I'm a few days late to update this, and the word has mostly spread about our appointment with the doctor on Friday. She checked everything out, and it looks like bed rest has been doing its job and significantly slowed the progress that my body has been making. We're to continue as we have been until 37 weeks when we reach full term, and at that point, I'll be fully released to live life as a functional human being again! We're just two days away from 34 weeks, which is the sucking reflex milestone, so we're very happy to reach that and go beyond. Three more weeks to the finish line!
I don't think we've fully explained to anyone the nitty gritty details of what's happening, and for posterity and clarity, I've decided to pull back the curtain and lay out the medical truth of it - dignity be damned! :)
Here's the run-down as I, a non-medical professional, understand it...
Disclaimer: Wordiness and extreme sharing below!
A few points to make all this make sense:
-Cervical thinning/shortening is normal in later pregnancy as the body gets ready to deliver. It usually begins around 35-36 weeks, as I understand it, and should start thinning from a thickness of 3.5-4 cm.
-Funneling is when the cervix begins to open from the inside out. It literally looks like a funnel. This can be due to several factors, but in my case is likely due to a high level of amniotic fluid that's causing extra downward pressure. This isn't really normal and shouldn't really happen, but it's not a HUGE deal...
-The purpose of bed rest, in my case, is to keep pressure off of the cervix so it doesn't thin further and to avoid stimulating contractions, which I seem to get from sitting upright, standing, or walking around for more than a few minutes.
Now for the timeline:
29 weeks (when this all began)
-The Friday we went in for that fateful, sudden appointment, my cervix was measuring 1.8 cm with significant funneling, which is about half the thickness it should have been at that point. Coupled with the contractions I was having, it meant I was beginning signs of preterm labor. This is why we were sent immediately to the hospital to monitor the contractions and receive the steroids for Baby B's lungs. If the contractions had been or become regular overnight, they would have administered medications to stop the contractions, but luckily, this was not and did not become the case! Therefore, they sent us home after the second steroid shot with instructions to stay on bed rest and come back if the contractions got worse.
-By the time we saw the perinatologist the following Tuesday (still 29 weeks), my cervix had thinned further to 1.5 cm with the funneling, but they considered this 'no change' because it was such a slim difference. This appointment included a very thorough sonogram that showed our boy is very healthy with a very strong heart and a working diaphragm, and confirmed that the kidney fluid is at a normal and insignificant level. Baby B even gave us a thumbs up to let us know he's doing fine!
31 weeks
-We saw my doctor again, but she didn't check my cervix so as not to agitate it because I hadn't been having any significant or regular contractions. This was a no-new-is-good-news appointment, and I was just glad to get out of the house for an hour!
33 weeks (Friday's appointment)
-My cervix has shortened to 1.2 with just a little bit of funneling after four weeks of strict bed rest, which is so-so on what we wanted to happen. It would be great if it would stay put and stop thinning at all, but this slight shortening is okay too. As I said before, we're just staying the course and keeping up the bed rest until 37 weeks, and we'll see the doctor for a check-in again at 35 weeks to make sure things continue to go well.
So that's the long and gritty version of what's been going on with my inner workings! I'm not usually one to share things about my body parts, but in this case, I thought it might help our baby boy's grandparents to know the full run-down rather than being vague. Plus, I'll probably want to remember all this stuff one day, and it helps to have it written down somewhere. So long as the World Wide Web doesn't crash...
