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Jennifer Blahnik
Regular Participant
Posts: 28
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| 06/09/2008 6:54 PM |
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Hi Karin -
First let me stary by saying I'm sorry for the loss of little Kathleen. I know she is up in heaven with our little Blueberry and she is loved and protected by all those who are in heaven with her.
I wanted to contact you because I read your posts after my delivery and I found that you went through a similar pregnancy like mine. I am going to detail my pregnancy for you and then please share yours, if you will. I'd like to know what your healthcare professionals said during/after your pregnancy and what tests they are currently doing right now for you.
Here we go . . . .
Conceived our son: December 9th-15th??
Positive pregnancy test: January 5th
Brown spotting started on the evening of January 24th and then bright red blood at 1:00 pm on January 25th. I called my husband and he met me at my dr's office, but they said I should go to ER. So we did. ER did vaginal u/s and said that everything was fine. Nice strong heartbeat. Nurse said that sometimes bleeding happens and sent me home. I was found to have a urinary tract infection and put on macrobid.
Bleeding would come and go, ranging from brown to bright red, light to heavy.
March 15th - I was sitting at kitchen table doing some homework and I sneezed and coughed at the same time and felt something come out. I was terrified that it was the baby. I ran upstairs screaming for my husband and sat on the toilet. I felt/heard something drop. I picked it up to see if it was the baby, but it was a blood clot, the size of my palm. We immediately went to the hospital. They did another u/s and said that everything was fine. They sent me home documenting it as a threatened miscarriage this time. I also had another urinary tract infection and was prescribed macrobid again.
Bleeding never stopped after this point in pregnancy. It ranged from brown to red, light to heavy, but never went away. This time the clots got bigger and I passed a total of 4-5 the size of my palm and many, many of different sizes.
April 14th - Went to school that night and as I was walking into the building I felt a small strain in my belly. It came suddenly and disappeared just as suddenly. I sat in class for 2 hours and my bleeding did not change. When I left class that night I got into my car and coughed. I immediately felt a rush of fluid. I was sure it was blood, but this time it felt different. I got home and called the emergency line, I didn't want to rush to the hospital as they keep telling me that everything is fine. My doctor never returned my phone call. I lied down in bed and the bleeding seemed to lighten up. My husband and I agreed to go to the dr's office first thing in the morning.
April 15th - When we got to the office, they brought us right back and she examined me. She saw the amount of blood and fluid. She did a dopplar on me to hear the heartbeat. Baby's heartbeat was strong. She sent me home and told me to take it easy. She never did u/s to see the amount of fluid around the baby which was a big mistake, because I was leaking amniotic fluid and she never tested for it.
April 21st - We had our 20 week ultrasound with a specialist so that he could find where the bleeding was coming from. When we went in, the u/s tech asked us some questions and then when to get the doctor. He came in and asked me about my bleeding and the amount. Then he said that we had no amniotic fluid left. He said that the baby could not survive or develop any further beyond this point without it. He suggested that we induce labor to terminate the pregnancy that Thursday.
April 22nd - I started having conctractions at 4:30 am. By 8:30 am we were on our way to the hospital as my contractions were getting closer. I delivered at 6:28 pm. and my son's heart stopped beating at 7:30 pm.
My question to you is this. Was your bleeding like mine? Did you have clots of that size? What did your dr. say throughout your pregnancy? Did they warn you of the premature labor b/c of the bleeding?
Looking back, I should have gotten a 2nd opinion. I doubt anything would have been different, but I can't believe that I wasn't warned about this as an outcome. I haven't gone through my OB rotation yet, and have never been pregnant before, so it was all new to me. I felt like I wasn't getting the answers that I needed. I consistently called the office asking the right questions, because I knew my body, but they kept telling me that everything was normal. It obviously wasn't normal for me.
I learned in the hospital that the pains that I felt were not necessarily uterus growing pains, but my body trying to hold onto the baby and placenta. I started feeling these mid-late March as well, but only at night, when I was lying still. My body was trying to save the pregnancy. I wonder if I had been ordered strict bedrest, if my outcome could have been different. My dr. never made me feel like I was at risk for anything bad to happen, so I was not overly concerned either. If she had told me even once, that I could go into premature labor with continued bleeding, I would have stayed in bed for the rest of the pregnancy. I only had 7 more weeks until week 28. I would have anything to be able to keep my baby. Anything. I just feel like I wasn't warned or given the proper information. I felt blind when I met with the specialist at the 20 week u/s. I called the week prior to my dr. asking about leaking amniotic fluid, but they assured me that I was wrong. Obviously I wasn't.
