Placenta Previa

Okay. Another appointment this morning yielded a ton of information. In the good column we have:

•  The baby is alive! 
•  And huge! Measuring 8 days farther along than average. 
•  S/he still has a terrifying face. 
•  One of the sub-chorionic hemorrhages is gone, and the other appears to be resolving. 

And, as always, the bad:

• The placenta is covering the cervical opening entirely (known as placenta previa), which will require close monitoring for second- and third-trimester bleeding, and probable early delivery.
• There's a small chance the placenta previa could resolve, but it's very unlikely in my case. 
• Even if I make it to term - or close to it - I'm definitely looking at a C-section delivery.

So, to sum it up, my message to the universe this morning is: what the f*cking f*ck. One step forward, two steps back. Oh, and in case you were wondering, it's a complete previa, meaning that the placenta is entirely covering the cervix and very unlikely to resolve as the uterus grows. (Often, women will be diagnosed with a partial placenta previa and as things get bigger, the placenta is naturally pulled upwards and away from the cervical opening so the problem is resolved. This is emphatically not what is happening in my uterus; near as we can tell - and yes, Mr. Wandy helped make this diagnosis so there were a total of two ultrasound angles and two MDs involved - my cervix is pretty much smack-dab in the middle of my placenta. Worst place it could be.) Now I'm wondering if the sub-chorionic hemorrhages and the placenta previa were all ultimately related to the problem the RE had with the angle of my uterus and finding the right catheter during the transfer, and the embryo implanting lower than it should have. And I'm also wondering if, by some miracle we do have a healthy baby at the end of all this, I'll have difficulty getting a sibling to implant in the future now that I'm almost certainly going to have a big ol' scar right across my uterus. Oh, and did I mention that placenta previa is associated with placenta accreta, where it grows too deeply into your uterus and they can't take it out and then you have to have a hysterectomy?!?


Anyway. Breathe. I probably should have waited to post this until I was a little calmer; the Maternal-Fetal Medicine doctor could tell that Harry and I were starting to lose it a little bit and he said at the end of our visit, "You're doing really well, you still get an A today." I appreciate his optimism, I really do. But there are days I just feel like taking to my bed (how convenient, since bedrest could easily be involved at some point in the not-so-distant future) and this is one of them. Still, let's focus on something positive: I will probably never hear somebody say "Well, Charlotte, it looks like you have a fourth-degree perineal tear from pushing this giant baby through your vagina!" And for that, and our healthy growing fetus, I am very grateful indeed.