Irritable Uterus

Pregnancy has its ups and downs and last week was definitely a down week. I had two nights of very painful cramps to the point where I seriously thought I was going into labour. It can be quite common for pregnant ladies to experience Braxton Hicks (or "practice contractions"), but any more than 6 per hour is cause for concern. (I timed them and had 13 in one hour - and they really hurt!).

Time for another trip to the hospital, where I found out that my old friends the fibroids were playing up again and I now had an "irritable uterus". (I know how it feels, I was pretty irritable myself after 2 nights with no sleep). Irritable uterus is a condition where the womb contracts without causing any changes to the cervix or bringing on labour. IU symptoms are either painless Braxton Hicks contractions or painful labour-like contractions.

Of course, one difficulty is that IU can lead to preterm labour and it can be difficult to distinguish between the two. Preterm labour would be a disaster for me at this stage as premature babies do not generally survive until they are at least 24 weeks old (I'm currently 19 weeks). Either way the pain was too much to bear so something had to be done.

I left hospital with some interesting new drugs to try. The first was Nifedipine which is normally prescribed for angina, and basically works by blocking calcium absorption into muscles. (Calcium causes muscles to contract, so by blocking the calcium, the muscles should relax. The heart is a muscle, but so is the uterus, so I guess the same principle applies). The second drug was Daflon, normally given for piles. Apparently Daflon opens up the blood vessels and allows the blood to circulate more freely, which should reduce the pressure on my fibroids.

Well, two days on the medicine and a lot of rest later, I feel much better. The cramps have gone, I can stand up straight again and I don't feel like an elephant is permanently stamping on my belly. And on the plus side, getting piles is another common pregnancy side effect which I have yet to suffer. So at least with these meds I should be able to cross piles off the list!

http://www.irritable-uterus.com/

Bump Watch: Week 17

We have decided to track the growth of the bump in pictures. For one thing it will help me establish when I’ve moved out of the “who ate all the pies” stage (a bit porky but not enough for anyone to give me a seat on the bus) into a more obviously pregnant shape. It probably won’t be too much longer according to my iPhone application, which confidently tells me the baby is now 5 inches long. That said, it also gives me a week-by-week approximation by comparing the baby’s size to a piece of fruit or veg. So what was a lime in week 11 and spent an improbably long time as a navel orange is now as big as a turnip. Personally I thought turnips were smaller than navel oranges. Maybe they were really thinking of a swede?!

Practice Makes Perfect

There's nothing like getting a bit of practice in when it comes to babies. Dom's work colleague, Landri, has a son called Isaac. Here's Dom trying his parenting skills at Isaac's first birthday party. Looks like a natural to me!

Lumps, Bumps and Trumps

As far as pregnancy symptoms go, I'm almost a textbook case. Super sensitive breasts, constipation, non-stop weeing and morning sickness. Yup, I've had them all. Thankfully most of these particular complaints melted away around week 8. Now I'm faced with a couple of new challenges: fibroids* and indigestion.

Sorry if it's TMI (too much information), but I find it fascinating (and slightly horrifying) that my insides look like a bag of golf balls. Every time I go for a scan the doctor dutifully measures all of the fibroids, the biggest of which is now 9cm x 7cm and growing. If I lie down I have got a seriously wonky stomach, with one bump low down and one - thanks to Mr Enormous Fibroid - by my belly button. At this rate I'm going to have a camel's hump not a bump!

Fibroids are actually pretty common and there's nothing you can do about them during pregnancy apart from pray they won't get much bigger or cause too many problems later on. (Thanks to my GP on this score, for pointing out that fibroids can get as big as footballs and result in a birth that makes a Nightmare on Elm Street look like a nice day out at the shops).

I have a feeling Mr Enormous Fibroid is now starting to move in on my stomach's territory as for the last two days I've had indigestion pains, another well-documented pregnancy symptom. So I've stocked up on the only indigestion tablets allowed for pregnant ladies and a large supply of peppermint tea. Fingers crossed!

*Fibroids are non-cancerous tumours which grow outside or inside the womb. (Outside in my case!)