I talked extensively with the bereavement nurse at the hospital and she said that no matter what, always go with your gut. Always, make them do the extra test. Always, make them do anything! This is my baby. I learned an important lesson.
I met with a specialist at a different practice and he suggested that I take an antibiotic every day during my pregnancy because of the multiple urinary tract infections (3 total - 5 months). I also discussed the option of the low dose aspirin therapy. A friend of mine lost her baby at 10 weeks and her dr. recommended taking the 81mg aspirin daily, even before trying to concieve. I've read that they give it to IVF patients and has helped women to carry to full term after miscarriage. Neither you nor I had miscarriages, we had babies that died after delivery. It's different, but the specialist said that it could help and it definitely won't do any harm. Talk to your dr. about it. I've read that it may be able to provide a smoother uterus lining for placenta/embryo attachment.
I have not had any blood testing, but will ask at my next appt.
Please share anything/everything that you want to. I am just curious as to what your experience was and what your drs. have told you prior and since Kathleen's death.
I'm so ready to start trying again, but am so scared. I have good feelings this time, but I know that I have to be patient. I don't even have my period back yet. How long did it take for you to get your period back? My delivery date was 4/22. I'm at 6 weeks and no period. I bled afterwards for 3 weeks and then spotted twice on two days, but nothing since.
I'm sure that I will think of more after you respond, but this will do for now.
I hope that you had a good weekend.
Jennifer
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Karin Knapp
Recognized Participant
Posts: 132
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| 06/11/2008 4:37 PM |
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Dear Jennifer
I am too so sorry for your loss of Blueberry, but glad we can both hold onto the hope that one day we will see them again.
I apologize it has taken me a while to respond. I had to find so much information and wanted to make sure I included as much as I could possibly remember. I have to admit it was also hard emotionally to think it all through, but here we go..
Kathleen was conceived around Nov 14 2007 and due August 20th 2008.
March 9th I started spotting. I was 12 ½ week. It only lasted for about a day but it worried me a lot to get a spotting in second trimester. A couple of days later I had my first check at the hospital (it had been scheduled for a while) so I brought it up then. I only saw a midwife and she said it was normal and that it wasn’t necessary to see a doctor.
A couple of days later I started spotting again, on and off, and after about a week I decided to call my doctor and he send me in for a level 2 u/s. I was now in week 14. The person who did the scan seemed very thorough and knowledgeable and she spend a lot of time checking me out and found nothing wrong. She said the placenta was up high and perfect. Baby’s size and everything else she could see at this stage was perfect. Some women just bleed she said…
The spotting kept getting worse and worse though. It was all the time every day although due to the amount of bleeding it was still only classified as spotting. Sometimes it was a bit more, sometimes it was a bit less, and ranging from brown to pink to red.
Week 16 I had another appointment at the hospital. The day before I passed a clot for the first time. It wasn’t big but it still really scared me. I put it in a jar and brought it with me to the appointment. This time I saw a registrer (a trainee doctor). It was an awful experience. She would say that she didn’t know why I was bleeding for sure but it could be placenta previa or abruption or a polyp. We would ask her if it could be such and such and she would says ‘oh yes, that could be a possibility too’. We quickly realized she didn’t know much although she pretended. She even gave me an u/s and said ‘yes, see, the placenta is down low’ indicating it was previa, but then my husband said that the placenta had been up high 2 weeks earlier and then she responded “oh, well… I don’t really know where it is”! She said we just had to wait and see what happened. She managed to put a lot of fear in me although she didn’t warn me at all about what a possible m/c would be like. She did an internal examination and said there was tissue coming out from the cervix but she couldn’t tell what it was. She never looked at the tissue/clot that I brought in though! She said that the cervix otherwise looked normal and closed. She kept pushing for chromosome testing and we kept telling her no. I don’t so mind the actual blood testing but if that comes back positive they would want to do an amnio and there is no way we would ever allow that. There is a 1/200 chance of m/c and an m/c is what I was trying to prevent. She made me so angry and we decided we would never see her again. She put me on a mega doses of folic acid and send me for some blood testing to check for blood clotting.
I should probably add that I am on a public health system where you get to see whatever doctor is available. This means there is no consistency and they never know your full story.
I went home and researched abruption as I definitely didn’t think it was previa. But abruption made no sense. It usually doesn’t happen that early in the pregnancy plus there should a fair bit of pain. I never had any pain. In spite of the fear the doctor had placed in me I decided to try and think positive and that it was probably just a polyp.
