Projectile Bleeding

Ya know, a couple of days ago, I thought to myself that gee, I don't have much to say when things are going ok. So I started thinking about what I could chat about if things were going to be uneventful from now on.

Didn't get a whole lot of time to explore those ideas, because things decided to get eventful again.

Last night around 1am, I'm getting ready for bed, and I find some blood when I go to the bathroom.  Nuts.  It had been 3 whole weeks since my last bleed and I was really starting to believe that I was done with all that.  In fact, I had the guts to order 2 pregnancy items from Amazon yesterday.  You know, having faith that I would still need them when they arrived a few days later.  So I'm looking at blood, almost feeling punished for being so arrogant.

But I've got an ultrasound appointment scheduled for 10 hours later, so I'm not panicking.  I tell K that I'll sleep a lot better if we can get a heartbeat or two on the doppler before going to bed.  So I lay on the floor and he gets the little machine out.  Now K is nervous, not because he's afraid something is horribly wrong, but rather he's afraid that if he can't find a heartbeat (which has been difficult in the past), I'm going to freak out and be inconsolable.  So he's got a lot of pressure on his shoulders to find the little buggers.

Within 30 seconds, we're hearing it.  This is a record for us, the other times we've found it, it took several minutes.  But now we know why, one of them is hiding directly under the main vein that runs through my belly.  So my heartbeat is so loud that it usually drowns out the little ones.  But we were able to hear both at the same time, mine kind of slow, and baby going nice and fast behind it.  So K moved a bit to the left (by now I'm content, 1 is all I need to hear), and pretty quickly finds a second one.  They are a solid inch and a half, maybe two inches apart so it is definitely baby number 2.

Well okey dokey!  We've confirmed that both are still there and alive, so let's watch some Craig Ferguson and go to bed, we're already scheduled for a proper look at them in the morning.

I'm sitting in bed and I feel it.  Not the usual whoosh of fluid suddenly falling out of me, but rather this feeling like it's squirting out of me.  And normally it would land directly below me, but this feels like the stream is almost pointing up.  So off to the bathroom I go and the front of the pad I'm wearing and my underwear are just soaked.  Not the usual red and purple thick blood with random clots, but rather a thin blood that looks mixed with a clear fluid.

I sit on the toilet and it almost feels like I'm actively peeing, except slightly more south, and I'm not putting any effort into squirting this bloody fluid out of me, it's just happening without my consent.

Blood I could handle.  I have a clue as to what that is and what it means.  But an additional fluid mixed with the blood?  I wasn't ready for that.  And the way it felt like it was coming out, it felt like when you poke a hole in a water balloon and all the pressure pushes the fluid out that hole.  Sooooooo, I kind of have 2 water balloons in my body, you can imagine what I was thinking was mixing with the blood.  I started to panic that my water had broke at only 12w6d.

When I was able to get up, I poke my head out and say "we're going to the hospital" almost more pissed than anything else.  We get dressed and off we go.  The very familiar late night, rainy drive.  The usual checking in, this is why I'm here, get the temperature taken and blood pressure measured while I sit there, feeling like I'm about to soak through my jeans.  We head to a proper room and I'm told to strip down completely, and sit up on bed covered in puppy pads wearing a gown.

I think we all know what most of the night entailed - waiting.  I soak through the gown in the front and have to get another one.  I'm sitting on a puddle and it feels like it's going everywhere.  I'm fluctuating between wanting to cry, to wanting to break the tension with jokes, to thinking about what our next step will be if this is the end of this pregnancy.  I'm in decent spirits as I finally get wheeled to the ultrasound room.  I have to pee and I'm honestly afraid I'm going to expel something important, so they give me a little bucket to put in the toilet.  If I catch anything, the nurse will retrieve it, if not, dump it and flush it.  Fortunately, just some bloody urine so dump and flush and back up on the table.  The technician checks my kidneys (seriously docs, we moms don't give a hoot about our damned kidneys!) and we prepare to check on the little ones.

That's when I lose it.  I start shaking uncontrollably and crying.  And the technician has the screen pointed away from me, but K can get a look at it.  We put the thingy on my abdomen.

And they're alive.  And moving.

Encouraging words start being said and I look to K to confirm, do they really look ok?  Yes they do.  I'm still crying and shaking, REALLY trying hard to believe them.  And she finally turns the monitor to me so I can see for myself.  Those really are babies in there, throwing a dance party!  They've grown so much, they don't' seem to have as much fluid around them as they did before.  But I'm assured that the sacs look full, and there's no evidence of any kind of leak or anything.

She gets an obnoxious number of measurements which gives me all sorts of time to watch my babies wave at me and I even saw a leg kick or two.  They were just dancing, having a grand old time!  And I was shocked at how developed they appeared.  I could identify the full face in profile, nose, lips, chin, and a hand with fingers, and everything!  Even a little hint of spine here and there.

So back into my room for another hour of waiting until the doctor can interpret the images and come talk to me.  I'm not allowed to have a glass of water or to grab the granola bar from my purse because until the doctors interpretation comes in, they have no way of knowing if I'll be needing surgery or something.  Standard procedure, but still not what you want to hear.

The doc finally comes in and says that everything looks great.  They specifically looked for evidence of a fluid leak.  Apparently the sac will kind of go teardrop shaped as it starts to leak, and then will lose most shape as it collapses around the fetus.  But no, both are nice and round and no evidence of any issue.  They did find the subchorionic hematoma that I've had all along and it's about twice the size it was the last time we looked at it. So that freaks me out a bit, but he says that these things rarely cause any real problem.

We head home around 5:30am, confused, still not understanding where all the fluid came from, but at least able to tolerate trying to sleep until my appointment 6 hours later.  I take a quick shower to wash the blood that has stained my thighs and abdomen (like I said, somehow it got everywhere) and we go to bed.

Everything at my scheduled appointment this morning went fine.  The technician found what had been a bleeding void last night and said it's fully clotted so all is good.  The sacs are still full and round, still no evidence of any leakage.  The kiddos are chilled out (they partied hard last night, must have been tired by this morning) but measuring well in terms of size and heart rates.

I get to see Dr. C and he says that this is the best he's seen things so far, so everything is great.  The bleeding has moved south towards the cervix so it's either going to come out in a main clot (he described size and potential shape) or it will break up and bleed out gradually.  And he gave me a visual of how much blood to expect so hopefully I'll be able to handle it as it happens during the week.  All the genetic markers look good, I think this was the scan where they measure the back of the neck to look for abnormalities and I'm pretty sure he told me that looks perfect, but it wasn't really the main focus of conversation.  He says the extra fluid was probably cervical mucus, but wow, I didn't know that much could be in there.

I pouted that I don't know if I can wait 4 weeks for my next appointment considering my record so far has been 13 days.  So he says that I get to break all the rules and make as many extra appointments as I want.  Next ultrasound - Jan 16th and I'll have a brief meeting with a different doc because Dr. C won't be in that day.  That's fine, I want to meet all the doctors at some point because for delivery, you get whoever is on call.  I'd kind of like that person to not be a complete stranger.

I'm exhausted.  I'm not even fully out of the first trimester yet.  I just don't know if I can handle all of these scares.  But I don't have any choice because I can't figure out how to avoid dealing with them either.  Silver lining (besides the 2 healthy little ones of course)?  We probably burned through our annual deductible last night.  Yup, 4 days into the new year and we've used up a years worth of insurance.  That's just awesome.