Placenta Previa

January 7, 2008
9:13 pm

Another Monday is here and yet one more day that I didn't leave my home. Here the culprit: on Saturday, 12/29/07, John and I woke up, made love, talked and right before we went downstairs to have coffee, I went to the bathroom and then I realized that I was spotting -- but only slightly, and since sex hadn't been painful and the quantity of blood was so small, I didn't really worry about it. We went about our business; we had breakfast, shopped, prepared some appetizers for a friend's New Years' Party, etc. That night, at about 9ish, we had dinner and right after I took my 100th trip to the bathroom that day I realized that I was still spotting and that the blood was actually turning brownish in color, like the way it got to be towards the end of my period. I told John what was going on, but also that I wasn’t worried at all about it, John told me to, at a minimum, call my OBG-YN to let them know what was going on with me (I had had spotting early in my pregnancy and it was no big deal to my OB - they couldn't pinpoint the cause and it was business as usual, hence us not worrying at all about it this time}. The doctor on call called me back right away to know what was going on and when I told her about the spotting, she got a bit aggravated and was like: "You are 6 months along, you can't mess with these things at this point and you have to come to the hospital immediately!" So, John and I got in the car and drove to a deserted maternity ward at Hartford Hospital. I guess people don't get sick or have babies around New Year's Eve?!

When we got there, I was taken to a room where a jolly nurse helped us get settled and a very nice doctor from Nigeria puts this contraction monitor on my belly (I was not having any contractions). He then decided to do an ultrasound on me to make sure the baby was OK. As he is looking at the monitor, he decides to examine my cervix and to do an intra-vaginal u/s (VERY uncomfortable!). Just as he is looking cautiously at the monitor, the lady doctor who had called me, comes into the room. We were having small talk when she looked at the monitor. She stops talking to me and starts talking to the nice doctor in doctor-language. So the 2 doctors start to talk like: - Look how low it is? Think it’s placenta previa? Oh, I think so! At this point John and I are looking at each other and I finally say: What’s going on? Think you can explain it to us in like layman's terms? The doctor tells me that my placenta is lying unusually low in my uterus, next to or covering my cervix and that until they had a Level II u/s done on me (which will be in a couple of days - this Level II u/s, BTW, had already been scheduled due to my incredible fear and inexplicable anxiety that my baby has a congenital malformation) that I should be in total and complete bed-rest. She even threatened to keep me overnight in the hospital, but since I wasn't bleeding anymore nor having any contractions, I asked her to please let me come home.

So here I am. It’s been 9 days now and I’m beyond bored but I've been really good about not moving much. I am loving the "working from home" part but hating the "not doing anything except sit on the couch" part. I am beyond anxious about the Level II u/s, in reality for reasons other than the placenta previa (because of my irrational fear that my baby is not developing like she should). I have a couple days to go and I can’t wait for some assurance that things are OK with both of us girls. It’s actually 40 hours and 17 minutes to be exact.