Did I have a placental abruption? Future pregnancies? So anxious

[Toadhall44]

TW - includes details of previous baby loss
Hey,

I am reflecting on my labour and how it may effect future ones.

About a week before I gave birth (37+6) I started to get intense waves of back pain. Went on a CTG and it didn't pick up any contractions, I was only 1cm dilated, and baby was fine. They sent me home with some pain relief. The pain stopped that evening.

In the week I lost my mucus plug.

A week later (38+6) I woke up with blood soaked underwear. Put on CTG and baby was reading as compleltly normal and I had the same back contractions. They said as I was passing small clots of blood that they may need to keep me in and potentially hurry things along. I was checked and I was 4cm dilated. I continued to bleed like a heavy period, and due to being in active labour no intervention was needed.

No one told me what was happening in terms of bleeding - they just said baby was happy and ignore the blood. I gave birth that day and it was a fairly easy labour otherwise. They checked babies heart beat on and off and she was never in distress.

Now 6 weeks later, I am starting to question why I was bleeding and my mind is going to placental abruption. I understand that this may increase my chances of having one in following pregnancy if it were and I'm terrified.

Does anyone have any insight or reassurence? Could this have been an abruption and if so, do I need to be worried in future?

I lost my firstborn son at 33 weeks (TFMR) due to his brain being severly malformed. If I were to have another baby I will struggle with anxiety in pregnancy.

I’m sorry you went through this, and you’re absolutely right to question what happened. I hope that my story will help to ease your worries over future pregnancy.

I pretty much bled the whole way through my first pregnancy from around 6 weeks. At the beginning they suggested cervical erosion, but as the pregnancy progressed they didn’t really have a reason and put it down to unexplained. I had a very, very big bleed at 36 weeks where I was admitted to hospital and offered a C-section, or to have a steroid injection to strengthen baby’s lungs if they decided to make an early entrance. Baby was always showing signs of being healthy when monitored so I opted to keep her cooking with monitoring. She held on until 38+1 and then arrived through spontaneous labour. I had post partum haemorrhaging after delivery and was put on a drip etc, and the anaesthesiologist arrived incase I needed an emergency blood transfusion, but thankfully I didn’t, and my baby was born perfectly healthy and unaware of the worries! She’s a happy and healthy 4 year old now. :) I never really understood what ‘went wrong’ and didn’t really equation afterwards, as I was just so grateful we were both doing well.

I’m expecting my second baby in May and was placed under consultant led from the initial booking appointment with the midwives. The care team said from day 1 that I’d be delivering in hospital with canulas etc already inserted just incase of PPH again. This pregnancy could not be more different and (touch wood) I haven’t experienced any bleeding - though I still check daily out of pure habit. When discussing the first pregnancy with my consultant, she said that they don’t know the full reason, but that it must have been to do with the placenta. They have monitored the placenta with this pregnancy, but there have been no similarities at all.

I hope that my sharing this helps to relieve your anxiety in some way over future pregnancies. But also wanted to share that if you reach out to your maternity team, they may have a team that looks into labour and births for you, and who talk you through what happened. I was given this by my trust, and I think if I wasn’t already under consultant care and in talks with them, I would have found it very useful in helping me to process and understand it all that little bit better.

I had a suspected placental abruption during labour with my third child.
I won’t be having any more children so I can’t help with reassurance for future pregnancies (3rd child was our last anyway).

i was 41+3 and after a sweep that day I went in to spontaneous labour.
I started to bleed in labour which didn’t stop and my contraction were very very close together. Like there was no time between them. I remember them assessing me and I was only 5cm at that point. They gave me an injection in my leg to slow the contractions. I think this is a sign of abruption… either way, I was taken to have a C-Section as baby was in distress and right before they could put me to sleep I gave birth… it was crazy!
they checked my placenta over. Baby was born seriously blue but all fine and healthy.
very close to not being ok but all was fine. A few days later I passed large parts of retained placenta.

it is a very traumatic thing to happen. I hope that you can find some peace about it.

sorry to hear about your first born. Sending lots of love

Have you contacted for a birth debrief if you're not sure what happened? It might help and you're entitled to it.