My wife has not had the easiest of pregnancies. This is our first child and neither of us would be prepared for the dreaded 1st trimester. Going back a bit... We had been practicing Natural Family Planning (or NFP), since we got married. We decided we didn't want kids right away, and so we used the NFP method to not conceive and it worked great - no pregnancy. Back in late 2004, we had switched our intentions to try to conceive. 8 months of trying and we got nothing. Our NFP instructor referred us to a doctor who specializes in the Creighton Model for Fertility (the technical name for NFP). For various reasons, she recommended for Bethany to have some bloodwork done. After we got the results back, it was determined that her progesterone levels were too low. Our doctor informed us that low progesterone in the 1st trimester can often leads to miscarriage. Also, low progesterone later in pregnancy can lead to pre-term labor and/or a low birth weight baby. Because of the various risks, our doctor recommended that Bethany would need to take natural progesterone (non-synthetic) to get her levels up. The next decision we made would turn out to be a costly and painful endeavor. Bethany was placed on vaginal suppositories and wouldn't you know it, the 1st month we had a little bun in the oven.
Now that Bethany was pregnant, we were put on a strict monitoring program to track her progesterone through pregnancy. This required bi-weekly blood draws. The first few weeks she continued to take the progesterone vaginally. However, this did not prove to keep her progesterone high enough. It was determined by our doctor that she would have to take the progesterone by injection. My first reaction was panic, because they expected ME to administer the injections! My first experience doing it wasn't bad as I had the help of our NFP Instructor. However, the first night that I was to administer the injection by myself - I froze. I just couldn't do it. So I did what any son would do in an emergency situation - I called my Mom. Thankfully a next door neighbor and friend of hers, Michelle, was a nurse and agreed to give Bethany the shot. We drove over there that night and I felt a huge weight off my shoulders as she agreed to give the shot from then on!
The frequency of the shots was a real pain too - twice a week. So 2 times a week, we drove to my parent's house and Bethany took her shot like a man.... I mean woman. She eventually got used to them, but I know that she didn't much care for getting stuck in the butt with a large needle. For added fun, because of the thickness of the progesterone serum, this inter-muscular shot took anywhere from 90 seconds to 3 minutes to adminster depending on the dosage. So not only was there the intial pain of the shot, there was also a uncomfortable and sometimes intense burning sensation during the adminstration. The progesterone also made the area very sore and made sleeping and just moving around difficult for several days after. The twice a week regiment would continue for what seemed forever (6 weeks?), until we were finally able to drop it to once a week. Add this on top of the regular 1st trimester joys - puking, anxiety, severe sleepiness, and generally feeling like crap - it would turn out to be a very difficult 3-4 months.
Sometime in November, her worst symptoms started to ease a bit and she gained some much needed energy. Still the shots continued as she could never get much above Zone 3 (progesterone level), and we needed to reach Zone 4 to safely discontinue the shots. In Early December, we had decided that Michele had done her part and either my Mom or myself would need to start giving Bethany the shots. The first night we decided this, Michele coached my mom through the process and she did an OK job. The next week, I decided I would try it, and after a faulty start, I was able to do it. The following week's shot came up and I couldn't find the right spot for some reason. I ended up giving it to her in a slightly different area and boy was she in pain! We were both worried that something was dreadfully wrong, but after a few days had passed, things returned to normal. I felt really bad about that one!
Christmas was coming up and we finally got some good news.... Since she had hit Zone 3 twice, we were told that she could skip a week! Yeah! Still, Bethany worried that her level would drop without taking the shot as it became sort of a security blanket for her. A tough 2 weeks of waiting passed and we got her level again. It shot way up to Zone 4!!! Finally, after 25 weeks of pregnancy, no more shots were needed!
Now to the costly part... The progesterone, supplies, and blood draws were not cheap as insurance only covered a small amount. Still, we would do it all over again if we had to. Some things in life have no monetary value you can assign them and this is one of them.
Next on Babies... The Decision for a Natural Birth
1 comment:
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