13 Weeks and Growing

Barring vitamin trouble, mercury poisoning or the thousands of other things I am tempted to worry about almost constantly, Baby J has reached 13 weeks of gestation as of today. He or she posed for some photos on Friday, at 12 weeks 5 days, and proud Mommy and Daddy are excited to share the pictures with our small blog-viewing public.

But first, some background.

Ahhh - they joys and trials of pregnancy. Just when I talk myself out of one neurosis, I find reason for another.

Today, it's that my prescription prenatal vitamins have been recalled. That's not news one wants at a time like this. I *did* have sense enough to research the whys of the recall in order to avoid a meltdown, and I discovered that the reason is rather benign: some pills may be oversized in certain lots. I don't think my lot is affected since this is a rather visible flaw, but I sent Daniel back to WalMart pharmacy to make sure that my pills were not from the recalled lot anyway. WalMart didn't know... but they gave us a new bottle with non-affected vitamins for Dan's trouble. This is not one of the times in my life that gambling seems attractive.

Friday my neurosis was just how much king crab leg I ate on one of our very, very rare restaurant visits. We had a gift card, and I wanted crab. I knew it to be low mercury and fairly safe, but I didn't know they had brought me 20 ounces until I had enjoyed every one of those ounces thoroughly and then thought to ask, just out of curiosity, how much crab they brought me anyway. Who feeds you 20 ounces of any meat!? So, Friday night was spent, in part, researching probably mercury levels in king crab legs, shelled weight of meat (since my portion was 20-ish ounces with shell) and the possible mercury consumption based on the two combined figures. That took more work than I expected, but the numbers produced by a handy calculator I found online indicated that we probably escaped harm - even after I added to my weekly seafood menu some shrimp and salmon for good measure. This mommy-to-be will probably not crab binge again for a very loooooong time.

----------

Week 12 was rather difficult for us. On Sunday night one week ago, I started to pass a frightening quantity of red blood and clots. The bleeding came at scary timing (don't get me wrong, it is always scary), because apparently miscarriages are most common during the weeks when the mother would have menstruated: weeks 4, 8, 12 and 16. When I began to bleed on day one of week 12, I was very afraid that we were about to become an incidence of the statistic. I called the OB on call and was told to just wait and see if the bleeding got worse or if any other symptoms developed (cramping, etc.), in which case we'd be sent to the hospital. We are grateful to report that the bleeding lightened up considerably within 3 hours, and stopped completely within 36. I called the OB office during office hours the next day and arranged to go in to have them check me out. They didn't find active bleeding, and everything looked okay, except that my cervix is a bit irritated. They checked for baby's heartbeat with a portable ultrasound, and we got to see him or her, albeit rather blurry and indistinct, bopping away in there with a good, strong heartbeat.

I had a first trimester ultrasound scheduled for Friday already (the stated purpose is to screen for Down Syndrome, which we would have done only for the sake of information, and which is why we hesitated to have it done), and although I had been on the verge of canceling it when I went in on Tuesday, the doctor who checked me out said that she thought it might be a good idea to have that more-detailed ultrasound on Friday so that we could also see if there was any visible reason for the bleeding.

The ultrasound proved helpful. Not only did it produce really great images of our baby - complete with brains! - but it reassured me a great deal and revealed a couple of things that I would not have otherwise known. One of them is that I have what is referred to as a marginal placenta previa. This means that the placenta has attached low enough in the uterus that it is bordering the cervix. This could be a problem if it remains in that location as the baby grows towards term, but, the likelihood is that the placenta will move up as the top of the uterus stretches away from the base. Worst case, the placenta doesn't move up, and I would require a c-section and somewhat closer monitoring towards the end of pregnancy for any bleeding that would indicate a problem. The placenta is, however, well-attached and has normal vascular activity. The Sonographer was unable to find any evidence of blood clots or pools that would explain my recent bleeding. This may mean that the clot/blood pool (subchorionic hemorrhage) that was visible in an ultrasound at 6-ish weeks has healed, which is great.

[Aside, I have to wonder if the placenta previa explains the bleeding. It can cause bleeding, usually much later on (keeping in mind that the condition is usually diagnosed several weeks later), which is red and painless, just like what I experienced this past week.]

Bleeding like this is labeled a "threatened miscarriage" by the medical community, which isn't the most comforting choice of words. We have, however, gotten past week 12, and we're hopeful for a quieter week 13. As you may imagine, the myterious bleeds are still a cause of concern. As the doctor put it, "I hope that was just a freak occurance and that you won't have further problems." We hope so, too. We'd appreciate your prayers to that end.

In the meantime, I am trying to keep myself pretty low-key in terms of excitment and activity. The bleed came just about the time I decided that I was fine, so I may have overdone it - if overdoing it means just doing things around the house and occassionally venturing outside. *sigh*

And now, as promised... our little trooper!