August 17, 2011

The Weekly Pre-Appointment Freakout Commences

I was doing so well. After last Friday's appointment, I had 4 days of being relatively calm and normal. I even started a draft post about how I am enjoying this pregnancy, really, even though it's also been stressful.

But zen only lasts so long.

I woke up in the middle of the night Monday night as usual when the dog wanted to be let out. Usually I'll lay there for a moment, trying to determine if she's really up and wanting to go out or if she's just readjusting her sleeping position and will go back to bed, and try to close my eyes and go back to sleep. But it's generally useless, because at that point my bladder has made itself known and there's no ignoring it.

Except when I woke up in the middle of Monday night, I felt like I could go back to sleep. I rolled over, closed my eyes again, then realized my bladder wasn't calling out to me and went pretty much straight into a full-blown anxiety attack.

I'm afraid my uterus is shrinking and not pressing on my bladder as much. I'm also not as bloated - I just feel more normal in general.

Also, the stretchy, pulling feelings I'd been having (I assume round ligament pains) had been occuring kind of all over, including on the sides of my pelvis. But now I'm only feeling them down low, so for some reason now I'm thinking that those feelings are really the reverse of stretching - that they're further signs of my uterus shrinking back down.

Plus, I'm getting a kind of mild burning feeling in my cervix that I get right before my period is about to start. And I had been crashing for a nap every day around 5 p.m., but last night I was fine - didn't need a nap at all.

This morning, I think my chest is shrinking back down as well. There was a tape measure involved, but I forgot to write down yesterday's measurement, so I can't be positive, but I'm about 99% sure I was bigger yesterday.

There's no bleeding. The last bright pink/red I saw was a week ago today. The only stuff I've seen this week seems to be a little bit of vaginal/cervical irritation since I restarted the aspirin/Lovenox on Saturday.

I know all of this sounds crazy. But during the other pregnancy where we saw a heart beat, we saw it at 8w1d, and around 9w1d I told R that I wasn't growing any more. My stomach wasn't getting any bigger (I popped really early that time) and my chest also stopped growing, but even more than those signs, I just had a feeling that something was wrong, and I started to physically feel normal (non-pregnant normal).

At the ultrasound the week after that, we learned that the baby had died a few days after the previous ultrasound. I had a D&C a few days later (about 2 weeks after the approximate day of death), and I never had any spotting or bleeding during those 2 weeks, so not having any bleeding now isn't reassuring me all that much. (Although obviously I'd rather have no bleeding than bleeding.)

I have work meetings for the next two days that I need to attend. I'm afraid to call and see if I can move up our next ultrasound appointment in case it's bad news, so I'm going to wait at least until tomorrow afternoon to call, but I'll probably try to make it all the way to Friday's appointment (54 hours at this point) if possible.

This calls for some heavy-duty self-soothing. Ice cream may be involved in breakfast. If I put it in a blender, I can call it a smoothie instead of a sundae, right?

9 comments:

Sue said...

Definitely try not to compare it to the prior pregnancies!!! I will be the first to say that the early pregnancy symptoms come and go...and I was so sure too...but my DD stuck around and these 2 are sticking around...and, seriously, I went from serious pregnancy symptoms to none, to a few, to nothing at all (or maybe indicating something bad was happening) to being okay. They literally couldn't take my blood pressure before the ultrasounds b/c it would be so high that they'd freak out...they'd have to wait until a half an hour after the ultrasound and it would be normal. It is soooo hard to do, but try to remember that each pregnancy is different and that symptoms come and go. In fact, being 28 weeks with twins, my bbs just deflated last night, lol. They look tiny! I know by next week, they will be huge again...so weird. The only bonus later is that you know all is okay b/c you can feel them...so, I'm praying you get there...I am DYING for you to be done with the first trimester!!!! I don't know if I'd be able to wait, so I will commend you...but if you can't, get an early appt and let us know that all is well:-) Hugs!

Silver said...

I'm just going to refer you to my posts from last year:
1) http://silverhopeforthebest.blogspot.com/2010/05/oh-worry-worry-worry.html
and 2)
http://silverhopeforthebest.blogspot.com/2010/05/sometimes-i-hate-to-be-right.html

It's SO normal to feel this way, emotionally and physically. I too knew that my pregnancies were ending because of a change in physical symptoms, but I had the same changes in the pregnancy that worked out - it just happened that the changes were temporary and meaningless. I can't tell you how much I empathise/sympathise with you - it's such a hard time. I say take all the ultrasounds you can get - IF they make you feel better.

Anna said...

You don't have to put ice cream in a blender and make a smoothie for it to be breakfast. Just consider that your dairy part of breakfast, and have some fruit and grains as well. No worries. ;)

I'm no pins and needles for you. I'm very grateful that I am not going through this again. I don't thing I could handle the emotional roller coaster again. Our DS will just have to accept that he will get ALL our stuff when we die. ;)

MyTwoLines said...

Listen to those wise other women who have been there and had success! Thinking of you tons!

Erin Bakal said...

Sending good thoughts and light. I'll be watching to see if you cave and get the early u/s (I know that I would!)

Libby said...

None of this sounds crazy - we get it! Hope it's just one of those unexplainable things and that you get great news at your next u/s. Enjoy that smoothie :)

SLES75 said...

I think it's perfectly normal to go through a pre-weekly appointment freak out....Heck I still do that. I had similar symptoms as you...everything was there and then suddenly it wasn't. Panic set it and I wasn't OK until I saw something on that ultrasound. Even now when all they want to do is the doppler, I panic thinking it could just be my elevated heart rate and not my baby's.

I agree that ice cream can easily be breakfast...it's just frozen cream, right? Take care of you and definitely keep us updated! Thinking of you and keeping you in my thoughts and prayers.

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