Okay, I barely know where to begin. This is not a birth story, and it is not what you expect. Part of why it is so hard to write is because there are still so many questions. Some (all?) of you will likely have questions, and I want you to feel free to ask them. I trust you all to be gentle and will promise to take all questions at face value.
Here is what we belive happened. We believe that I was pg and had a loss about midway through, around the same time that I had the first bleeding episode. I think that the baby reabsorbed into my body and that my body continued to produce pregnancy hormones. In other words, my body continued to think it was pg.
When we went to the pregnancy crisis center the day after I had seen the mw, the low-level u/s showed no baby.
I went to a kind OB on Monday. I had a Level II u/s. What we discovered was that my uterus and overies were healthy, but dormant. My uterus was normal, non-pregnant size. Yet I continue to have pregnancy symptoms. My hands and feet and face are swollen, my nipples are still darker than normal, and my milk supply has never returned, for example.
My belly has shrunk somewhat, but I still look pg. I assume that it is simple a combination of fluid and extra weight that my body continued to accumulate due to the wrong horomones flooding my system.
We are checking the levels of the pituitary hormones that regulate your cycle. We are also getting a prolactin level and thyroid. My hope is that there will be a fairly simple way to jump start the right hormones into production.
Now, let me address *this* issue. There is the possibility that I was never pg to begin with. Some of you might remember that I had a negative blood test at the beginning of this pregnancy. And since we do UP/UC, we never had an u/s. We were kind of beating our selves up for that at first, until we remembered WHY we didn't have an u/s early on, and why we chose to proceed as we did.
First, it is important to know that I have a history of false negatives. For instance, with my second son I continued to get negatives until 11 weeks. So when I continued to have all my standard pregnancy symptoms after a negative blood test, we decided to take a wait-and-see approach. Who would have been willing to give me an u/s with no BFP? What we decided was that if I was pg, it would declare itself soon enough, so no harm in just waiting it out.
So why, when things continued to progress as a pregnancy, would we question it? Which was not to say that we didn't actually...how could we not after my missed miscarriage last Fall? But when I could feel movement regularly and from the outside could make out lumps and what seemed to be baby shapes...
Even right now, I can feel what the mw even assumed to be my fundus, measuring about 34 cm. I thought it was too! What is it now that we know it's not my fundus? Beats me.
Anyway, pseudocyesis...that is the name for false pregnancy...used to be pretty common, surprisingly. One figure I've seen estimates it to have been around 1 in every 250 women experienced it. It was apparently never widely discussed, because doctors and mw's were often embarrassed that THEY had diagnosed the woman as pregnant. Somewhere around 1% of these women actually went into labor, producing no baby. I can't see how a pregnancy would get that far without the doctor or mw being able to feel realistic signs from the outside.
I did not have a "false" labor, but I did have plenty of ctx that completely subsided about a few weeks ago. At the end of Sept. I spent a day having regular ctx. I didn't feel like they were leading to labor, but they were strong enough to call my dh home to watch the boys. So, was this my womb beginning to shrink?
Right now I am feeling grateful that I will have the opportunity to give my body some time to get back on track in the next several months while dh is at boot camp and Officer Candidate School. I won't feel any internal pressure to get pg. And I am hopeful that we can get my hormones back in line and maybe get a few normal cycles going before we have an opportunity to try again. Even though I know I will start to long for a baby...I feel like I've been waiting so long...I will not have to wonder if I am pg or worry about it at all for at least 6 months.
I hope this isnt' too rambling. I've been working on it off and on for hours, in between vacuuming and helping my boys clean their room. And now lunch is ready. Well, if I've forgotten anything I can come back later and add it.
Oh! I also got blood drawn to be checked for Factor V Leiden blood clotting disorder. My cousin, who had several losses, including a full-term son who was born still, got diagnosed with that this summer, and it is genetic. I am wondering if that might be a clue to two losses.
Here is what we belive happened. We believe that I was pg and had a loss about midway through, around the same time that I had the first bleeding episode. I think that the baby reabsorbed into my body and that my body continued to produce pregnancy hormones. In other words, my body continued to think it was pg.
When we went to the pregnancy crisis center the day after I had seen the mw, the low-level u/s showed no baby.
I went to a kind OB on Monday. I had a Level II u/s. What we discovered was that my uterus and overies were healthy, but dormant. My uterus was normal, non-pregnant size. Yet I continue to have pregnancy symptoms. My hands and feet and face are swollen, my nipples are still darker than normal, and my milk supply has never returned, for example.
My belly has shrunk somewhat, but I still look pg. I assume that it is simple a combination of fluid and extra weight that my body continued to accumulate due to the wrong horomones flooding my system.
We are checking the levels of the pituitary hormones that regulate your cycle. We are also getting a prolactin level and thyroid. My hope is that there will be a fairly simple way to jump start the right hormones into production.
Now, let me address *this* issue. There is the possibility that I was never pg to begin with. Some of you might remember that I had a negative blood test at the beginning of this pregnancy. And since we do UP/UC, we never had an u/s. We were kind of beating our selves up for that at first, until we remembered WHY we didn't have an u/s early on, and why we chose to proceed as we did.
First, it is important to know that I have a history of false negatives. For instance, with my second son I continued to get negatives until 11 weeks. So when I continued to have all my standard pregnancy symptoms after a negative blood test, we decided to take a wait-and-see approach. Who would have been willing to give me an u/s with no BFP? What we decided was that if I was pg, it would declare itself soon enough, so no harm in just waiting it out.
So why, when things continued to progress as a pregnancy, would we question it? Which was not to say that we didn't actually...how could we not after my missed miscarriage last Fall? But when I could feel movement regularly and from the outside could make out lumps and what seemed to be baby shapes...
Even right now, I can feel what the mw even assumed to be my fundus, measuring about 34 cm. I thought it was too! What is it now that we know it's not my fundus? Beats me.
Anyway, pseudocyesis...that is the name for false pregnancy...used to be pretty common, surprisingly. One figure I've seen estimates it to have been around 1 in every 250 women experienced it. It was apparently never widely discussed, because doctors and mw's were often embarrassed that THEY had diagnosed the woman as pregnant. Somewhere around 1% of these women actually went into labor, producing no baby. I can't see how a pregnancy would get that far without the doctor or mw being able to feel realistic signs from the outside.
I did not have a "false" labor, but I did have plenty of ctx that completely subsided about a few weeks ago. At the end of Sept. I spent a day having regular ctx. I didn't feel like they were leading to labor, but they were strong enough to call my dh home to watch the boys. So, was this my womb beginning to shrink?
Right now I am feeling grateful that I will have the opportunity to give my body some time to get back on track in the next several months while dh is at boot camp and Officer Candidate School. I won't feel any internal pressure to get pg. And I am hopeful that we can get my hormones back in line and maybe get a few normal cycles going before we have an opportunity to try again. Even though I know I will start to long for a baby...I feel like I've been waiting so long...I will not have to wonder if I am pg or worry about it at all for at least 6 months.
I hope this isnt' too rambling. I've been working on it off and on for hours, in between vacuuming and helping my boys clean their room. And now lunch is ready. Well, if I've forgotten anything I can come back later and add it.
Oh! I also got blood drawn to be checked for Factor V Leiden blood clotting disorder. My cousin, who had several losses, including a full-term son who was born still, got diagnosed with that this summer, and it is genetic. I am wondering if that might be a clue to two losses.
: Thanks for updating us and I hope that the coming months bring you peace and healing.
That's so much to take in for you I'm sure. I'm sorry for the loss you are feeling right now. As Amanda mentions, it 
For the child of your heart.
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