FB just freaked me out
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Anonymous
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One of my FB friends (from high-school) lost her 28week fetus.
I'm 23 weeks pregnant and now totally freaked out. The weird thing is I am more ambivalent than not on this one and part of my fear is that i"ll loose her b/c I don't totally want her all the time and then would feel guilty forever. How common is fetal loss at 28 weeks? FB reports no reason for the loss. Just one day movement, next day none. We are both near 40...could that matter? |
Anonymous
| another question...how long should you NOT feel fetal movement before I start freaking out? I feel in the street yesterday and today my baby is moving but my belly hurts. and toe, and knee |
Anonymous
| fell! I'll stop sock puppeting myself now. |
Anonymous
I'm 34 weeks and still worry about this every day. Part of me wants this baby out today just so I'll know he's alive and won't just mysteriously die inside me. One of my best friends and his wife lost their baby at 36 weeks. No reason...cord wasn't compromised or wrapped; he came out looking perfect and her placenta seemed fresh and healthy. One night, she didn't feel him and was freaking out. My friend told her she was being a hypochondriac and to go to bed. She fell asleep but woke up to pee during the night and still didn't feel him. At daybreak, she went to the hospital and his heartbeat was indeed gone. I am haunted by their grief pretty much hourly and probably torture my poor baby by ingesting too much cold juice to wake him up and reassure me he's still there. My OB has never prescribed kick counts, but the Internet tells me its a good idea to do regular kick counts starting at 28 weeks. Decreases in movement can signal distress and allow them to save a baby before it's too late. |
Anonymous
| Oh I am with you....one of my family friends just lost hers at 21 weeks. Didn't announce it on FB though, but it freaked me out. I don't think it's very common and I know you just can't stress out over things out of your control, but it is scary. |
Anonymous
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BTW, my friend who lost her baby at 36 weeks was 43. I'm 41. My OB assures me that we'll take the baby early if my placenta seems to be calcifying (which I guess can happen with older moms) but its not that reassuring to me b/c my friend's placenta wasn't calcified at all. She is also a nurse (not OB, but still) and in very good shape, eats a vegetarian diet, etc.
Its one of those things I think we just all have to accept are possibilities that we can't directly control, like car accidents caused by other drivers or acts of nature. Just do the best you can to take care of yourself. For me, I think the hardest thing about being pregnant for the first time at 41 is knowing all that can go wrong because I've had so many friends who suffered fetal loss. When I was in my 20's, being pregnant meant having a bouncing baby 10 months later. Now I know acutely how lucky I am and don't take a single kick for granted. |
Anonymous
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Pregnancy is 8 months of fear that the baby won't stay in, followed by 1 month of wishing that kid would get the hell out.
Once they are born, it's a whole new set of worries. Try not to read too much and remind yourself that with each passing day your baby's health gets stronger and stronger. |
jindc
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My mother lost her first at 8 months. I try to say to myself that it's not genetic, it's the fact that 40 years ago, medicine wasn't as advanced. That if this were today, the baby would be fine. This is why I try to tell myself.
It's hard to explain to people who don't know anyone who has had a late loss how nervous you are. All. The. Time. Like, if I exhale (emotionally) something will happen. Odds are, the further along you are the less likely anything will happen. But it's a real fear (a fear that many people and care providers think we make up). It's hard to accept, but bad things happen....I hope tht you can be ok, OP. Maybe a kick counter would help? I have an ap on my phone that includes one. If you fell and are worried, you should definitely call your OB. It can't hurt. |
Anonymous
| It is exceedingly rare and horrible. |
Anonymous
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It happens. The risk of stillbirth (a loss after 20 weeks) is 1/160. Not to freak you out but it is a reality. There was a Washington post article on it a few years back http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/06/AR2009070602918.html
No one, including doctors, talk about it or the risks, because most of the time there is little you can do to prevent it. I've know people who have lost babies at 21weeks, 30 weeks and 40 weeks. Sad but reality. |
Anonymous
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OP here. Ok so 12:23 just freaked me out.
