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I don't know if I am pregnant for sure

On March 28 me and my boyfriend had intercourse. Now I think I am pregnant.

Tomorrow if I am I will be 2 weeks. I have pain in my stomach, I sleep a lot, eat all the time, and have to use the bathroom. I took a pregnancy test but it came out negative. I don't get sick.

I just want to know if I am pregnant


Amber

possibility of down sydrome

I just went for my 20-week sonogram...up until this point everything seemed to be fine. My 13 weeks blood work was fine. When I went for my sonogram the other day 19 weeks, everything was fine with the baby the doctor said, but it seemed his lemur bone was small in comparison to the head.

He scared me so very much and continued to say that this was just one marker for downs...everything else was fine...unfortunately, he was very rude with all my questions and just blew them off, but I do have questions...

He feels that it is no "big deal"; the odds were 1 in 683 since I am 32 years old. He did not suggest an amino...


maggie

Pre-eclampsia worries for pregnancy number 2

I recently found out I'm pregnant and although it wasn't planned, I am happy about having another baby. I have four-year-old now and he is healthy and wonderful.

I had pre-eclampsia with him as well as pregnancy induced hypertension (part of having pre-eclampsia) and gestational diabetes. I even had to take insulin. I spent months on bed rest and had severe swelling. I was induced at 36 wks due to have a severe headache and worry that I would go into Eclampsia.

My induction started on a Monday at 8:30am and I finally had him on WEDNESDAY at 2:30am by c-section. I was on Mag Sulfate IV and insulin drip, and Pitocin with Cervadil. After laboring for all that time and with the Pitocin I had only dilated to 1 1/2 cm even with the Pit and Cervadil and having my membranes ruptured by the OB/GYN.

It was extremely scary and stressful experience because I have never been sick before and it was awful to be so sick and worry about my baby’s health on top of being sick myself. I was praying to God as they wheeled me into my c-section to make sure my baby was ok and thankfully God made sure he was. He came out wonderfully and had no breathing difficulties or blood sugar problems. Despite being born early he is bright, intelligent and above average in ht and normal wt.

So, as you can see it is stressful and worrisome to be pregnant again but I am optimistic that we will be fine and not have so many problems this time. I pray that we will be and if you would like to say a prayer for us too that would be great.

I wish you a safe and happy pregnancy and just know that even when things are not going as planned, you can still have a wonderful healthy baby so hang in there!


T

Drowning for Love

I was about 16 weeks along in my pregnancy when I started coughing. I went in to the doctor when I came down with a severe headache and couldn't get out of bed. He told me I had bronchitis after listening to my chest. He sent me home with antibiotics (a Z-pack). I took those for the 5 days and then five days later, when they still should have been working, I got stabbing sharp pains in my right side and shoulder.

I went in to the ER and the x-rays showed that I had pneumonia. They sent me home with more antibiotics, amoxicillin. Five days later, I followed up with my doctor and he said that it wasn't getting better and he thought they should have given me something stronger. He gave me more antibiotics, Keflex and a shot of antibiotics for good measure. The next day, I wasn't able to urinate. Within the next 5 days I had gained 14 pounds in water weight. I again went in to the doctors and he ordered an ultrasound of my kidneys, which I made an appointment for 2 days later.

The night before my appointment, I was so miserable and having trouble sleeping and breathing so I went into ER again. There they told me that I had Renal failure (kidney failure). They hospitalized me for a week all the while the IV's they were giving me caused me to gain another 40 pounds in water weight. They got my kidneys working again and sent me home where I thought I would die if I had to deal with that much extra weight for 4 more months.

Two days after I got home, I woke up with my hands and feet so swollen that I couldn't shut my fingers all the way or curl my toes. During that day, I also started getting winded just trying to eat. That night I again went into the ER because I was having so much trouble breathing. This time when they took x-rays, they decided to send me on life flight to a hospital about 300 miles north and told me that they were worried that I had severe Preclampsia and that the only cure was delivery and that I was too early in the pregnancy to save the baby.

I was scared that I was going to die on that flight. I was suffocating. I had to be sitting completely upright in order to feel a little satisfaction from the air I was taking in. They had to put a central IV line (it is run directly in to an artery in your neck and extends almost to the tip of the heart) in with me lying flat and they didn't have time to numb it because I was having so much trouble breathing. I did make it up to the other hospital where they put me on lasex to clear out some of the fluids of my lungs, because by the time I got there my lungs and heart were drowning in it.

They still thought that maybe things would start getting better if they could clear some fluids off. So two days after getting into ICU there, I felt a little better and was able to eat. I was hopeful that we wouldn't have to deliver. Then, later that day, I took a turn for the worse and they had to put me on a ventilator and made the decision to induce me. I delivered a beautiful 5-month-old fetus that lived for just an hour or so.

Immediately after that, all the fluids started just pouring off. I dropped 45 pounds of water weight over the next 5 days. Since then, I have racked my brain as to what could have been done differently. I tried to think of what I could have watched for so that I wouldn't have gotten so bad, but the thing that baffles us all is that I never had high blood pressure until I was about to die from all the fluids, then it jumped up to 220/105 or there abouts and they were giving me anti-seizure medication.

Even the doctors are baffled as to why I got so bad so fast. My story doesn't have a lot of hope but maybe it will give someone else some early warning signs that they may be ignoring.


Tina Roberts

intrahepatic cholestasis

In July of 2001 I lay on my bathroom floor bleeding and breast-feeding my two-week-old son, thinking that if I were to die from the post-partum hemmorhage I was having, I wanted him to know that his mother was with him in the most loving way until the very end. An emergency blood transfusion saved my life and it was not until much later that I realized that my bleeding was likely caused by a liver disease of pregnancy--intrahepatic cholestasis in which estrogen causes toxic bile to build up in the blood instead of being processed out of the body, causing severe itching to the pregnant woman and threatening the life of the unborn baby.

The itching I suffered was the most excruciating experience I've ever suffered--scratching only made it worse. My family got used to dining with me in restaurants with my feet submerged in a bucket of ice and water. I took cold baths so frequently that I stopped draining the tub. But memory is short and the pleasures of my boy long, so I had another baby, born in April of 2003. Now I knew what to expect and I went in for induction before 37 weeks gestations as most of the stillbirths occur late in pregnancy.

Unfortunately the delivery didn't progress and I ended up with a C-Section and sepsis leading to pulmonary edema. I was in the hospital so long that my second son had his bris on day of life 10! Although I almost died twice from the complications of ICP I consider myself lucky--I have two healthy boys.

Michele