Never a dull moment

So...... why stop writing pregnancy related posts when so much keeps happening in this pregnancy?

Sunday night as I prepared for bed, I washed my face, brushed my teeth and used the washroom. The toilet paper had a slight amount of brownish tinge. A very light tinge, so light that you had to hold it up to the light to see it. Three months ago I might have panicked, but be proud of me friends, I did not.

Krista, I said to myself, there is nothing here that indicates a real problem. You feel the baby move several times a day... you felt it move several times today, there is nothing wrong with this baby, you are imagining things. And so I went to bed and slept.

I awoke at 8:30 to what I though were very bad gas pains. When I went to the washroom there was no need to hold the toilet paper up to the light... I had passed a very large blood clot (well very large to me, between the size of a quarter and a loonie or one dollar coin for my american friends). Naturally I panicked.

I called the hospital who asked me to save the clot and come in immediately. I spent several hours there and was hooked up to a monitor to trace the baby's heart beat and a monitor to determine if I was having contractions. The baby's heart beat was fine (averaged 153) and I was not having contractions. I was not having any further bleeding. My OB arrived and did an internal and confirmed that my cervix was still closed. Although he acknowledged that it was not good to see any blood at this point, he reassured me that he thought everything was fine. The clot was small in his opinion and made up of old brown blood not fresh blood. I did not bleed before or after the clot and had not bled the entire time I was at the hospital. I had an appointment scheduled for today at any rate so he told me I could go home to bed but that I was to come back immediately if I had any further clots or started bleeding. I had neither.

At my appointment today my cervix was still closed. The baby's heartbeat was still high, I had felt movement. Ob told me that he was not at all concerned, that his theory was that the blood clot had to do with the fact that the sac and embryo of the lost twin was not seen at last week's ultrasound. He suggested that most of the remains had been reabsorbed by the lining so I was unclear if he expected any more drama or not. I also did not think to ask how this clot got out of my uterus if my cervix was firmly closed.

Believe it or not, I am not overly concerned. Not that I wouldn't go over the edge if I saw more blood but..... except for that one clot I have seen nothing. AND... and this is huge, I feel this baby move several times a day. It is much, much easier to be reassured by the doctor when it is hard to believe anything could be wrong with a baby that is this.... active.

I must also admit that I am also reassured by the fact that in 4 or 5 more weeks this baby could viably be born. I know that such a thing would be incredibly dangerous and risky, that even if the baby survived it could have major heath problems, but it is easier to be reassured by your OB when you have made it way further than you ever have before.

But hey, 21 weeks and never a dull moment!