***WARNING - post is a bit graphic***
On Thursday night, I was just finishing up a new episode of Grey's Anatomy and decided to hit the hay. I pit stopped in the rest room like every pregnant woman needs to do before bed time. And low and behold - blood. Not bright red and scary, older brown blood but yes, of course still scary. After staring at it for a couple of minutes. I prayed a bit and decided to wake IJ up. I scared the heart of of the poor guy - he was sound asleep. I called the doctor's office and the on-call nurse called back within 15 minutes. 10 minutes later, we were at the hospital. 15 minutes after that, Baby J was hooked up to a fetal monitor. After bracing us by saying she might not find his heart beat right away, there he was, clear as day and right away. Heart beating strong and still moving like crazy. I was also hooked up to watch for contractions.
My doctor came in about 15 minutes later and did an internal exam. He said to expect more bleeding but that if it remained "old looking" not to panic but if there was a lot of it, to call again. They sent me home with instructions to schedule an ultrasound for Friday.
I was in the shower Friday morning and the phone rang by 8:10 - the office opens at 8. They had already scheduled me for the U/S at 9am. IJ and I headed over and saw the little guy moving and shaking. All of his measurements were right on track. And then, there it was. A large whitish area overlapping my cervix. Yes, placenta previa has now been discovered. When I went for the Level 2 Feb 14, the Doctor said it looked like my placenta was "close to" my uterus but he didn't say anything about overlapping. According to this close look, it is definitely overlapping- hard to tell how much because scale is so altered in U/Ss but I would guess about a centimeter. So, it is possible that as my uterus stretches, my placenta will move up (like it normally does) but it may not. If it doesn't, I am likely facing bed rest and a definite C-Section. Which is fine. Since it causes no harm to the baby, I don't care what I have to go through to get him here safely.
For now, I had to take the weekend to rest and I can't lift anything over 15lbs for the rest of the pregnancy. Also, no aerobic activity. They will monitor me with US every 4 weeks and see what happens. I am really hoping I can make it to June before having to be on bed rest. I think I will go nuts if it goes on for months. Even 6 weeks sounds like a lot. But, they could take him out early, likely after 36 weeks. Of course I will keep you all posted on this as it progresses. For now, no bleeding since Friday morning so it seems, for now, we are in the clear.
