Then when I did the repeat beta and progesterone for my RE (I'd already started myself on progesterone suppositories twice a day because I was convinced my progesterone was too low), the beta had just doubled in 10 days time. I freaked out and begged for an early ultrasound when I saw my RE. She got me in for one the next day, and DH was able to come along. Initially they did a transabdominal one, and I didn't see anything except a small empty black dot in the uterus. But when they did the transvaginal one, I saw a flickering heart, that they measured as beating away at 113bpm. I had just spent a night on call feeling sick to my stomach that my baby was dead, and there it was with a beating heart. It was such an incredible feeling of relief.
She had me do the beta again 1.5 days later, and it had risen respectably again, so I heaved a sigh of relief and spent a happy week. I dropped off the next beta a week later, and didn't find out till partway through the weekend that it had once again hardly risen in six days. I finally caved in and told my Mum that we were pregnant but that things weren't looking good, and spent days crying intermittently and frantically searching the internet for stories of crummy betas that had ended in a live baby. I found a lot of them, and tried to convince myself that the same could happen to me. I prayed and prayed, and lost sleep, and talked my RE into a repeat ultrasound. And once again, the baby was growing on track, and now had a heartbeat of 162bpm.
The relief was again incredible, and I decided I wasn't going to do any more betas. It lasted a few days until while I was on call that weekend, I started spotting. Now for me it had been incredible that I hadn't had any spotting since the positive HPT (I was on progesterone remember). My RE had just told me that my progesterone levels were right where she wanted them. I freaked out again, and decided to see if the little ultrasound machine I have access to at work to put lines in patients would be able to see my baby. Amazingly enough, it can see nearly 7.5cm into the body, and I was able to see my baby in there with a beating heart. The staff I was on with had me take it pretty easy that afternoon, and it looked like things were settling down. I slept fine that night, but the spotting was worse the next morning. And it was getting a little chunkier (sorry for the TMI). I went in to work (even though I was dying to go stake out my doctor's office) so that I could try scanning myself again. This time I could find the baby but no heartbeat, and I just knew that the game was over.I put a call into both my RE and my family doc OB's offices to tell them what was going on and find out what to do. Initially the answering service nurse at the OB group's office told me spotting was normal in early pregnancy, and I should take it easy and keep an eye on things. Luckily I called in again a little later when I couldn't concentrate at all at work, and my OB's group had a clinic that afteroon that I could come in to. I took off from work, met up with DH at home, and we went in to see the doc.
The doc reassured me that my cervix was closed and there was no fresh blood coming from it. Supposedly both good signs. But when I told her I'd scanned myself and couldn't find a heartbeat, they managed to organize an ultrasound at the hospital that same afternoon. We had to sit around waiting for over an hour for it, but it confirmed my worst fears without too much delay - the baby had died. Thankfully the ultrasound tech (who had initially said she wouldn't be able to tell me anything about the scan) realized I knew what I was looking at (I told her I'd scanned myself at work earlier and just needed professional confirmation) and told me right away that she couldn't find the fetal heart either. She got one of the staff radiologists to review the images, and he came in to reconfirm and tell me in person. S was with me in there for the scan, and just held my hand as the tears rolled down my face.
We went back to the family OB to discuss options, and decided to stop the progesterone and wait things out. If the miscarriage didn't happen naturally in a few days, I was going to fill a prescription they gave me for a tablet to bring on contractions. I guess as far as this sort of thing goes, I got lucky, because I started bleeding heavily a day or two after stopping the progesterone, and it was all over within 11 days. I had a few days of really heavy bleeding and some icky cramping, but it wasn't way way worse than AF usually is.
When I saw my family doc in follow up a week or so later, she was convinced I still had retained products and was going to start hemorrhaging at work sometime in the near future. She wanted me to do serial betas each week till it came down to zero, and wanted me to do an ultrasound too to rule out retained products. Again, thank God I work in a hospital - they squeezed me in that very afternoon for a quick scan before my night on call started. And thank God, there was no sign of retained products. I think it was by the next week that my beta was down to 7, which my RE said was zero as far as she was concerned.
No comments:
Post a Comment