Re: Fall. I am having a lot of cramping today but other than that, I feel baby moving a lot and I"m eating spicy food so I"m guessing she'll flop around in about 30 minutes. And I see my OB on Friday. I didn't take that bad of a fall and Dr. Google tells me that if I fall bad enough to hurt baby, I too would be hurt. Re: still birth: I guess this is just another thing to take if it comes and hope that it doesn't. There are pains in this world I hope I don't have to feel. I was widowed in my early 20s and that's given me a look at loss that I don't want to repeat any time soon. |
Anonymous
Not so exceedingly rare. The article above said Holy Cross alone has 150+ stillbirths a year. That's nearly one every other day. The article is so true. We hear SOuch about trisomy risks and SIDS risks, which are both SO much more rare than stillbirth. More research is desperately needed. |
Anonymous
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I am 16 weeks pregnant and yes, it's hard. Cousins of ours lost one 2 months ago at 18 weeks. And everything seemed perfect, she said; it was a total shock. Another couple I know had a stillborn baby at 40 weeks. She was 39 (I'm 40).
With my first, I never stopped feeling nervous. I remember feeling marginally less nervous with each milestone. We saw the heartbeat with u/s at 8 weeks, i knew my risks went down. We heard the heartbeat with doppler at 12 weeks, risks go down again. First tri, brought more relief. 20 week scan showed a little quirk with my uterus that doc was reassuring about, but my nervousness skyrocketed. Then as the weeks went on and baby looked good on all subsequent u/s's, more and more relief. I remember feeling a slight relief at 24 weeks - some babies make it at this point. 28 weeks? Universally deemed "viability." I felt a big bit of relief. Boy, OP, am I ever familiar with that damn WaPo article. It came out 4 days or so before my due date with number 1. And yeah, haunted me. I went into the hospital early in labor because I had a ton of bleeding. Boy was I scared that "it was happening." Along the way, I realized that at each step, I was giving myself less and less permission to love the little creature that was growing inside of me. And between that pregnancy and this one I made myself consider this: yes, miscarriage is very common. 1 in 4 women will experience it, they say. and yet, you'd think the way we worry, it was the other way around. There is a 3 out of 4 chance, even from the beginning, that your baby will make it. Get through that scary first trimester and the realistic chances are like 50 - 1 that baby will be fine. Get to birth and it's more like 200+ to 1, and I'm not sure those statistics are completely clear, not sure how many instances of something going very wrong, unassisted childbirth, unplanned homebirth, etc, that are in those statistics and to be honest, I haven't tried to tease those numbers out because I don't want to arm myself with yet ANOTHER troubling statistic that will float through my head. With this one, I'm older. By any standard, my risks have gone UP. But I just can't bring myself to worry as much. Whatever happens is going to happen. We can't change what's written in the cards, we just have to meet each days and its joys and risk of heartbreak as it comes. OP, if you had a fall, call your provider, especially if your stomach is hurting. Very likely that all is well, but this merits a call. |
Anonymous
| PP again. I also have to say that the article above eventually ended up making me feel ANGRY. The man who wrote it was grieving, personally. He was saying that he and his wife would have benefitted so much from knowing exactly what his risks were. Well, now I know it's one more thing OUT OF MY CONTROL to worry and obsess about, and I wish I could put that genie back in the bottle. Yes, I want doctors to be paying attention to this, and researching the hell out of it, but I don't want this overdose of info. I don't want to worry about every disorder that could befall my fetus. I just don't want to hear it. Information is not power to everyone. To some of us, all this info can be debilitating. |
Anonymous
| Also, OP, so sorry about your loss of your husband in your 20's. How heartbreaking. You know, overwhelmingly, your chances are so high that everything will be fine. Please try to find a safe place in your mind to consider the risks objectively, then going back to living life. You know all to well: life is indeed short and the things that matter most can in fact be lost. It's hard to find purchase in a world so tenuous but we all have to manage. Your baby will be here, of this I'm nearly sure. Call your provider about your fall, as these things should be monitored if you hurt your stomach. It shouldn't wait until Friday. But, you're nearly certainly fine. |