A couple of days later I passed another small clot. Probably the one the doctor could see coming out from the cervix. I didn’t pass any other clots in the rest of my pregnancy.
Week 17 I went in for another u/s. It was just a quick one that allowed me to see that my baby was still alive and well.
Week 18 I had another doctor appointment. Again I saw a registrer but she was able to answer all our questions (and this time we had a lot) and she said it couldn’t be previa and it couldn’t be abruption – I would be in a lot of pain. She too checked my cervix and said it looked normal and that the amount of bleeding wasn’t that serious. She said it was either a polyp or hormonal changes. If it was a polyp I may spot throughout the pregnancy. If it was hormonal changes it should stop soon. She also said that the couple of clots I had passed were just old blood clots when I described them to her. She wanted to check my iron levels to make sure they weren’t getting too low because of the bleeding (I was very tired) and she did do a swab for yeast infection - on my request though as I had read that yeast infections can make you bleed and another symptom is increased discharge which I had had during this pregnancy. I never got the results of this test as we ended up needing to redo it and the person that was supposed to redo it said you can’t do such a test when you are bleeding as it would affect the results. Either way I went home from this doctor feeling really confident about her statement that it was nothing serious and for the first time in weeks I allowed myself to get very excited about the upcoming baby.
I had considered going to see a specialist but because of this last doctor visit I felt reassured everything would be fine and so I decided not to. It would have been a lot of money out of our pocket, but if it would have made a difference we would have gone in a heart beat. You just never know!!! It is so hard who to trust. If I have any complications next time and I don’t feel like I get the proper care, I will definitely go see a specialist.
Neither registrers ever mentioned that bleeding can irritate the membrane and make it rupture.
March 27th, 6 days later, when I was 19 weeks and 1 day, I woke up at 1 am and realized my water had broken. There was no warning, no change in my bleeding etc prior to that. A few minutes later the contractions started with just 2 min apart and we rushed to the hospital. I knew in my heart this was the end yet I just couldn’t believe this was happening! God blessed us with a wonderful Christian midwife who helped us through the next two hours until Kathleen was born at 2.59 am. A young doctor (another trainee) showed up and basically just said there is nothing they can do and then left again. The midwife later told me it was the doctor’s first experience of this kind and it affected her a lot. I tried so hard not to push, but in the end I could not hold it back. I so felt like I killed my little baby when I pushed her out. The cord was cut and our little baby girl was handed to us and we held her for the next 90 min. until her little heart gave up. We saw her try to take several breaths. It was otherwise so much of a blur. I have many regrets about the situation afterwards, like I wished I had talked more to her but that is a different story… This midwife told us that bleeding can sometimes irritate the membrane and make it rupture. That was the first time we heard about it.
Later that morning we saw a consultant (a fully educated doctor) – the first actual doctor we saw in this whole process! He too said that bleeding can make a membrane rupture. I was so upset that no one ever warned me about this. In that case I would have done anything to try and stop it, like bed rest for instance, even if not many doctors believe in it these days…
We gave permission that Kathleen could be examined – except her head/face. We wanted answers if possible as our first priority now would be to know as much as possible for the sake of our next child/pregnancy. This testing included chromosome testing. We also of course gave permission to have the placenta examined. They drew blood from me at the same time to do some more testing. Honestly I am not sure about all the tests they have done. They have done so many. One day I want to get all the files…
All I know is that all Kathleen’s testing came back normal. This is something I was really thankful for. I had had several people (including the first registrer) insinuate that there was probably something wrong with her. But I saw my little girl and I knew in my heart she was perfect – and she was! The placenta testing came back normal. Testing for any infections came back negative. We have a cat and that was one thing I was worried about… Testing for blood clotting came back a little bit abnormal. Normal number is 15, alarming is 70 and mine was 21. But that was the only thing that came back not completely normal. For this follow up appointment (6 weeks after birth) I saw an actual consultant as well. In his opinion bleeding will not cause a membrane to rupture! So there you go – some doctors believe it, some don’t. He said (and so did the doctor I saw after birth) that it would very unlikely happen again. It frustrates me that they say that. When they don’t know what went wrong, how can they make such a statement? He also said that in my next pregnancy I would probably be put straight into high risk and be seen by consultants – something I am thankful for. I want the best care possible.
Due to my slightly higher blood number I was referred to a hematologist and they are doing more testing right now to try and find the cause for the higher number. It could just be a normal number for me. They are testing for lupus and anti beta2 glycoprotein (it makes your body think the baby is a foreign object, among other things) but the hematologist does not think we will find anything, considering my low numbers and my health in general. I asked this doctor about aspirin, if it might in general help me, and she said no, it could actually be dangerous due to my past bleeding. If prescribed to the wrong patients it can actually make you bleed more.
