Well we made it. We are officially on top! On top of our OB’s hierarchy of high risk pregnancies. It’s a title I am not happy obtaining but we have been dealt this hand so we must play this game. Our first 19 weeks has been a waiting game interspersed with bed rest, activity restrictions, vertigo, hypermesis, hospital visits and lots of tears as we watched a hematoma grow beside our precious baby. I should have been excited going into our 19 weeks scan, the one where you can find out the sex and get pics of your baby giving perhaps a hint of whom he or she will resemble. But I cried before the scan, during the scan and after the scan. It seems our troubles are only just beginning.
As the sonographer scans my belly I see a huge growth taking up nearly the entire screen. Relieved to hear it isn’t the hematoma I am shocked when I am told its my placenta, occupying the lower third of my uterus and our baby is squished between it and the hematoma that now sits above. “Tell me the sex” I demand between sobs determined to have something positive to take away from this day. Most of the scan is spent looking at the placenta and measuring the hematoma. As we realise the severity of our situation I begin to wail so loudly that the sonographer has to stop scanning.
Two days later we see our OB. He tells me with a straight face that I have complete placenta previa and an extremely rare condition know as placenta accreta. He then tells us I will have a hysterectomy. I begin sobbing loudly. I am aware our OB is a busy man and has other patients waiting but I can’t contain my shock and grief. I am grateful our OB is also a patient and caring man and he waits whilst I wipe away my tears and his face comes back into focus, showing genuine concern. I retain my composure and we discuss the anticipated series of events. We realise our life as we know it will be turned upside down in a matter of a few short months. Our baby will be born any time after 28 weeks depending on how things progress. I will be hospitalised at 32 weeks providing we make it to that point and will then have an MRI and a decision on when to have a cesar will be made. Our OB says he is now more concerned for my life than our baby’s but assures us he will have a team of doctors and specialists ready to ensure things go smoothly.
I leave our appointment feeling relieved in a sense as we are more certain than ever in this pregnancy that we will get our baby at the end of all of this. But at what cost, I now begin to question. Am I going to die? Am I going to have blood transfusions? Am I really losing my uterus at the age of 31? Is this really happening? Determined to look on the bright side I begin chiding husband about baby names. We discuss how we might need to buy tiny prem clothes and how we should research breastfeeding and expressing and all things breast milk, mother natures most powerful source of nutrients, so we can be prepared. But can we ever really prepare for something as dramatic as this?
At the start of our pregnancy I had told husband he was only needed at our first appointment, our 12 week and 19 week scans and our appointment before C-Day (cesarean day). Yet here he was, holding my hand as he has been throughout this journey so far, and as he continues to do, having come to every appointment and every scan. And now looking at coming to numerous more appointments as we edge closer to our goals of making it to 28 weeks, then 32 weeks and hey, 35 weeks would be amazing! I tell him I know he has work, I know he is in negative leave as he has already taken so much time off to look after me and our children, to hold our family together. I tell him I will be okay going it alone for a while. He shakes his head, he won’t have a word of it. He will be there at every scan, at every appointment, on every step of this journey holding my hand. Clearly I have more luck on my side to have him by my side.
Over the coming weeks we are aiming to keep things as normal as possible for our family. Our kids have struggled enough with the changes around our house with me being unable to do so much of what was so normal to us before. We move up our plans to get a larger family car to accommodate another baby. I write lists of what needs to be done to ensure our eldest’s transition into big school runs as smoothly as possible, especially now as we know within her first term of Kindergarten I will be in hospital, possibly for weeks. We discuss with our children how we need to be extra careful around “Mummy’s belly” and how I can hold them once more in my arms and cuddle them tight by the time our eldest turns six. She just turned 5! We make more plans to do a weekly swim together so I can hold my babies, weightless in the water, free of earth’s concerns.
I am scared but I am strong. In all of this we will grow as parents and partners, relying on eachother for emotional strength and support more than ever before. We are being forced to trust more than we have ever trusted, have greater faith than ever before and and be stronger for eachother and our children than we thought we were capable of being.