In several of my past posts I had
mentioned that I was dealing with placenta previa in my current pregnancy. For those of you who don’t know what that is,
placenta previa is a condition during pregnancy when your placenta is covering
your cervix. Typically the placenta will
attach to the uterus and as the uterus grows the placenta will move along with
it. However, with placenta previa the
placenta does not attach to the uterus like it is supposed to and it remains in
the way of the cervix.
Although in nearly all cases of
previa, the placenta will end up moving by the end of the pregnancy, we haven’t
been as lucky. I have what is called
complete placenta previa. My placenta is completely covering my cervix and is incredibly
unlikely to move. This condition comes with several risks, but the biggest
being that of bleeding. I was told that if I was to have the smallest amount of
bleeding, I was to immediately go into the hospital.
Well Saturday evening I had a small
amount of spotting and immediately chose to go into the hospital. I ended up
having more bleeding once I got the hospital and they chose to admit me. I was admitted Saturday evening with the
understanding that the doctors would be here on Monday and they wanted to watch
me until at least then. Once the doctors
got here they would decide what needed to be done.
My bleeding ended on Sunday
evening, which was a great thing. They
had kept checking on Marie making sure that she was not in distress and that
her blood levels were okay. On Monday they
communicated to me that they wanted to keep previa patients in the hospital for
7 days after a bleed. So I was planning on being here through Saturday. They
did an ultrasound on Tuesday and Marie is doing just fine, they also monitor
her heart rate twice daily to make sure she continues to be okay.
Yesterday, I ended up passing
several blood clots (sorry TMI, I know…). Although these clots were not
accompanied by any new bleeding, they did count it as bleeding and had to
restart my 7 day count. I am now in here until next Thursday or Friday assuming
that nothing else happens in the mean time.
They want to make sure that both Marie and I are safe and that nothing
would require her to have to be delivered any earlier than necessary.
So why have I not shared this until
now? This has been a week of several emotions and we did not feel that we were
ready to deal with facebook or people until this point. Although I’m still a little hesitant, I think
that there are several people who would like to know that this is going on.
So what now? Assuming that nothing
else happens while I’m here in the hospital, they will continue to monitor both
Marie’s and I’s heart rates and such. If
nothing else happens I will be going home next week, but will remain on virtual
bed rest for the remainder of my pregnancy.
Because of the previa, they do not want me to go into labor of any kind
as it could result in more bleeding. So I will be hopefully delivering her
around 37 weeks via C-section. We have
yet to actually schedule this, but within the next few weeks I am sure we will
know our little girl’s birthday.
During this time I am going to try
to figure out crafts and such to keep myself busy. However, if you have any tips on things to
keep you busy during bed rest I would much appreciate it. I will try to post some of the craft projects
that I do and keep people decently updated as we know a little bit more.
So now that I've written an entire book I will go back to watching the Olympics (one benefit of being here, we don't have TV at home!).
With love,
Erica
