Being open and transparent can be difficult sometimes when I’ve made my life into a job and things don’t go all that great. But none the less eventually I will share it. As most of you know, the past week or so has been pretty hectic and shitty and I’d taken some time off to just recuperate and focus on my body and Ophelia.
I just want to say how thankful I am for all your messages, I literally received over a hundred and I wasn’t able to reply to all of you, but I read each one and it was so lovely that so many of you wished us well.
So, to fill you in fully on what’s been going on, (if you haven’t been blessed with a rambling stream of consciousness with a dog filter on my face already) I had my 28-week growth scan and everything was fine, she was even weighing just on the edge of too big. But about two days later I stopped feeling her moving around, before she would be constantly winding me or kicking my bladder to the point id leak a little (So glamourous).
But I’d noticed I’d not felt her move in a few hours, so I called up MAU (Maternity Assessment Unit) because I know how important the movements your baby shows can be. Any change in your baby’s movements can be a sign of a problem, even if they are still moving but not at the same rate as before, or it feels different, they could be at a serious risk. A reduce in movements can be directly linked to still birth, which is any expectant mother’s nightmare, so it doesn’t matter if you feel like you’re pestering people, it is better to be safe than sorry.
The MAU midwives told me to come straight in to be put on the CTG monitor and
arranged for a doppler to be done the following day. Every midwife I see reassures me that it doesn’t matter how many times I call them or how many times I visit and get checked i should always never hesitate. But still, you feel like you’re constantly pestering them like a buzzing gnat. Still, I went in the following day for my doppler.
A doppler is an ultrasound scan used to measure the blood flow to the baby, the uterus and the placenta.
It turned out that she hadn’t been moving much because my placenta was not working sufficiently, and the blood flow was not getting to her fully. Sort of like a hose, if you bend a hosepipe the water can still trickle through but at a slow pace and at a decreased amount, this was what was happening with the blood vessels, they were providing her with enough oxygen to survive but not enough for a normal pregnancy. Therefore, my pregnancy very suddenly became high risk and a happy hopeful me turned into a blubbering, paranoid, psychotic.
The midwives and doctors all talked me through what it meant, that it doesn’t necessarily mean the worst or that she’s suffering, just that they need to watch her constantly and be prepared that at any point she might need to come out.
I was 30 weeks pregnant exactly. At 30 weeks Ophelia is around the size of a large cabbage (although considering she was chunky she was probs more like the cabbage in Wallace and Gromit) and weighed around 3lbs. She is fully developed but there is some fine tuning to be done in order for her to survive without intervention, her lungs still need to mature and intricate details are still being worked on like the grooves in her brain. However, if she was to be born now she would have a 97% chance of survival with medical intervention, she would have to stay in ICU until she could breathe without machinery but there is no guarantee she wouldn’t have problems or develop serious conditions later on in her life.
Still 97% survival was all that mattered.
From then on, we have been going to the hospital every single day to be monitored. The CTG shows she is still fairly happy being inside my womb and although I cannot feel her moving as much she is doing fine. We have been having doppler scans twice a week and the most recent one we had showed a significant improvement. The blood flow to her is increasing each time we go to the hospital and she’s just started to move around like she used to before.
We can breathe a sigh of relief now knowing that we still have a few more weeks 
(hopefully) before she arrives so can hurriedly start painting the nursery. The blood flow to her is consistently being monitored and her heart rate is being measured daily to make sure she is not in any distress and that is all we can do. All we can do is wait and hope that everything will be fine, but I have a positive view and think it will be fine, she will just be joining us a lot quicker than we originally expected!
In the meantime, I’m literally exhausted, I’ve been napping repetitively and managed to get through 13 reasons why in just 3 days (which to my sister would be an absolute failure). There literally isn’t really much more to tell, we are taking each day as it comes but each day she is moving around a bit more and my body is showing signs of improvement.
Again, thank you all so much for your messages over the past week, its meant a lot! And I’ve actually rather enjoyed not being on my phone or on social media for a while, its been quite refreshing for me, but as much as I wanna lie around watching reruns of Come Dine With Me I have to get back to doing normal work.
But it is important to take time away sometimes, and these past few days of recuperation have been revitalising and enabled my body to continue to grow my chubby cheeked and large nosed Ophelia.
xoxo
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