Hi all, and a very happy new year - I had a bit of a scary start/end to the year, and at one point thought I was going to be following Chuffed into the baby production line... ready for the tale?...
Thursday night, having just got into bed and having some pillowtalk with DH, felt a dampness between the legs and thought "wey-hey, this could be my waters breaking". Dashed to sit on the toilet, and realised that it was not fluid but fresh bright red blood. Remembered from the text books that this is not a Good Thing, so called community midwife straight away who advised waiting to see if any further gushes or if it was just a one-off.
DH very concerned, but I was not that worried as no accompanying pains or cramps, and lots of movement from baby. So went back to bed with giant sanitary pad and slept through to early hours of morning. However, towel quite heavily blood-stained again, so still losing blood. Called labour ward and went in at 9am (having packed hospital bag for first time... just in case).
To cut a long story short, bleeding continued for about another twelve hours, had lots of monitoring, baby fine throughout. Had ultrasound late afternoon to see if placenta abruption could be seen, but nothing abnormal showed up (lovely to see babs again tho!). Bleeding eventually halted late evening, so they kept me in overnight to check that really was going to be it.
A clean pad in the morning (thank goodness), and more monitoring. Eventually got discharged lunchtime Saturday. Lots of bed rest since then, and obviously a very very quiet new year!
Just so frustrated at lack of conclusion on cause of blood loss. They think it's probably a small abruption of placenta (which often doesn't show on scan), but they don't really know where the blood was coming from or what caused it.
Still, baby very active, lots of strong BHs (that's why they thought I might go over into labour as monitoring showed up very regular and strong BH activity, about once every ten minutes at one stage), but no pain at all, and cervix was still tightly closed, so no other signs yet.
Sigh, glad not to have a new year baby, but I had got myself all psyched up for it, so also now slightly disappointed that babs is staying in there a bit longer - honestly, typical woman, never satisfied eh?! DH has been great at focussing on the positives about the whole experience - at least we know that all is well with babs, and got to see him/her again on the scan (pretty sure it's a HER now, as fetal heartrate was consistently 140bpm and above).
Rachey - love your bump cast... what a wonderful record of your blooming belly (wayward nipples aside). I am now starting to think about how much I will miss having something to stroke and pat of an evening (may have to substitute DH!).
Eshay - hope things are getting better for poor Thomas... GPs can vary so enormously, sounds like you have a right numpty. Can you change to a different one within the same practice?
Lyra - hope the pains either start something happening or die away - it must be really frustrating being in pain but with nothing else happening.
Keep posting new pics on the Yahoo site - it's great to see everyone's bumps at this late stage (don't think any of us are looking particularly enormous), aren't we a lovely bunch eh?
Looking forward to an announcement from Jaysfirst soon!! Off for another relaxing bath now, and yet another easy afternoon on the sofa.