WK12: Day 3 - Emotions are Running High

Wow what an emotional day today was! Luckily I woke up feeling better as I spent the whole of yesterday off work in bed. My migraine finally decided to subside in the afternoon after 72hours. Mart and I were up at the hospital at 9 am this morning to see the specialist sonographer. We spent the first half and hour or so in a room with him and the midwife running through the pregnancy again being asked the same questions on fertility treatment and whether anyone had spoken to us about the risks and the options we had. I’d been waiting for this bit... I wanted to point out my frustration of the fact that we hadn’t had any contact from the hospital for two weeks, which I thought was quite odd as I knew he was about to launch into risks and reduction. You really would think that if this is the route they encourage that it wouldn’t have taken someone two weeks from the first scan to sit us down and discuss this. It almost seems like a life time since the last scan two weeks ago, but I decided to keep my mouth shut as I do understand NHS hospitals and staff are busy and I’m very grateful for the care I receive. After making us aware of all the risks invloved in a multiple pregnancy he gave us the following options.

1. Termination of the whole pregnancy
2. Selective reduction (probably of the monochorionic pair)
3. Continue with the pregnancy and take it one step at a time.

It was a lot of information to take in in such a short space of time and even though we had read up about all of the risks he had brought up and decided to continue with the pregnancy prior to today, it was very emotional to have to be bombarded with it all in such a matter of fact fashion. I hoped nothing had changed in Martins head about the whole thing as I looked to him to get the reassurance I needed to confirm with the specialist that we had decided to go with ‘option 3’ as he had put it. He then went on to make sure I understood that all aspects of the care would be difficult including scanning and problems detecting growth restriction and malformations. He then spoke to me again about the risks of pre-eclampsia, anaemia and bleeding. We confirmed with him again that we would like to continue with the pregnancy so we went off for the scan.

The scan then presented its own emotional twists and turns. Quite soon into the scan the sonographer thought that he saw an empty sac so told us that ‘nature had taken its course’ I thought that’s what I heard him say so I quickly jumped on him asking him what exactly he’s meant by that. He said that one of the babies had died. I wasn’t ready for the way I reacted to this news. My body went numb and a wave of sadness washed through me. I started to cry (as quietly as possible) as I knew that this was going to be a possibility all along. As much as you mentally prepare yourself for these things, you can never tell how it’s really going to feel. It made me realise just how attached I was to these tiny little babies inside me already. I couldn't look at the screen after that. The thought of losing any of the others after seeing them wasn’t easy for me. Mart looked at me and stroked my hand, but also shook his head as if to say, it’s ok the baby is fine. Just as he did that the sonographer stopped and said ‘oh I’m really sorry I think I’ve made a mistake, here’s the fourth baby and it has a heartbeat’ he basically just couldn’t see the third sac and baby when he initially looked. What a flip of emotions in such a short space of time. The rest of the scan went fine. All babies roughly measure 59mm with all body parts appearing normal. Their nuchal translucency was also measured to screen them for Down Syndrome. These all came back as 1:4503 which is very good. 

We left feeling a mix of emotions. We are so happy that everything is ok, but it was such an emotional drain on the mind and body. I really hope we aren’t going to feel like this every time we go for a scan!

So here are the babies. The scan pics aren’t very good this time.

This is baby one who is lying on my lower left 

These are the twins who are both on my right 

Finally here’s number four who is above baby one on my left.