I'm hoping there might be some medical professionals on here who might be able to help.
To give a "brief" history, I had DD1 at 28 weeks in 2014. At the time I went in to labour, they did a urine dip and the midwife asked if I'd had a urine infection as the protein level was high. I hadn't and she said to keep an eye to see if I was developing one. DD was born about an hour after. I didn't develop a UTI subsequently.
DD2 was born at 33 weeks in 2016. I was monitored throughout the pregnancy, my cervix started to shorten at 26 weeks and they started me on progesterone. Around 22/24 weeks the urine dip showed a possible infection, although they said it could have been due to contamination (it was a mid stream sample) and I had ABs. At 32 weeks I saw the midwife and the urine dip showed high protein. She gave me ABs. I got a chest infection whilst taking those ABs and DD was born a week later.
In 2019, I had vaginal bleeding continuously for 7 weeks. They took a swap and it came back positive for group b Strep. GP gave me ABs but it didn't seem to make any difference to the bleeding or cramping. In the end, they put that down to the coil. It came out on its own a while later and I had no further problems with irregular bleeding.
I'm pregnant now. I saw the obstetrician on Thursday and was keen to have a cerclage as I had previously been advised it would be beneficial. He disagreed as he said that babies born at 28 and 33 weeks wouldn't be due to cervical incompetence as they would have been born earlier if that were the case. Instead, he thinks that infection could have been the cause. He's given me two courses of AB cream for group B Strep to be used at 16 and 20 weeks and they will also do monthly urine tests, where they will send the sample off rather than just dip and 2 weekly cervical length scans until 24 weeks.
I realise that that history hasn't ended up being "brief". But all of this has made me wonder if I could have had group b Strep all this time and if that could have been the cause of the premature births. From what I understand, it's not something that would have routinely been tested for and it was only picked up my chance because I was having other gynae issues. Would GBS have shown up as a high protein level in the urine dips? As I never had any symptoms of a UTI.
I should have asked all of these questions to the obstetrician when I saw him on Thursday but it's all occurred to me since, and I'm now not seeing him until 24 weeks. I suppose I'm hopeful that GBS was the cause as we have a plan to treat it and therefore the outcome could be different.
Sorry for the length of this post. If anyone has any information or opinion about this it would be much appreciated.