My First Trimester

Alrighty, I have wanted to write a post about my First Trimester experience for a while now. Not because I think that mine is so special, but because I had some complications that aren’t really explained so well when you are at the doctor. Like many people, I found out more information from the trusty internet, than when I was at my doctor’s office.

Previously, I blogged about how I wasn’t happy that my future girlie doctor wasn’t listening to me. Well, what caused that was that I started spotting/bleeding the third day after I took the home pregnancy test. Talk about STRESS! And it happened right after I got home from a yoga class, so I completely freaked.

It’s hard to put into words, but essentially what it did was make us hesitant to even believe that we were going to be parents.

As you know, from the previous post, it didn’t stop. Eventually I made it to the doctor, they got me into an ultrasound appointment, and I was finally diagnosed: subchorionic hematoma. This is how it was explained to me: Subchorionic = outside of the chorion (sometimes referred to as the sac), Hematoma = blood clot.

What I learned is that it’s the most common ultrasound abnormality, which could result in a miscarriage, but typically it doesn’t. Your bleeding can resolve itself in a few weeks or go all the way until 20 weeks. The best explanation to that timing was when my doctor compared it to a large bruise that you might have on your leg. It takes several weeks for that to heal and the blood to re-absorb into the body, you can see it happening. It’s the same thing for this, only the blood has somewhere to go; which means you might encounter having to see it leaving the body. It’s frightening, but there isn’t anything you can do about it. It’s the most maddening bit of news you can get, but it’s also something that you didn’t do to yourself. Which was nice to hear because I was worried that my yoga practice was the cause.

The good and bad of it was that I was told to “take it easy.” Not that you really know what that means, but to me it was essentially laying on the couch ALL DAY! I guess it all worked out because I could sleep whenever I felt like it and the “morning sickness” didn’t attack quite as hard as I was preparing for. I was lucky that I could take the time to “relax” and feel like I was doing the absolute best to help remedy the situation.

If you have the luxury, I say, do what I did. But it’s not imperative. Being able to “take it easy” helped to settle my nerves a bit and relieve some of the stress. Which, I hear, is the best thing you can do for your baby.

For me, the bleeding stopped right about 11.5 weeks. When we went to our 12 week ultrasound there were no signs of it and we were elated! The relief was something euphoric, and I have to say after that, I was ALL IN! We were officially going to be parents. When I called my Mom to tell her the news, she cried and it was about the best day I could have had.