The First Scare...

Everything seemed to be going well in our pregnancy.  We'd shared the good news with our family at Christmas, and because of our experiences in cycle one, we'd made the decision to wait until the first trimester had passed before sharing the news with the rest of the world.  Less than a week after telling everyone, we had our first scare.

Its not uncommon to have a scare or two during your pregnancy.  As the baby grows, the body stretches and makes room.  Although there is a preferred rate of growth and development, some babies have their own agenda.  There are lots of aches and pains, sometimes bleeding, and occasionally something doesn't look right on a sonogram.  All of these would be considered pregnancy "scares" and they happen more often than you'd think.

A pregnancy scare is a reality check.  For me, it was a not so subtle reminder that a pregnancy is a long and complicated process, and there are lots of things that can happen.  We'd had a pretty good few weeks,.  We were just starting to feel comfortable about things and were becoming more euphoric than nervous when our world stopped one evening.  After an hour-drive home from my parents' house, Lisa noticed something that all pregnant women fear - blood.  I'd read in "What to Expect..." (I think I've read that book cover to cover about 10 times now) that sometimes pregnant women have episodes of bleeding, and that it wasn't necessarily a problem.  But I'd also read that bleeding could mean problems with the baby, problems with Lisa or both.  I haven't had many of these moments in my life, but if you've ever felt your stomach in your throat, you know the feeling.

12 weeks and 2 days at our emergency ultrasound

I ran to the phone and called the doctor; after a few questions we were told it was most likely going to be okay, but that we should come to the hospital in the morning for an evaluation and ultrasound.  I'm not sure either one of us slept.  The baby turned out to be fine; Lisa had something called a subchroionic bleed (a small bleed in the cervix / uterus that in most cases resolves on its own) and a complete placenta previa.  This means that the placenta is resting completely on the cervix, and the baby on top of it.  Also not uncommon early in pregnancy, previas can cause delivery complications later in pregnancy and make a cesarean delivery the only option. 

We also tried to do the nuchal translucency test at this appointment.  The ultrasound technician tortured Lisa tried really hard to get a close image the baby's neck and the amount of fluid (if any) between the neck and the wall of the uterus, but she couldn't get a good enough picture.  We'd have to come back and try that again, but we weren't disappointed - the bleed was not a major problem and we'd get to see another picture of our baby a week later.  I'd take that outcome a thousand times out of a thousand.