Tuesday, September 8, 2009

First Baby Scare

So, Stephen and I had a bit of a scare Sunday night. I was having some slight spotting.

So I of course turned to the very trusty internet to research it and all signs were pointing to "probably nothing to worry about, but contact your doctor". I next called up the insurance company's nurse line. The woman was incompetent, and simply gave me an over the phone computer survey and said "contact your doctor w/in 72 hours". No advice, no explanations, no comforting. So, I called the hospital, told them my symptoms, and they told me to come in so they could take a look.

After about 90 min. in the waiting room, we were seen by a doc (at 9pm). She did an exam and an ultrasound. The baby is fine! Peanut was very active on the monitor but the doc did find that my placenta was covering my cervix (this is a condition called complete placenta previa). She couldn't be certain, but she suspected that this was the reason for the spotting.

I have since, had no additional spotting.

Good news is, this placenta previa happens to a lot of women in the early stages of pregnancy and they "outgrow" it by the time the baby is ready for delivery. I got an appointment this afternoon w/ my usual doc, and she said it wasn't anything to be concerned about at this time, and that as my uterus grows, the placenta will probably migrate away from the cervix. If it doesn't then we'll have to deliver by C-section. Either way, the baby is healthy, strong, active and 4 days ahead of schedule.

We had an extra long ultrasound (u/s) today and get to see a BUNCH of great things (baby's spine, shoulder blade, ribs, legs, brain). But peanut was shy and didn't wave or smile for us and stayed in a head-tucked-down position.

We got 4 new u/s pictures, but let me say, even as the mom of this child, i can't tell a THING from these! They're not very clear and its hard to make out any distinct parts. I'll post them on my flikr but you're probably not going to get much out of them :). This was my first real trans-abdominal (like you see in the movies) u/s. and the baby is now 15 cm, 100g (6 in / 3.5oz) Previous u/s have been trans-vaginal which give a much clearer pic when the baby is so small.

it's still too early to tell the gender, but the doc tried w/ no luck. But we have moved into a new category of measurements. in the first trimester, they measure crown-rump length (from top of head, to the bottom of the hiney) and the head circumference. Today, we had head circumference, crown/rump and now femur length. So, good news is, our baby has legs!! Which we didn't see on the last u/s (doesn't mean they weren't there, we just didn't see them)

Bottom line, baby's healthy, i'm healthy and now we're hoping that in the next 6 mos. i'll "grow out" of my placenta previa.