1st OB visit

The appointment yesterday was good and bad.

First the good: I still really like my OB. She tells it like it is. She understands that we have worked very hard for this pregnancy. As she says, "It is very precious" and she is taking a conservative approach with me. Which means extra u/s's and monitoring throughout the (hopefully) next 32-ish weeks. Love it.

She also told me about a clinical study that is being conducted at the fancy research hospital that would entail 3-4 3D ultrasounds over the course of the pregnancy. They are measuring fetal growth or weight or something like that. But more u/s? And the super-fancy 3D kind? For free, or even get paid a small amount to do it? Hell yeah, sign me up.

We also did an u/s yesterday, and the critter looks great. Still growing on track, still heartbeating in the 150s. We even saw him/her move around a little. Sigh. Melted my heart completely.

Now the not so good (otherwise known as "the bad"): I do in fact have a subchorionic hemorrhage (SCH). This is the reason for the bleed last week, and will likely cause additional spotting and/or bleeding. Ugh. While I'm glad to know the cause for the bleeding, and I'm glad to know it is not directly or immediately impacting the critter, it is still a scary thing. Basically, from what I understand, it is a pocket of blood between the placenta and the uterus. It can impact the solid attachment of the placenta to the uterus. It increases my miscarriage likelihood.

There really isn't anything to do to treat it, other than what I'm already doing: take it easy. No lifting, pushing, pulling of anything. No working out, including walking far. Nothing of any sort up the hoo-ha. Lots of laying around.

And we wait. And watch.

My OB said that normally she'd say come back in 2 weeks for another u/s, but given how stressful this is (bleeding is not good for my mental health) she said I could come back in a week. Love her.

So here I am. On the couch, hanging out for the indefinite future. Trying not to stress, which sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. I check the toilet paper constantly, and have "phantom leakage" sensations all the time. I continue to have those stretching, pulling, odd twinging sensations too. These used to reassure me that the baby was growing, and now they just stress me more.

But as of now, we are still both here, me and the critter. And that is a good thing, a thing to be grateful for.

I am very grateful.