I was told that I could expect to bleed for about 3 weeks and I read somewhere that you can expect your period back 4-7 weeks after the loss. I bled for 22 days, then stopped for 10 days and then started bleeding again. This second bleeding felt like a period (and it was cause I got my second one 28 days later) although it was different than normal – not particularly heavy at any stage and on and off a lot. My second period was heavier than normal and I also experienced a mid cycle bleeding and I passed a clot 1/3 the size of my palm. Whether it was leftover placenta or an incomplete period (most likely) I don’t know. I will talk to the hematologist about that when I see her June 30th. She is so thorough and sweet and caring as well. I wish all my doctors were like that. I know they don’t have a lot of time to care, but I wish they would at least just say that they are sorry for my loss.
I was lying in bed last night thinking through everything that had happened and suddenly I just felt like I knew I had/have an incompetent cervix. Only registrers examined my cervix and after all that happened I have no trust in them. Plus the consultant I saw at my follow up appointment said they would check me for IC in my next pregnancy and I told him they had already checked and I remember now how he didn't comment on that. This morning I read about IC and how it usually starts happening in the beginning of second trimester often with symptoms like change in amount and type of discharge, spotting/bleeding and pelvic pressure/heaviness. I had all of those symptoms! I even told the registrers this. I also told the second registrer that it seemed the more the baby moved/kicked (I felt movement from week 15) the more I would bleed, and I was told that wasn't possible, but that doesn't make sense to me. If you have IC then movement would also add extra pressure, wouldn't it??? It really upsets me because that means it could all have been prevented if they had examined me correctly. I have read though that you are usually not checked for IC until you have already experienced a 2nd or 3rd trimester m/c but I just don't understand that! It is not that hard to find out. It also upsets me that I may have this condition but maybe it has a lot to do with the unsureness of what happens if I do. I suddenly just feel so scared! My husband said to be careful not to diagnose myself but it is hard not to try to when the doctors can't and you are afraid your next pregnancy will end the same way!
I don’t think it is healthy to dwell on it too much and become hypochondriacs, but I do think we need to learn as much as we can so we can ask the right questions and make sure we get the proper care.
We are trying again… Being pregnant again won’t replace our Kathleen but I do believe it will bring me some comfort and something to look forward to, if all goes well. There is nothing I want more than to be pregnant again, and nothing that scares me more either.
Let me know how you are going and if this has helped you in any way. I hope and pray you get the best care!
All my love and God bless!
Karin |
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Jennifer Blahnik
Regular Participant
Posts: 28
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| 06/11/2008 8:43 PM |
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HI Karin -
Thanks for your response. It does help and I will push to get some blood tests done. Just today my mother in law gave me contact information about her friend's daughter who it sounds like experienced what I did. I will give her a call tomorrow. I guess she went to see multiple doctors and finally settled on one that is being a big support to her. Her specialist is putting her on Lovenox (once she gets a positive pregnancy test), which is a low-molecular weight heparin (blood thinner like aspirin), but is a prescribed medication that has to be given daily with self-administered shots. I don't want to go that far, but I will if I have to.
I know it sounds scary to be on a blood thinner when all I did was bleed, but because of all the clots I experienced, I think the blood wasn't getting to where it needed to go . . . .the baby's lifeline. Instead it was clotting off and causing harm, who knows?
It makes no sense to me, but I am going to do more research and be more confident before we start trying. Unfortunately, as you stated before, 2 doctors say one thing and 2 more say the exact opposite. Which one do you believe? However, just so that you know, the bleeding did cause the PPROM. There is plenty of evidence supporting it and the specialist that I met with graduated from Notre Dame, so he's no dummy. 
I'm disappointed in my previous doctor after hearing how you were upgraded to the level 2 u/s after only bleeding for 2 weeks. I bled for 12 weeks at that point and there was never a rush to get me to the level 2 u/s. I know that the outcome wouldn't have been different, it's not like they can stop it once it has begun, but why didn't my doctor care enough about going the extra mile to try to find an answer?
I will NOT allow someone else to decide what tests will be done for me and my unborn child. If I feel that something more needs to be done, then I will demand that it be done. I'm not taking no for an answer. I am not having another funeral service for another child.
Going to bed now . . .I'm probably going to toss and turn b/c I'm frustrated again, but "Will & Grace" is on, so that always makes me laugh . . .
Talk to you later -
Jennifer |
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