Category: Spawn

There’s so much more to it than I ever thought possible.

23w 5d

Great hospital visit today :). Baby is head down, crp is back down to 12, doctor is happy for me to stay home for an extra week, and she is starting to sound a bit more positive and supportive :). Yay!

At this point I will probably go in to hospital on or around the 21st of October.

(sorry for the dodgy update, typing is difficult, so I am just copying and pasting from facebook etc). Oh, and CRP stands for C Reactive Protein. High numbers means a possible infection, 12 is good 🙂

23 weeks, two social workers and a neonatologist

Thursday came and went in a bit of a blur, honestly. I managed not to blubber at anyone, though it was a difficult day. And then wordpress put out an update to their iPad app, and broke itself so that I can no longer blog from the iPad. And it’s taken me three days to get around to moving the laptop from the bedside table to the belly so I can update.

First I did the blood/urine/blood pressure thing, and by then I was in a state because little beastie wasn’t moving. Neither of us are morning people, but it makes me anxious on Thursday mornings. I had tried to find a heartbeat with the doppler that my lovely friend Kendi loaned me, but it decided to run out of batteries before detecting a heartbeat, so by 10am I was a wreck.

I saw my dr wandering around with another patient, she asked me how I was, and I told her how stressed I was. She said she would see me as soon as she could, and it wasn’t long before she called us in and found a little heartbeat. We then went back to the waiting room to wait for the Clinical Midwifery Consultant (head of the Perinatal Support Team), and the social workers.

They apologised that I had “slipped through the cracks”, apparently the womens health unit hasn’t had a social worker since April, but they had just had a new social worker start this week, and she would most likely be taking over my “case”.

They gave me a twee handpainted box with a tiny nylon nightie, a pair of lemon yellow acrylic booties (beautifully hand knitted, but the yarn is a crime against nature), and a little booklet from SIDS and Kids with space for ultrasound pictures. Apparently it’s a “memory box” in recognition of my dead baby. The horror. But I suppose some people dig that shit.

Then the new social worker (let’s call her “Heidi”) took us upstairs to meet the neonatologist. We were ushered into a tiny store room, and the doc talked to us about all the horrible things that could happen to our baby if he is born alive. Most of it wasn’t news, but there is a rare and nasty thing that can cause brain damage because this baby is sharing a womb with his dead sibling. It’s nasty, and it’s very rare, so we won’t entertain any thoughts about that just yet.

I was also able to ask questions, so I asked about their policies on breastmilk feeding, donor milk, etc. The dr assumed I was a lactation consultant, and I decided not to correct him, as he actually started to listen to me.

So now I suppose I am as prepared as I can be for what the next few months hold. We have seen the NICU, and the size of the tiny babies there (most not much bigger than my outstretched hand), and am pleased to see that the babies have stylin’ Hawaiian shirts as part of the laundry rotation.

My new social worker is going to meet with me every time I go in to the hospital from now on, and when I move in as a resident they will do everything they can to smooth the transition for me. Just over 2 weeks of relative freedom left.

22 weeks, and a whinge

Yesterday we clocked over to 22 weeks.

On Thursday my doctor gave me three more pathology forms, for three more out patient anti natal visits, and said Id be going in to hospital after that, which puts the date around the 18th of October. We had asked to bring forward the meeting with the neonatologists by one week, just because I feel like I need time to digest the information before having to make any big decisions. Unfortunately, my dr told me that we wouldn’t be seeing he neonatologists for another 2 weeks, a week after we were initially told it would be, and two weeks after I had wanted it.

On Friday, I had a meltdown. Two things were bugging me. That my wishes were ignored completely about seeing the neonatologist early, and that my doctor didn’t seem to have the time to talk about it with me. And that made me cranky about something else. In the three weeks since I was told that one of my babies had died, nobody from the hospital had said anything to me about counseling, or even talking to someone about how I felt. Granted, I didn’t want it at the time, and I’m not sure I want it now, but if the same thing happened to one of my loved ones, I’d want to think that there was some service offered to them. The death of a baby at such a late gestation is a big thing to most mums, and I find it quite shocking that I was just sent home with no resources at all.

So I decided to call the perinatal support team, and just mention my concerns. I wasn’t about to kick up a stink, but if there is something I feel strongly about, its using my strength to make things easier for others.

