the end like I thought we were gonna get bad news
But he goes, "Oh the baby's moving, yeah, he's obviously ok" and then he turned it and showed us and
he was moving his little little tiny gummy bear limbs, and we could see his heart beating and
It was such a relief to see that he was okay
But that was just a really really hard couple of minutes, and I just can't even imagine what it feels like for
Parents who do actually have a loss because that was just so
emotional and hard for us and
Then we went over the baseline labs that they had run that the week prior because of my history having pregnancy-induced hypertension
With my first two children and my autoimmune condition Ankylosing spondylitis
They just want to get a baseline so I did the 24-hour urine I did a whole bunch of blood work
I mean it was ridiculous like ten vials or something. It was a lot and in that
Testing is how they figured out that I had gestational diabetes more about that in a future video a lot to talk about
I'm gonna make a video about that, probably more than one video about that actually, so we talked about the labs
It was just a really long appointment
we were there like literally two hours fast forward a couple more weeks, and I did that genetic testing
and he Was like, "oh, yeah,
I forgot to get that let me go get those results." and he left and was gone for literally
45 minutes and the more time that went by the more I was worried that it was going to be bad news
Because I was like why is it taking so long and then he came in and said everything was negative so
For me that was the last straw. I was done with the Naval Hospital after that
I don't think that doctor was a terrible doctor himself. He's actually one of the better doctors
They have there
but just the way everything was handled the way that they refused to do that ultrasound the second time at urgent care and
That they even did HCG draws that late in pregnancy
They usually don't do it that late in pregnancy because there is such a wide variation of normal
And it doesn't tell them a lot and because it can drop
Sometime towards the end of the first trimester and apparently there is a wide variation of that too
and
so it doesn't really tell them enough and when the ultrasound is just a quicker and more sure way of seeing the viability of the
Pregnancy I just didn't feel like it was the best place for us and that is why I switched to
TRICARE Standard
Which is now called TRICARE select so that I could go to a civilian OB
And civilian hospital to have my birth, and I have to go pretty far for that. It's in Tacoma
So it is about a 45-minute drive
But it has been worth it, the care has been so much better
So that's the story of the first trimester
And why we thought we were losing him more than once and why it was just very hard for us very emotional for us
And why we kept holding off on announcing
We didn't even tell the kids until I was like nine weeks
and the only reason I told them at that point was because
There was a mini photo session that I was gonna go do that I was gonna use to
Take announcement pictures
So I had to tell them first.
we told my dad, we ended up telling my dad and step mom later that day
Some other parents and what not around that time
And then a lot of people didn't find out for another few weeks after that now as far as my maternal fetal medicine doctor
So he is actually in Gig Harbor which is a little bit closer than Tacoma. My new OB referred me to him
Because if you have gestational diabetes or some other things that make you really high-risk
It's just usually good to have an MFM also be following your case
To have just an extra pair of eyes someone who's even more specialized in
High-risk complicated pregnancies, and so I went to him and they did a very thorough ultrasound
They basically did an Anatomy scan, a BPP, which is biophysical profile
and a growth scan all in one it was really long she didn't print out any pictures, though, unfortunately. He is perfect and
Placenta was looking great. The fluid was absolutely great. He.. the biophysical profile section of it
He passed with flying colors like max points everything was great. I mean as soon as we started
We could see him practice breathing
It was really cool to see I've never seen that in an ultrasound it literally looked like he was breathing like his chest was moving just
Like he's breathing. It's really cool, and he also got hiccups a little bit later
It was really cool to see that on ultrasound too, and he was head down and just everything was looking fantastic
He's still on the same growth
Curve is 69 percentile for 32 weeks
which is approximately 4 pounds 10 ounces and
The MFM came in and he was just thrilled um so he talked to me in depth about how GD works
You know why it's a high risk and all that so again in that gestational diabetes video
I'll talk more about what he talked about. He said my blood sugar was very well controlled
He was really happy with where they were at they're obviously not
Negatively affecting the baby because he is growing normally
He's a little bit on the bigger side of average
But still average and remember Caledon and Kerrigan were both big they were both almost nine pounds without gestational diabetes
So he's actually on track to be about the same size probably actually even a little bit smaller
So he's not getting too big because of gestational diabetes. He also his head is bigger than his shoulders
So that's what they want to see with gestational diabetes are usually worried about the shoulders being too big and being bigger than the head
The head usually needs to be the biggest part, and if the head makes it out
Then the rest of them can make it out. He was very confident
We can wait till 39 weeks, and maybe even all the way up to my due date
Even before needing to induce if he didn't come on his own by then I left that appointment
Feeling really confident that like we're gonna make it to full term. I've never not had a full-term, baby
So I was kind of worried about what it's like to not have a full-term
Baby, and before anyone who says 37 weeks is full-term. It is no longer considered full-term
the American College of
gynecologists
or obst-
ACOG.... I can't remember what it stands for
They changed the guidelines in 2013 actually during my pregnancy with Kerrigan, that 37 and 38 weeks
It's early term and 39 and 40 weeks is full-term
So it's really 39 weeks is really the best outcome for babies if you can make it that far
They're way less likely to have any issues with feeding breathing
Temperature all of that stuff cause their brains and lungs still develop quite a lot in between 37 and 39 weeks
Fingers crossed and that's about when we're shooting for my dad to come visit is around like right before 39 weeks
So that hopefully he would be here for the birth, and hopefully Justin will be back home in time
He doesn't get back til like right before my due date, so
It'll be kind of hard, but it's at least kind of possible this time instead of, 'no baby's definitely coming '
So I'm just kind of feeling really hopeful things are going really well. We're feeling really healthy
And that is good
So let's go ahead and look at that belly shot and see our growing it 33 weeks now
So we're getting pretty close to that
Delivery day is coming up so quickly So hit that subscribe button if you haven't already
so you don't miss out on my future bumpdates and
birth and baby related videos, thanks so much for watching
Bye!
("Payday" plays and then concludes"
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