Baby Pearson: A journey through a pregnancy with a fibroid

Welcome to Baby Pearson's blog! I actually created this blog account in the very early stages of our pregnancy and so much happened since then that it unfortunately took this long to get back to starting it. As you know, Brian and I are expecting a baby boy! We are thrilled about growing our family but we have unfortunately experienced some challenges throughout the same time period (loss of my dear Grandma, family illnesses, work challenges for Brian and a fibroid for me) that have made it hard for us to truly experience the joy we expected to feel at this time. Although my original intention of keeping a blog through my pregnancy was to keep our family and friends updated on this major event in our lives, it has now become important to me to also write about my fibroid experience as I have had such a hard time finding information online and I'm hoping other expectant mothers will benefit from learning about my experience.

Starting a pregnancy blog at 32 weeks and 3 days means that there is a lot of catching up to do so know that along with providing updates I will also be going back and forth through my pregnancy timeline to discuss my fibroid challenges.

So here we go! Our dear baby boy is due June 2nd and we are well on our way to getting ready for his arrival. When I say ready I actually mean we have most material things that we have been advised to get. This is in no small part due to my sister and mother (our eternal gratitude goes out to them and more details will come later about how they have help us prepare in such a small amount of time). As most first parents will tell you, however, you are never quite ready for a baby no matter how hard you try. I have come to understand that although you will be able to prepare by purchasing most of the material things, you will never really feel ready when it comes to to the emotional and educational side of things. Although when it came to the materials things, a few emergency trips to the hospital forced us to get ready much sooner than we had expected. You'll soon get all the details on those experiences. :-)

Now let's go back to the beginning...I had no idea I had a fibroid until my first ultrasound when the ultrasound technician found a large mass near my ovary. At this time, the radiologist believed they had found a rather large ovarian cyst and my OB/GYN immediately referred us to a perinatologist (a high risk pregnancy specialist) for further assessment. This was a terrifying phone call to get at such an early time in the pregnancy. At the same time I got these news, my Abuelita (Grandma) was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack so emotionally this was quite a stressful time. I quickly scheduled the follow-up appointment and after an evaluation with a much more advanced ultrasound machine, the perinatologist determined I actually had a rather large fibroid on the outside of my uterus. This was a relief as I didn't have to worry about anything malignant and I was told it was probably there for a long time but I was just not aware of it. I was not told the size at this visit and for some reason I didn't even think of asking but many visits later we found it was actually around 7.8 cm which we was described as the size of a small grapefruit. It was explained to me that the fibroid was located on the lower side of my uterus and close to my cervix, sitting right on my rectum (fun, yes!). The good news: the baby was doing great, which were thrilled about. The bad news: I would now need to be monitored throughout my pregnancy to track how the fibroid moved as the baby grew to see if it would get in the way of my cervix which would then affect whether I had a natural delivery or be forced to have a C-section.

So many questions came to mind! Is this new? Has this been here all along? Since I had been originally told it was an ovarian cyst I had done plenty of research in advance of this visit to get familiar with what that would mean, however, I had not done research on fibroids. The doctor said this new (to me) invader had been on my uterus for some quite some time but obviously I had no idea. So how did I not know I had such a large fibroid? Should I have have known before now? So the doctor started asking questions: "Have you been experiencing very painful cramps?" Yes! Debilitating at times and I had even had to miss work a few times in the last few years because of it! "Have you been experiencing pain during intercourse?" Yes! And a few other questions which applied to me that I can't recall now. I was then mad! For years I had explained these things to previous OB/GYN doctors and they all explained it away as symptoms of a tilted uterus. None of them ever asked more questions to look at other possible reasons for my symptoms. I had no reason to question this before but now it all made sense. By the way, when I've told my new OB/GYN's and perinatologist this story they laugh and nod as they imply those doctors should have known better. As frustrated as I am about that however, the truth is, based on my research only 10-20% of women with fibroids end up having complications related them during pregnancy so even if it had been found earlier I'm not sure any of them would have recommended doing something about it in advance. And at this point in the process, there were no serious complications other than monitoring the location so for now it was just something relatively manageable to monitor. So I left the office with some very basic information but I knew I had a lot more to research to do on this new topic.

To keep this first blog at a reasonable length I'll stop our story there but stay tuned for much more on our pregnancy and fibroid journey.

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STATS: As of our last perinatologist visit 3 weeks ago our baby boy was 3.3 oz. and was measuring pretty average when compared to other babies on all categories they keep track of. He didn't let us see his face during that visit and the tech told us we probably won't be able to see much of it from here on out as he's getting so big <so sad>. As of our last OB/GYN visit, yesterday, our baby's heartbeat was 140 per minute. Our next perinatologist visit is tomorrow so I hope to have more baby stats updates soon.
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Ultrasound pics: Since we're so far along I've included ultrasound pics from throughout the pregnancy so you can see how our baby boy has grown.