I rang the pager number that was given to me by the team leader a few weeks ago, but she was on an RDO. The call was answered by a very lovely woman, but it wasn’t Susan, and I wasn’t in a fit state to explain my case from he beginning, so I tried to ring off and say that I would call back on Monday. But she wasn’t having that and was quite insistent that she could help me, so eventually I started to tell her my story.

And I lost it. I completely broke down on the phone to this stranger. And since I haven’t cried for a long, long time, I just couldn’t stop the tears from coming. Eventually I explained about the NICU visit, and she promised to arrange it for me, but I just had to get off the phone quickly, and I’ll deal with the other issue later.

Quite honestly, this situation is taking a toll. Each day seems harder than the one before, and every hospital visit seems like an unbearable force bearing down on me, its almost all I can do to put one foot in front of the other to get myself through the front door. Previously, I’ve been able to stumble through it all with a smile on my face, and to crack jokes, and see he lighter side (though how, I am not so sure).

And from now on, its only going to get harder. As this baby gets closer to viability, the stakes get higher every day. And now that we know we have a little boy, its hard not to think of names, to think of the future, to think about what a lovely big brother this baby is going to have. But still, that future is as tenuous as ever, and despite being 7 weeks into the journey, the end of the road seems further away than ever.

20 weeks, 5 days

Since all this began, Ive been taking my temperature 4 times a day, and had instructions to trot myself off to hospital if it went above 37.5.

So on Tuesday afternoon, I started to feel a bit headachy, perhaps like I was getting a cold, and my temp went up to 37.6. I decided not to panic, and kept monitoring it for the next hour or so until Mark got home (Inigo was having a sleepover with Nanna and Gonad). When Mark came home, my temp was still 37.6, so I rang the hospital early pregnancy clinic, who told me to ring labour and delivery ward, and they told me to come in, but to have dinner first.

So after dinner and a shower, Mark drove me in to the hospital, where we promptly got lost. And while wandering around near the intensive care ward, we found my specialist who was on her way home, and had varied from her usual route, to meet up with us quite fortuitously. She personally guided us to the right place, and briefed the midwife in charge about my case.

Long story short, they werent worried too much about my temp, it was stable, so they sent me home with some anti-biotics (2 days before I was going to go on them anyway, I am doing one week on, three weeks off until the baby is born). But due to a few babies needing caesarians while we were there, it was almost 2am before we were able to leave the hospital.

Not a very exciting story, but I realise that people do tend to freak when they see the H word in a post 🙂

Todays visit was pretty routine, no visit to the vampires because they took blood on Tuesday night, and mum came with me, so she got to meet my lovely doctor.

And next week is my 20ish week scan.

20 week scan

Most people around this stage of pregnancy have a morphology scan, to check the babies development and that everything is on track.

Since I have very little amniotic fluid, which makes it very hard to see the baby in any detail, my scan has been delayed until I am about 23 weeks. Which means we wont have any idea about gender at least until then, and possibly not even then.

Which is driving me batshit crazy, of course, but that is the least of my worries 🙂

Will report back after the 23rd of September.

A good question

Existere asks an excellent question – what happens if the baby arrives before 26 weeks?

I have heard of babies surviving and thriving when born as early as 22 weeks. Obviously, the chances arent good, but they improve with every week. At 26 weeks gestation, NICU is government mandated, that is, all babies born after 26 weeks get the care they need.

Before 22 weeks, no hospital will take extra-ordinary measures to prolong life.

So what happens between 22 and 26 weeks? The parents have to decide.

Around 23 weeks, well meet with a neonatologist who will give us a tour of the NICU, and discuss various outcomes with us. At that point we are supposed to write a birth plan, with our care decisions outlined. Obviously, they arent going to recommend NICU for this baby before 23 weeks. And I suppose well make up our minds once we have more information.

That being said, we have lung maturity as the great unknown. If this baby is born at 36 weeks, it might still not have enough lung development to be able to survive, its all a big gamble. But if the lungs are ok, what other issues might we be dealing with before 26 weeks, I just dont know, and I am not up to doing the research just now.

So while I wont want to be caring for a profoundly disabled child when I am 80, I am also going to find it impossibly difficult to just give up on this life I have fought so hard for. And each day, each week, will only make that decision harder.