Happy Easter little ones

This Easter has brought so many mixed emotions.

We should have been celebrating a first birthday. We should have been celebrating a first Easter with three of our angels. It was also our first Easter without my grandfather.

Yet I spent most of the day focused on protecting the life of the little one I am carrying now. Part of me feels terribly guilty, but I also know that really, this little one is the only one I can still do something for. So for the first time in my life, I didn't go to church on Good Friday. I didn't go the the dawn service on Easter Sunday and I didn't have Easter lunch with my family. Instead, I stayed home, mostly on the bed, and nurtured the life inside me the best I know how.

People keep assuming I must be bored, but I'm lucky I guess in that I can always find something to occupy myself. My mornings are reading, I'm reading the second book of the Outlander series (again!) before the series begins in two weeks and I check all the news on my phone or tablet. Then I have been catching up on movies in the afternoon that I'd rather not subject hubby to! I have a nap, hubby's home and then the night flies by.

In between there are countless trips to the kitchen to refill my bottle and the resulting trips to the toilet, along with an increased appetite (yay!) and the resulting nausea.

My nerves are building as tomorrow's appointment draws closer. I really don't know what to expect. My spotting has all but stopped, but I don't know if that is a good thing. I'm just hoping that baby has a little more room to move and that everything is still going along.

Only tomorrow will tell.

Scans, heartbeats and bed rest

After our weekly scan on Tuesday, I am officially on bed rest. I've been told not to go to work and to spend at least 1.5 hours, 4 times a day in complete rest.

Our appointment this week was booked in correctly, for the first time, and we only waited about 10 minutes for the specialist. He still walked in and asked, 'Where are we up to?' I suppose this is normal, but how hard can it be to check your notes before you see a patient?

He had a little trouble finding baby and I was getting anxious, but then we saw that beautiful little flicker on the screen and I breathed a sigh of relief. He was able to measure the heart rate right away (166bpm) but found it difficult to get a good clear view of baby. Even still, he did a rough measurement (still not convinced of his accuracy) and said baby was measuring well. He didn't give us a number.

I mentioned that I was still spotting every day and he noted that there was a blood clot just below baby. He said this would either reabsorb or continue to bleed out and either was fine. That didn't worry him. What was worrying him was that my amniotic sac seemed to be all baby and all heart and very little fluid. This, he said, was not a good sign and although nothing can really be done at this early stage he ordered bed rest and increased fluid intake. Of course we checked Dr Google when we got home and this seems to be the only treatment for low amniotic fluid this early in pregnancy.

We actually had an ok week last week, but this has thrown everything into chaos again. I am now consumed with what the next scan will show and the helplessness of knowing that there is really very little we can do. The only glimmer of hope I am hanging on to is that his scanning technique is rubbish (as evidenced by our first horror scan), that he just couldn't get a good view of baby and that next week everything will be fine.

Once again, we wait.