Three years ago, sitting with my 15-month-old son and my husband during a long layover, on our way back home from Norway, I felt a sudden gush of warm blood.
So much for my miracle pregnancy, I thought. I was only six weeks along and certain I was miscarrying.
Our return trip was already off to a poor start. United Airlines had cancelled our original flight from Newark home to San Francisco. Then, to rub salt in the wound, they refused to refund our first-class tickets.
We never fly first class, but had made an exception for this trip. We were travelling overseas with my 15-month old son and facing a 9-hour jet lag. The chance of sleeping on route, we decided, was worth the extra cash. We had bought our tickets a year in advance to lower the cost.
But United, being United, told us we would have to request a refund, and then maybe they would grant it. And–perhaps just for kicks–they refused to let us access the first-class lounge while in Newark, because our replacement tickets were now in Economy.
My husband–who nevers argues with anyone behind a counter and hates it when I do–spent half an hour arguing with their “customer service” that they should give us passes to the first class lounge. After all, we had paid for first-class tickets even if we no longer had them. But no dice.
So there we were, exhausted and enraged. I had not slept in over 24 hours. My son, sick for the last 3 days with a high fever, had nursed continuously the entire flight from Oslo to Newark. And then I started bleeding.
At that point, I contemplated tweeting, “United, you ate my baby,” but decided against publicly sharing my pregnancy or what I assumed was an impending miscarriage.
The pregnancy had been a surprise, but a welcome one. We had taken over a year to conceive my son. This time we had not been trying. I was still breastfeeding, and my cycles had only resumed a month earlier. We were planning to wait a few more months and then start trying for #2, expecting that it could easily be another 6 to 12 months before we conceived.
The bleeding tapered off by the next morning. I had no pain or cramping, so little fear of an ectopic pregnancy. And I still felt pregnant: nauseated, tired, and lightheaded.
I called my OB, but they could not fit me in for another 5 weeks. Until then, they told me, just sit tight. Oh, and assume that I was still pregnant, because a miscarriage would have caused several days of heavy bleeding.
I found another OB.
My new OB ran tests. My HCG levels were normal, but my progesterone was low, perhaps because of the nearly constant breastfeeding, the lack of sleep, and the stress. She could not say for sure. She prescribed progesterone supplements for the rest of my first trimester.
Progesterone helps build up and maintain the uterine lining for implantation of the fertilized egg. High levels of progesterone are required to sustain an early pregnancy. But taking progesterone supplements during the first trimester to prevent a miscarriage is controversial.
Over half of miscarriages result from chromosomal abnormalities, and no amount of progesterone will save these pregnancies. A 2013 review of randomized trials, however, found that while progesterone supplements did not alter the risk of miscarriage for pregnant women as a whole, they did significantly lower the chances of miscarriages for women with 3 or more prior miscarriages.
And for women like me, with a threatened miscarriage (defined as any bleeding within the first 20 weeks of pregnancy), who have more than double the normal odds of a miscarriage*, progesterone supplements appear to cut the risk of miscarriage in half, and oral progesterone, as opposed to suppositories, may be especially effective.
So, although I will never know for sure, my OB may have saved my pregnancy.
A Subchorionic Hematoma
At that initial visit, she also performed an ultrasound. The fetal heartbeat was loud and clear, fast and reassuring, racing along like a rabbit’s. When I heard my baby’s heartbeat, I fully exhaled for the first time in days.
Less reassuringly, the ultrasound revealed a subchorionic hematoma–a blood clot next to the placenta and the cause of my bleeding.
Pregnancies with a subchorionic hematoma are considered high risk. They have a higher risk of miscarriage (17.6% versus 8.9%), stillbirth (1.9% versus 0.9%), and placental abruption (3.6% versus 0.7%). They have a slightly higher risk of preterm delivery (13% versus 10%) and for the waters breaking before labor starts (tv-style labor).
The risk varies by the location of the hematoma. Pregnancies with recurrent bleeding or with hematomas located between the placenta and the uterine wall (retroplacental hematomas) have a higher risk of miscarriage and other pregnancy complications like placenta abruption. Because of the risk of placental abruption, bleeding in the second and third trimesters require immediate medical attention.
As worrisome as these statistics sound, most subchorionic hematomas resolve on their own, as mine eventually did. By 11 weeks, we could no longer see the hematoma on an ultrasound. And thankfully, rest of my pregnancy was uneventful. I gave birth to healthy baby girl, who in a few months will turn 3.
Do you have a story of bleeding in early pregnancy? Was a cause detected, and how did things turn out?
Footnote
*About 20% of women experience bleeding during early pregnancy. Figuring out their chances of a miscarriage is far from simple.
One commonly cited statistic states that roughly 50% of these women eventually miscarry. Some digging reveals that this claim derives from a 1981 obstetrics textbook rather than recent research. (Lots of researchers cite papers that cite papers that cite this textbook, and I am willing to bet that none of them have read the original research behind this claim.)
If bleeding starts after detection of a normal fetal heartbeat, most prospective studies find a much lower rate of miscarriage, of 3.4-5.5%.
References
Haas DM, Ramsey PS. Progestogen for preventing miscarriage. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2013, Issue 10. Art. No.: CD003511. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003511.pub3.
Nagy S, Bush M, Stone J, Lapinski RH, Gardó S. Clinical significance of subchorionic and retroplacental hematomas detected in the first trimester of pregnancy. Obstet Gynecol. 2003 Jul;102(1):94-100.
Sotiriadis A, Papatheodorou S, Makrydimas G. Threatened miscarriage: evaluation and management. BMJ : British Medical Journal. 2004;329(7458):152-155.
Trop I, Levine D. Hemorrhage during pregnancy: sonography and MR imaging. AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2001 Mar;176(3):607-15.
Tuuli MG, Norman SM, Odibo AO, Macones GA, Cahill AG. Perinatal outcomes in women with subchorionic hematoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Obstet Gynecol. 2011 May;117(5):1205-12. doi: 10.1097/AOG.0b013e31821568de.