I was chatting with a mum-to-be on Twitter the other week because she was having some issues and I’ve now decided to write a few posts about my pregnancies as I did experience some problems and I thought that sharing might help.
I’m not going to tell you about No1Son or Eldest daughter as it was all way to long ago to remember any real detail. Although I will always remember being told that Eldest Daughter was breach on the day she was due then actually feeling her turn around in the car on the way home (wow, I’ll never forget that!) and then going straight into labour and having her born, the right way up, later that day. I suppose I should also add that my first born was an emergency C-Section after a long labour which left him in distress.
With Star I’d had a 16 year gap between pregnancies. I would have liked it to have been sooner but I did suffer a little unexplained infertility, and a miscarriage. I found out I was pregnant on December 28th 2004 after a really special Christmas. My first scan was on 25th February and I had bloods done which put me at a high risk for Down’s Syndrome. I decided against further tests for personal reasons. I could write you a whole post on my reasons but I won’t go into that just now.
Just a month later when I was 17 weeks pregnant I started to bleed. In a panic I rushed off to the hospital. They gave me a scan and I saw my baby waving back perfectly happy. They wrote ‘unexplained bleed’ on my notes and sent me home. I carried on spotting (Which means I had small amounts of bleeding all the time) for a few more days. Then I had another big bleed and was back at the hospital. They checked the baby’s heartbeat and all was fine. No-one had any answers and I was so scared and worried. The spotting continued but as the blood had become old and brown I tried really hard not to worry too much, I didn’t want to raise my blood pressure and cause any more problems.
Then in April I began getting a searing pain in my pelvis. I could barely walk and actually clicked when I did. I went to my GP who diagnosed Sympathis Pubis Dysfunction. (SPD) I was sent to help group at the hospital (which was fast becoming my second home) only to learn that there was not a lot that could be done. I was shown how to move without causing myself too much pain and advised to get a support band to hold up my bump and ease the pressure. Just in case you didn’t know the Sympathis Pubis is a bone at the bottom of the pelvis and when you get SPD the bone becomes softened and moves around too much which causes pain when moving and walking (and if you get it bad also when sitting and lying down.) It happens in pregnancy when your bones naturally soften to allow for childbirth, it can become quite serious if it continues after the birth.
The good news was, even though I was now in complete agony almost every moment of the day and night (it was a bad case of SPD) the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Thank you nightmare pregnancy for giving me at least some relief.
On the 20th April I had my anomaly scan and everything looked perfectly normal. So perfect, so beautiful, a lovely little girl. I was determined from the start that I wanted to know the sex of my baby. When I’d had my older two it wasn’t an option and I found the whole idea really exciting. My other half was not so keen so I said I’d go by whatever he wanted. He left right until the last minute at the scan to ask if baby was a boy or girl.
On the 26th April I was admitted to hospital after another really big bleed. I lost a huge amount this time and was convinced I was going to lose my baby. I’m convinced that the midwives at the hospital thought that I was too. They were all whispers and fetching someone else in to see what was going on. Still there was no explanation. It was still a little early for my little girl to survive if she did arrive but I was given steroids just in case. I can’t explain how I felt that night while they kept me on the labour ward. I don’t think I’d ever felt so lost and desolate. Then the bleeding just stopped. The heartbeat was still there, baby was still there. The nightmare just ended and a day later I was sent home. Still no explanation, but I knew now that this baby was meant to be. I was going to hold her and she would be breathing. Surely this was the end of my worry?
ON the 30th July and just weeks away from the birth, I went for a routine anti-natal appointment and the midwife was concerned about baby’s heartbeat. She sent me to hospital, again, with a note saying baby was tachy cardic. Her little heartbeat was really fast which was obviously not normal. I was put on the monitor for an hour and listened in to my little girl. Her heartbeat was only fast when she was moving, when she was still it was ok. She was moving around an awful lot, getting impatient I suppose, so it looked like she was tachy cardic, but the hospital was happy enough with the results and I was sent home after another scan just to make sure she was ok.
My baby was due on September the 5th so I had decided to have a meal out with a friend on the 23rd August, a couple of weeks before. She was pregnant too, our due dates where days apart. We decided to have a bump photo taken together and asked a waiter to do the honours. It was funny as he had to keep moving further and further away to fit us and our huge bumps into the photo. That morning I’d had a show, that means the mucus plug had come away from the cervix. It doesn’t always happen in pregnancy and although it can be sign of pending labour, the plug can also come back again. So I hadn’t thought too much about it. Until I started getting twinges.
On 24th August I woke up in labour at around 2.30 am. It got quite strong that by 6am I was fitted up to my TENS machine. Then at 10am the contractions stopped. I was really disappointed and the other half hadn’t gone into work. Then while cooking lunch (sausages) the contractions came back with conviction. I went to the hospital at 3pm and Star was born at 8.01pm. The time from established labour (4cm dilated) to the birth was just four hours.
I will always remember that first night with my little girl, I couldn’t sleep for looking at her. A real magic moment that I’d waited sixteen years for.
So as you can see I had a very eventful pregnancy. The bleeding was never explained but apparently it is quite common for women to bleed during pregnancy and it doesn’t always mean that the pregnancy is going to end. The SPD went soon after the birth. I’d found it incredibly painful during the birth as it hurt to open my legs. Stirrups where a definite no-no and it was all a little difficult, but worth it in the end. I’d had no assistance during the birth, just my TENS machine and a little entinox, which made me sick.
It couldn’t have been that bad, I went on to have two more!