The following post is all medical, no money 
Just warning you...
Ok, so I haven't been here for a while, so you all don't know I am pregnant! Yay! It took a lot to get this far (14 1/2 weeks). Lost 30 pounds, took loads of medicines, prayed, etc.
In fact, out of frustration, I made this handy little collage:
By using NaPro Technology, with the Creighton Model, we had tried about everything. This means that we were trying to get my body to heal so it would naturally become pregnant by itself (with a little help from my husband lol), not gloss over my symptoms and implant an embryo. No offense, hopefully. The final thing we tried was to take Femara, a breast cancer drug, but only 4 pills on the third day of my period. This is being used off label, but a dr in Ireland is having success with it. My dr explained to me that it was similar to Chlomid, which helps prompt ovulation, but Chlomid had a side effect of making the endometris thinner, which might cause a miscarriage. The Femara would just kick start the ovaries but not have a side effect on the back side.
I was getting very frustrated, and my dr. thought the next thing to do was look into surgery. Dr. Hilgers in Omaha at the Pope Paul Institute has been doing groundbreaking surgeries for the past 30 years to get women's bodies able to get pregnant when they are having trouble. After looking at my fertility chart that I had been doing every night for about a year, he accepted me to come up for exploratory surgery. However, the day that I called up there to figure out what I needed to do (forms, time table, etc) I was 17 days past ovulation. At the beginning of my charting, my luteal phase had been all over the place, but the past three months, it had been a solid 14 days, so something was up. Plus, my nipples hurt. So I went and got a blood test at the hospital, and it was positive!
I had been taking progesterone level tests at 7 days past ovulation every month to chart how much I was producing, and that month was the highest so far, a 12, when it should have been in the 20's 7 days past ovulation. When I took the pregnancy test, they tested the progesterone as well, and it had already gone down to 10.7. We went to Salina the next day and my Dr. gave me a Progesterone shot and showed my husband how to do it so he could give them to me from now on. I was to take 2cc on Tuesdays and Friday and get my levels tested every other Tuesday. So far, the levels have steadily gone up, except one week they fell a small amount. This past test they were high enough, my dr felt that the placenta was taking over as it should, so she dropped me to 1cc, still twice a week.
This is natural progesterone in oil, and the first few times we did it, it came right out of the bottle into the syringe, and into my upper hip. Doing it that way really left welts and bumps on my hip because it was so thick, so after doing some research online, I found to warm it up to body temperature (either in my hand or in my bra), take the shot, and then put a warm washcloth there for a while, and that helped immensely.
Things have been going good. Got past the 1st trimester. Started telling a few more people. I had a dr. appointment scheduled for last Wednesday, and I told my husband that once that appointment was done and everything looked ok, I'd start telling everyone, not just family and friends.
Well, on Wednesday morning, I started bleeding, badly. I sneezed and blood went everywhere. Like enough blood to fill a pad in an hour. I was working at home that day, so DH came home and we rushed to the nearest non-triage hospital, 75 miles away...would have been faster but the governor on the pickup stopped us at 99mph. Every time I squeezed my stomach muscles, even just to sit up or anything, I could feel more blood coming out. The only thing was, it was only blood, no cramps and no clotting, so that was different from before.
We finally got in to the radiologist for an ultrasound, and the baby is ok, but I was diagnosed with a subchorionic hemmorhage. When we first saw that heartbeat, which is the first thing she looked for, we both started crying. That was such a relief. The hemmorhage is a pocket of blood that isn't supposed to be there between the outer sac of the placenta and the uterus, and when I sneezed it started bleeding, like popping a blister. The dr said no one knows why these develop, there is nothing I did that could have caused it (like lifting something heavy or anything like that) and there is nothing they can do for them, but she put me on bed rest for a week.
When I got home on Wednesday night, after we had eaten at Red Lobster to celebrate that I didn't miscarry and drove home, a bit slower this time, I had been sitting for over an hour and a half in one position, and when I stood up, I felt a very large clot coming down. Very large. Got to the bathroom and a blood clot the size of my hand came out. I freaked out again, but DH said it just looked like blood, nothing else. It was darker than fresh blood, but I was still freaking out, even though the doctor said I would continue bleeding until the rupture healed. DH finally told me that it looked like when you shoot a deer and you butcher it, the first place you hit it has that blood clot look, so that calmed me down. Thank goodness for redneck husbands. I didn't have the number for the after hours person at the Dr.s office, so after calling, my mother in law, who was at work at a different hospital, and she asked the OB staff in the hospital, they said they thought it was normal, but to have me call my hospital and they would give me the number for my after hours doctor,and so after all that, I got ahold of him, and he said it was normal too.
After that, I have only bled a very little. The next few days, maybe as much as a dime or a quarter? But now, I haven't bled at all for at least 3 days, but I am still on bedrest, blowing PTO I was trying to save for when I had the baby. My boss's boss told me "not to worry" about PTO, but they just say things like that. Like he is going to give me 3 extra days next summer of free PTO. He won't even remember he said that when I go back to work (hopefully) on Thursday. I go to the Dr. tomorrow to check things out, but won't get an ultrasound again until next week.
I ordered one of those fetal heartbeat monitors from ebay, and hopefully it will get here in a few weeks, so I can just calm myself down a bit if anything else funky happens.
Well, here is our baby, and hopefully he (I don't know, but I think it will be a boy) will just stay put for the next 6 months:
subchorionic hemmorhage
December 7th, 2010 at 06:50 pm
December 7th, 2010 at 07:04 pm 1291748656
A joyful blessing, indeed! Congratulations, and take care of yourself!
December 7th, 2010 at 07:20 pm 1291749618
Best wishes to you for a healthy, full-term baby.
December 7th, 2010 at 07:24 pm 1291749865
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December 7th, 2010 at 10:16 pm 1291760204
I am Catholic. I say the rosary, have many prayers that I have memorized and say frequently. I also say heartfelt prayers that are just a conversation with me and God. But, I have found that when you get right down to it, "Please God, no" is the most basic and heartfelt of them all.
December 7th, 2010 at 11:18 pm 1291763880
December 7th, 2010 at 11:50 pm 1291765827
As a fellow Catholic, I sought great comfort in St. Elizabeth following bouts of secondary infertility. I will keep you in my prayers daily! Laura
December 9th, 2010 at 08:44 pm 1291927480
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December 10th, 2010 at 11:07 pm 1292022423
Jerry
December 10th, 2010 at 11:37 pm 1292024223
We went in, and the baby is ok still, the hemmorhage is smaller, and I am back on bed rest. I have only bled a bit since then, and to be frank, am scared to go to work on Monday. But I will. I think this is just something I am going to have to deal with.
I won the bid for the fetal doppler machine today on ebay, and paid for it already, so hopefully the seller will drop it in the mail as soon as possible. Just being able to hear the heartbeat will help my state of mind if anything else happens.
December 11th, 2010 at 02:22 am 1292034150
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December 14th, 2010 at 10:46 pm 1292366816
Congrats on getting where you are and best wishes on a healthy, scare-free pregnancy from here.
December 17th, 2010 at 11:15 pm 1292627706
December 26th, 2010 at 04:31 am 1293337889
December 26th, 2010 at 07:18 pm 1293391136
The Dr said after looking at the ultrasound results from a few weeks ago, the hemorrhage is practically gone, maybe 1/4", but almost not big enough to see. It was over an 1" in diameter before. Whew. I think we made it through this one.
Thank you, everybody, for your prayers and interest in my saga
December 27th, 2010 at 05:33 am 1293428018
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December 29th, 2010 at 03:12 am 1293592332