Pregnancy Update 30 Weeks || Complications

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