Pregnancy #7

First, a moment of silence for the baby we lost in April 2020 at 7 weeks gestation. I thank God every day for the opportunity to love our angel here on Earth as long as we did and for working things out so that I did not have to have surgery.

No one knows yet, but we are expecting our 3rd child (7th pregnancy). I'm just over 11 weeks along. This pregnancy has been different from those with Gabriel and Grace already. Craig wanted us to wait to tell people about this pregnancy because we had had to tell people about the last miscarriage after having revealed we were pregnant early on. I wanted to tell early so we could have the support we need in case something does go wrong, but I respected his opinion on telling. Miscarriage is a lonely time for women. It's not taboo; it's not like we did something wrong to make it happen. We want prayers and love.

Ok, back to the beginning... I honestly was surprised when I took an early pregnancy test in July and saw two lines!! We had just had our fourth miscarriage three months before. Every time I get pregnant, I struggle with the emotional roller coaster of excitement and anxiety. If you have never lost a baby, I'm not sure you quite grasp this feeling. I'm not even sure a father understands exactly how a mother feels about this, but maybe some do. To go from having life within you to feeling a void, a piece of you missing. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

Anyway, so back to this amazing miracle baby! After our most recent loss, I spoke to my OB about steps we could take to make my body a more hospitable place to sustain a pregnancy, in case that was the issue. (Most miscarriages are thought to be a result of a chromosomal problem with the baby, but this isn't well studied and sometimes it's the mother's body that is the problem.) I wanted to know about things we could do that wouldn't stop the natural course of events (should things to poorly again) but that could potentially help. We decided taking a daily baby aspirin and using progesterone supplementation were two active steps I could take to help my body sustain a pregnancy.

This decision led to lots of early blood testing for HCG and progesterone. I won't say that this didn't stress me out, because it did. Waiting 24hr for results is just awful!

3wk+5d: HCG 52

4wk: HCG 164

5wk: HCG 2230

6wk: HCG 7694; progesterone 6.4

 

Also at 6 weeks, we had an early ultrasound. The baby looked great! (Baby is that little white dot in the top of the black circle.) The heartbeat was 110, and baby measured 0.31cm from crown to rump. Perfection and SUCH a relief! However, the HCG level was rising slower than expected, so we got more bloodwork. Yay (with heavy sarcasm).

6wk+2d: HCG 9881

On this day, I also started progesterone supplementation since 6.4 was low normal (4.1-34 is normal range for 1st trimester).

7wk: progesterone 15.4

We got another ultrasound to check on things due to the low HCG. Baby grew beautifully to 1.03cm, with a 157 heart rate. (Baby is the white 'blob' at the top of the black circle. The white circular thing on the right next to baby is the yolk sac.) Again, perfection! The plan was to monitor HCG one more time to make sure it kept rising, and to track progesterone weekly.

8wk: HCG 53800; progesterone 11.5

We weren't really expecting this dip in progesterone, but it can happen around this week of pregnancy. Yay for HCG rising but it still wasn't that high. Again, rising is good. I started doing some more research -- because I am a nerd. It turns out that even though OBs use the 'rule' of HCG doubling every 48hr as ideal, it was a small study of only 20 women with a confidence interval of 85% (both bad signs for a really good scientific study) that decided this. In fact, 35% of women don't see numbers that double this quickly!! It's more realistic to see a 60% increase over 48 hrs for the majority of women. Again, not EVERYONE. Sometimes I shake my head at the solemn use of rules in medicine thatare not backed by good science! Now, if my OB had said, "don't worry, 35% of women don't rise like that," I sure would not have been worried as much. After this geeking out, I stopped worrying about HCG and plan to never worry about it again in the future. HCG rising is important, not by how much.

But I digress. The plan was now to check progesterone in two weeks.

10wk: progesterone 14.4

Well, that's odd, isn't it? The drop? Some doctors feel that as long as progesterone is a level that is "enough" (ie, not quantifiable) to sustain a pregnancy, it doesn't matter the number. Others would be starting me on injectable progesterone to boost it higher, preferrably over 30. My OB is in the former group. I am still undecided as there is very little data on progesterone in pregnancy, which is incredibly interesting! Some sources say that a woman's progesterone can vary by minute and thus a single test will not give the full clinical picture of the progesterone level. So the plan now was to test in two weeks, at the same time as my next ultrasound and first OB appointment. That brings us to next week.

In the meantime, that's a total of 5 weeks between ultrasounds and checking on the baby. I hate that. My anxiety is increasing now that we are a week away. I haven't been able to find baby's heart beat on a home doppler, which would be incredibly soothing to hear.

 

During the time just before this pregnancy and ever since finding out we conceived, I have felt a transition in my spiritual life. I have prayed more than ever, have put more trust in God than ever, and have praised Him for the good things He has planned for us more than ever. Do I feel anxious? Yes, but I am putting my faith in God and His plan. 

 

So now we wait...