Fair warning, if the title of this post is not appealing to you… don’t expect the content to be any different.
I haven’t told many people about my experience during my first trimester, but now that we are approaching the 30-week mark, I’m feeling much more confident about baby boy’s soon arrival! Unfortunately, the first half of my pregnancy, was not filled with the same comfort.
Also, just to be clear. Baby boy is perfectly safe and has grown throughout a healthy pregnancy once the hemorrhage occurred and healed.
Once Bert and I returned from Japan, we did not keep the pregnancy a secret. I just HAD to tell our close friends and family. We are pretty close, so they would figure it out on their own anyhow. As soon as I would have told my sister in law that I wasn’t running in our next marathon with her, haha, she’d have known for sure.
I don’t regret sharing early because those who we told would be those who were there for us god forbid if anything went wrong. Besides, nothing is a “secret” in this small town of ours anyhow.
I went to the doctor for the first time at 5 weeks.. after all I had known I was pregnant just 7 or 8 days after conception (hard to determine since we conceived in the US and found out on the other side of the world!). We were heading to Florida to visit Bert’s parents and wanted to make sure for when we shared the exciting news. We couldn’t see anything in the sac yet, but pregnancy was confirmed!
Once we returned from Florida, we went back to the doctor for my 6 week appointment to confirm the pregnancy was not ectopic, where the fetus develops outside the uterus, usually in a fallopian tube. But, all was good! No heartbeat yet, which is normal, but “it” (at the time) was in there. Huge milestone of relief for any parent-to-be!
It was my 8 week + 3 day appointment. I went to confirm the heartbeat. Bert was not allowed because… Covid. At this appointment, our doctor informed me that I had a subchorionic hemmorrhage (aka hematoma/bleed) on the lining of my uterus. Having to leave the office and explain this to the other parent of this little boy or girl, took some accepting. I didn’t want to scare him, but I also had to understand and portray the severity of what we were possibly about to encounter. Miscarrying at this point, was definitely a possibility. It brings tears to my eyes just typing about how I felt in that moment and knew that fear wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. The “good” thing is that apparently 30% of pregnancies have these and the mother doesn’t even know! Like, what?! 30%… how have I not heard of this? When a woman experiences light to heavy early bleeding, it can often be this hematoma just running its course and “dissolving” on its own. My OB said this happened to her in the middle of lunch at Panera! Good lord. Can you imagine? For me, I was just standing at my microwave, and thank GOD I already knew it was a possibility.
Anyways, many of you wondered and some asked me why I had stopped running. As I was running 5 miles a day with no problem early on. NO… the running did not cause this… eye roll for those of you who are thinking this… the hematoma started to pool from the very beginning. Where the issue falls is if it does not self-dissolve and continues to grow with the baby. Some can grow to be just as large as the uterus… or more commonly the issue is rooted from it rupturing and is not allowed to heal and keeps filling and rupturing and so on. It’s a hematoma, so the way I understood it is a bruise that pools blood. Like one of those purple bruises just under your skin. If you keep punching yourself in a bruise, it’s probably not going to heal very well. So I was on bed rest for a few weeks. TMI, but no sex, no exercise, literally bed rest to its fullest definition. Which falls about the middle of March… aka quarantine… so I was completely thrown off my rocker when it came to maintaining any sort of muscle I had built up that would help me maintain good practice for the next 7 months. I had just returned from a 7 day extensive back country snowboard trip in Japan just days after running a marathon. I was READY to be the “fit” mom. Which you may see as selfish for it to be a major disappointment, but for someone who has not gone more than a couple of weeks without distance running in years and uses exercise as an outlet to tackle mental blocks as many of you do, it was pretty challenging. And not to mention the worry of the baby. Day in and day out. I’m thinking about how people are probably judging me for being so “lazy” literally posting from my chair every day for weeks on end, and not exercising. I couldn’t even sit at home and drink my wine like many of those who were suffering from the quarantine blues were doing, haha!
I wanted to write this because NOT ONE of my mom friends, not even the nurses, nurse practitioners, etc. had heard of this, when it’s oddly so common. If one person reads this that ends up in a doctor’s office in their first trimester one day hearing they have a “hemorrhage”, maybe it won’t be as scary as it was for me. Just go home and enjoy that Netflix and hope for the best!
After all, most of these do dissolve on their own and result in a healthy pregnancy with a healthy baby, but we all of course naturally jump to the thought that we will be one of those where it does not.
xo Katie
