Back to my contractions - they got bad enough last night to send me to the emergency room. In addition to contractions I was also feeling light-headed, a little short of breath and just not right. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. At our local hospital they don't send you to Labor and Delivery until 20 weeks. I'm a few days shy and L&D didn't want me up there. Super sad face. I waited, had blood drawn, waited, had an ultrasound, went to a room, waited, had my OB check my cervix, waited, had a shot of pain meds, waited and finally came home at 1am.
The outcome of this little jaunt was kind of a question mark. Dr. Man has never had a patient with Asherman's syndrome nor has he ever heard of a patient with Asherman's syndrome getting pregnant. All of this was pretty funny to me - Dr. Man had never really addressed my future fertility while I was going through all of my surgeries and now it seems that he was trying to figure out how to tell me that we would never get pregnant. I think he was hoping that every surgery would fix the problem but as it got worse I questioned it less and he was less reassuring. I knew the diagnosis of Asherman's was pretty bad and that fertility was pretty slim. According to Wikipedia's page on Asherman's the pregnancy rates are as follows, "Pregnancy and live birth rate has been reported to be related to the initial severity of the adhesions with 93, 78, and 57% pregnancies achieved after treatment of mild, moderate and severe adhesions, respectively and resulting in 81, 66, and 32% live birth rates, respectively." My initial adhesions where somewhere between moderate and severe. So those rates aren't great. And the live birth rates are even worse. (Why the hell did I even choose to read that again NOW?!)
The point of all of this is that Asherman's is rare and I'm basically a guinea pig in this pregnancy. Now at 19 weeks and a few days they think I'm in preterm labor. The major theory in why this is happening is because of the extensive scar tissue in my uterus. While the baby has completely opened my uterus, there is still quite a bit of scar tissue lining the top. I had over 30% of my uterus that was scarred shut so when that opened it created a scar tissue covering that's now starting to stretch. A normal uterus stretching can cause a little bit of pain and discomfort but scar tissue stretching can be very painful. My poor uterus is in a ton of pain and is very irritable. For normal preterm labor they can give a myriad of drugs to stop contractions but because I'm only 19 weeks they're really not sure what to do. My "prescription" is for bed rest as much as possible and pain medication. I'm still going to work during the morning as I was and rest in the afternoon however I can.
So friends, please keep up that good juju for us! We had a great ultrasound where baby showed us their gender and is still measuring a full week ahead. We're keeping the gender close to us for now but you're more than welcome to take a guess! We'll probably "announce" it sometime next week. We're keeping our fingers crossed that our sweet baby continues to grow and stays put for 20 more weeks.
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| Really not the best picture of me but a pretty cute one of the belly. Take note of the size, shape and general highness or lowness. |
Low -- it's a boy! :)
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