Day 77: Thinking the worst

Hi everyone, I’m feeling very fragile / devastated / upset at the moment.

I’ve just been for the second scan.

Of all days, this was the day that T had to screw up and get the wrong time for the appointment. It was all a misunderstanding. When he was leaving in the morning he asked what time it was, and I said I thought it was 11:50, and then I checked the calendar (we have an online shared calendar) and it said 10:50. He didn’t hear the 10:50 and kept thinking it was 11:50. There was a pop up on the calendar (reminders pop up on our phones) but he said he didn’t see that either. So when I was sitting waiting for the scan at 10:50 and texted him to see where he was, he wasn’t intending to leave work until 11:00. (He works further away from the hospital than I do.) It would have taken him too long to get to the hospital so I said just leave it (as he’d have been 25 min late to the appointment and it would be over) but I was just not happy that he wasn’t there. He usually checks the calendar for things so I don’t understand why he didn’t today, and why the reminder didn’t pop up.

I had the scan… Remember from last week that this was a follow up scan as it “wasn’t clear”. The thing that I find frightening about it all is that they don’t really tell you stuff. They don’t say whether it’s good news or bad news or whatever. They just don’t tell you so you start thinking that something is wrong.

So I already have some kind of complication – fibroids, they think – that makes it more difficult to scan. (I don’t see why they didn’t pick this up in previous scans and operations – they mentioned something about it but then decided not to remove it in the last op, if it’s the growth I’m thinking of.) The sonographer dug around a bit and then found the baby, and she seemed quite positive about it in that it was just a blob with a heartbeat like it was last week. She seemed to think this was fine, but then she’s not the same sonographer as last week.

Thing is, Pizza Baby has not really grown much. Last week he was 5.3mm and this week it looks like he’s 6mm which puts him at 6 weeks 3 days. I’m supposed to be 7 weeks 6 days, ie almost 8 weeks. I don’t know if this is something to worry about or not, but they made me feel like it was.

The doctor had to go out and speak with someone else about it. (Doesn’t it always make you feel better when that happens?) They first of all said I don’t have another scan until 12 weeks. And then they said actually can you come back next week and we will do another scan. So there’s now another scan next week (that would be one day off 9 weeks). That’s the third early scan which is not something that makes me feel better at all, because usually they just do one scan at 6-7 weeks (like my one last week) and discharge you to the GP. This time they’ve decided that I need monitoring, because the doctor said that they were concerned that the baby wasn’t growing enough.

Oh and then just to make me feel even better, he then wanted to check with me that I knew what to do if I had any bleeding, which was to go to my local A&E.

How about that for making me feel better about the whole thing?

I said is it bad news or what are we saying, and he said it was just that they were worried that the baby wasn’t growing enough. But I saw his little heartbeat on the ultrasound. The sonographer said there was a foetal pole or something and the heartbeat looked fine. For 6 weeks 3 days.

I want to think that it’s just the doctor being over cautious.

I want to think that it’s just that I’m quite short so the baby is smaller than average.

But I just feel terrible. Terrified. Am I going to have a miscarriage? That’s what they seem to be saying. They seem to be suggesting that I should expect some bleeding. They aren’t happy to discharge me back to the GP and they want to scan me again next week. Is this just prolonging the inevitable?

Of course a quick google of “Baby not growing at 8 weeks” throws up more bad stories than good. (No good, actually.) I don’t know what to make of it. Part of me thinks maybe it’s just a small baby but part of me thinks I’ll go back next week and they’ll say the baby still isn’t growing.

And I’m angry at T for not being there. He’s all upset now as I kind of shouted at him over the phone. He should have been there. I know he didn’t do it on purpose and he planned to be there, but I’m upset that I had to go through it on my own.

As I was going out, the nurse called to me and asked if I was okay. And whether I wanted to sit down for a moment. That just made me feel worse… It made me feel like maybe they had said that they were expecting me to miscarry. I don’t know why she would have said that otherwise. She’s very nice. But I don’t understand.

Why can’t they just say one way or the other?

The doctor and sonographer both told me they had to wait for longer to see if the baby would grow.

That’s what this is all about… waiting.

I don’t want to have to go through a loss. I don’t want to have to tell my parents that the good news I told them last weekend doesn’t apply any more. I’m just really upset.

I’m going home now as I don’t feel like I can stay at work when I’m this upset.