Baby Martin's Big Scare

Today, I started bleeding. Really, really bleeding. My heart dropped. I called a friend to watch Kyle and drove to the ER. After doing several labs and waiting for a few hours, an ultrasound technician finally wheeled me in to get a look at the baby. He stoically checked things out for a few seconds (that felt like forever), then flipped a switch and the beautiful sound of a heartbeat filled the room. I burst into tears! Then, after confirming that the baby was indeed a week older than a previous ultrasound had shown (and back to what we had originally thought - due Jan 5th), he commented that he could see the reason for the bleed. Of course, he wouldn't tell me more than that, so I had to wait another hour or so to find out why from the doctor.

I was told that I have a subchorionic hematoma (SCH), which is a gathering of blood between the membranes of the placenta and the uterus. Basically, there is a tear between the placenta and the uterus and we obviously don't want that tear to continue. It is a common type of bleeding, if you bleed early on. And he said it could go either way. That there's a 50/50 chance this baby will make it. That this could very well be the start of what would be a miscarriage or that this could go on to be a very healthy pregnancy. He gave some recommendations and possible future scenarios and I walked out the door. I can't tell you how shocked I was to walk out with a baby still there.

Fortunately, I have a very good friend who was an ER nurse, who talked on the phone with me while at the hospital. She was a help in several ways. First, she let me know of 3 mutual friends who had this same thing happen to them (and they all went on to have healthy babies). Secondly, she guessed what was wrong and gave me a great website to start doing my own research ... which led me to discover a much better percentage/chance of this going the way we'd like to see it go. The article did mention, however, that women with SCH are at a greater risk of having placental abruption (which this particular friend did have in her 3rd trimester - which resulted in a stillbirth). A very sad, scary thought.

We are grateful for the positive news and prayerful that the bleeding will stop soon, and that we'll get to 12 weeks without any further incident. I am 8wks 3days, so we've got about 3.5 weeks left to go before we can breathe better. Then, once the baby is of viable age, we'll start having more tests done regularly to make sure the placenta is ok. For having a pretty average pregnancy with Kyle, it is different and sad to start this one in this way. However, if this little one is anything like his/her brother Kyle, he'll/she'll be a fighter (though we know this problem has nothing to do with the baby exactly)!

Here's a second look at Baby Martin:

Thanks for those of you who prayed and who I know will pray as a result of this post. Love to you all.