I have a subchorionic bleed

Well, I am on bedrest right now. Wednesday afternoon I went to Alex's school to play the piano for the choir. Right as I stepped out of the car I felt a warm gush. I thought maybe I was peeing my pants at first, and then thought, no way, what's going on. So I sat back down in the car and had another gush. It was obvious then I was bleeding. So I headed home. It felt like forever trying to get home. You just wanted everyone to move out of your way! I think I was scared that I was going to keep gushing blood. Luckily it didn't. I get home and tell Todd to take me to the hospital. After cleaning up and changing we head out. We decide to call the doctor to see if he wants us to go his office instead of the hospital. He tells us to come to the office. As I walk into the office, blood gushes again. (Now I'm wishing I'd brough more clothes!) I hope I didn't scare any of the ladies in the waiting room. There were about three other people there as I walked in and then knelt down as I felt the gushing start. Ok, I hope I'm not going into too much detail about this. So, anyways, we get back to a room right away and wait for the doctor to come. The first thing he does is check for a heartbeat, and luckily it was there. He then feels the uterus and says that it feels larger than 15 weeks and measures me to about 19/20 weeks along. He says there's either bleeding or twins. I knew it was bleeding when he said that. Then we head to another room to do an ultrasound. They find that at the top of the uterus, there is a good amount of blood that has collected. The blood was causing the uterus to feel larger than it was. They diagnose it as a subchorionic bleed. From my understanding, a subchorionic bleed is a gathering of blood between the membranes of the placenta and the uterus. (In the picture at the right, the P stands for placenta, blue line surrounds the baby, and the red is obviously the blood.) They suspect a small seperation of the placenta has caused the bleeding. None of the bleeding was bright red, so that was a good sign that it was not actively bleeding, that old blood was just trying to drain out. So I am told that the blood could continue to drain or that it might just eventually be absorbed by the body. That is the hopes of it anyways. So I am now on bedrest to make sure that whatever caused the bleeding is healing or has healed and to keep an eye out on the bleeding. We will take it day by day. The baby is measuring right on schedule with a heart rate of 162 beats per minute. I go in next Thursday for another ultrasound to see how things are going. And I didn't get a good look, but it is my assumption from what I saw that this is a baby boy. I think I will ask on Thursday to be sure.

Ok, so, here's the ironic part about it all. We are on the military's health insurance, Tricare. They don't pay for routine ultrasounds unless medically necessary, or you could go to a military hospital to have it done, which would be in Layton. So, we were thinking maybe we would just have a surprise and never get to see this little one. Well, we got our ultrasound anyways. Not sure this is the way to go, though, to have an ultrasound! :)

As long as there is no bright red bleeding or cramping, the prognosis is usually good. So far so good here. It has been nice to sit in bed and have no worries. But it is getting a little old and getting to be boring. Especially with the prospects of warm weather coming. I also get to miss the ROTC closing social (formal event) and a barbeque. But the good part about it is that Todd has one week of school left, thank goodness it's not the middle of the semester! He's been great. Doing alot of work around the house and getting the children to help as well. Well, I think my novel has gone on long enough. Now I think I'll take a nap. Who knew you could get so tired from sitting around all day!