One more week!

Still here! The scan showed no worsening of the blood flow in the cord and no drop in amniotic fluid levels, so maybe we're stable for the time being?  The baby hadn't grown, but as it has only been 6 days since the last scan, the consultant didn't seem to think that was a problem.  My blood pressure is a little up, but again, he didn't seem to think it was anything to worry about at the moment (preeclampsia often develops as the placental problems accelerate).  At the moment, then, the pressure is off, and I'm feeling much more relaxed. Though obviously the general situation hasn't changed, and 27 weeks is still really early, there's nothing we can do at the moment, and it seems to be impossible to stay totally worried for a really prolonged amount of time.  I'm sure the panic will build over the course of the week, before the next scan, but at the moment it's nice to have another week.  Having seriously upped my protein intake (and consequentially calories), in a probably vain attempt to load up my bloodstream with goodies to make the baby grow, I am certainly getting a bit more of a tummy, and hopefully some of those inches are baby and not just lard!  In the meantime, we are back to the mundane task of clearing some space in the spare room, to allow us to have a load of really disruptive damp-proofing done - cue van hire and furniture removal to Bakewell.  Luckily I obviously have to take it easy so can't be too helpful with carrying heavy stuff, but we have very nice friends who can, and I will try and contribute via the medium of witty banter and brewing of tea.  Hurrah for brief normality!

11 days later...

That Thursday was a really hard day - we were at the absolute limit of deciding whether or not to do a late termination.  We had just those two days from Tuesday to Thursday to come to terms with the diagnosis of severe, early intra-uterine growth restriction (IUGR), to try and understand what it all meant, and to balance the chances of this baby living and doing OK, versus it all going horribly wrong - and defining what "horribly wrong" would be. After a more reassuring chat with the consultant, and an aminocentesis to check for chromosomal abnormalities, which came back negative, we decided that the odds of a good outcome were sufficient that we didn't want to terminate.  Actually reaching the point where termination no longer was an option relieved a lot of the pressure, at least initially.  There was nothing we could do, from then on, except wait and hope that the pregnancy would keep on going for long enough to allow the baby to grow as much as possible and develop as much as possible.  We had another scan on Friday, and while he had grown a little (from 437g/15 oz to 521g/1 lb 2oz) some of the other things they look for to see how he's doing had got a bit worse (amniotic fluid levels, end-diastolic flow in the umbilical artery).

So we're still here, but I have another scan on Thursday where we'll see whether I can go on another week or not (and further weekly scans for as long as possible).  He'll be 26 weeks on Thursday, so I really, really hope that it won't have got worse by then.  He's still so borderline in terms of viability that another couple of weeks could make all the difference, in terms of both survival and all the risks of things going wrong due to prematurity. These risks are massively freaking me out - the huge range of problems he could have, physical, mental or neurological, acute or chronic, severe or mild - all well-documented and all-too accessible in endless scientific articles accessible from UCL's electronic database of medical journals.

Will our son live? If he does, will he be horribly disabled?  Even if he is only mildly affected, how will that change our lives from the one with a "healthy baby" that I'd imagined? Awfully, these seem to be not concerns for the well-being of a little child, but selfish worries about how my life will be more difficult, sad and scary than I had planned.   Worse, it's me, or something about my body, that's causing this all in the first place.  Something, at some point, must have caused the placenta to start to malfunction. What was it?  Could I have done anything to stop it?  Will it happen again?  All the time I am worrying about what will happen to me, I am starving my son of the nutrients he needs to grow and become healthy.

There are positives.  As Chris points out, given the chance, we're going to do our damnedest to make sure that whatever problems our little one has, he gets as much help as possible to overcome them.  He's still there  - we've got past one scan.  May we get past many more before he needs to make an entrance to the outside world.  We're at UCLH, which is good at looking after tiny babies.  We'll get intensive parenting training from the neonatal intensive care unit, and lots of future checkups and care. We're not alone - not only do we have each other, which has been so important and will make sure that we are OK whatever happens, but our families and friends have already been so supportive.  So, fingers crossed!  Hopefully we'll still be here in a week.  Then another one?

So far....

I've decided to publish this - I wasn't going to, but think it might be a useful way to let people know what's going on with us.


I don't know exactly why I'm doing this.  I think maybe it might help me get my head around what's going on, and to process it all.  I wrote a single edition of a blog that I never published when my grandfather died and that helped a bit.  It's now languishing on an unused page of myspace or something.

Anyway, today I'm 24 weeks pregnant, with a little boy.  Two days ago we had an extra scan, and learned that our baby is severely growth retarded, down at under the 3rd percentile of weights for his age.  I wasn't expecting anything to be wrong.  We'd watched the scan pictures with excitement at seeing our little one again, his face, arms, tiny hands, brain...  I thought they'd offered the extra scan as they had mentioned at the 20 week scan that the nasal bone was short and that increased the risk of Down's.  I'd looked rather worried and I thought they'd offered the extra scan to reassure me.  Maybe they had.  The consultant and midwife certainly were surpised when our small baby (who we thought was just a bit younger than the dates) was still really small and, while he had grown, he was now still smaller compared with others of his gestational age.  I just thought that this meant he was even younger than we'd thought  - I got pregnant just after coming off the pill so didn't have any useful dates of last menstruation to give me any dates. As they continued to explain, gradually Chris and I realised the truth  - that it wasn't OK, that he was really very tiny and wasn't getting enough energy from me, so couldn't grow correctly, and probably never had.  Worse still, the problem would be exacerbated in the coming weeks, as he needed to grow more and more but wouldn't be able to get this nutrition from the failing placenta, so would become more and more compromised.  My baby is small and getting sicker.  He will need to be born at some point in the next 8 weeks, which will make him between 24 and 32 weeks of gestation at birth, and he will be really small for his age.  I'm really scared.