I have received so many emails, and open questions asking about my
story. People in my everyday life whether it's at church, work or just
friends I have met after my move here to asking about our potential
surrogacy or use of donor sperm (since Love is a positive blood type with me carrying) plans since they know I have had children. I decided that
maybe I should open up and explain exactly what makes me fall into the
infertile community. Likely there aren't many out there who have heard
about my specific ailment, so fasten your seat belt, put your thinking
caps on and take notes, because here comes the story of
How Birdie
Is Broken! in technical terms:
My story is different, I am not infertile, yet I walk the same path to
expanding my family as many Infertile couples do. Why? I have Rh
disease. Rh is basically what makes your blood type negative or positive
but there is more. Rh factor deals with antigen d in the bloodstream.
This is where most people say "Oh yeah my (insert sister, aunt, mom,
cousin, friend here) had that and they just got a shot of RhoGAM, can't
you just do that?" The problem is once you have antibodies built up to
specific things they never go away. In fact in this case with each
pregnancy they start building once again from the vary place they ended
with the last pregnancy. There are 2 other antigens also present in the
blood stream to express specific blood types, c and e. My blood type is
O- I have a negative recessive blood type. From each of my parents I
received cde. Lower case letters are used to show a non- dominant or
recessive trait. Each person has 2 sets of these 3 specific antigens.
When a woman becomes sensitized to another blood type, either through
blood passing back and forth between mother and child, or transfusion,
or some other unknown way blood would enter into her bloodstream she
builds antibodies against the offending antigen expressed in the blood.
This is purely out of protection, if our bodies didn't build antibodies
against these things it could not just be harmful , but could cause
death. Antibodies are the way our body fights infections, and disease.
In my specific situation I became sensitized to D and C antigens. I
never received baseline testing or (Antibody titer) since this was my
first pregnancy to see where my levels were. One day Dr W came in and
said "oh we missed giving you the RhoGAM shot and need to do that
today." When my son Froggy was born we had no clue there was anything
wrong. I had a normal pregnancy, but within a couple weeks of my RhoGAM
shot (given to me late at like 33 weeks instead of 28 weeks) I went into
labor and the doctor had to stop it. The hospital kept me overnight and
then sent me home. The next week I was in and out of the hospital and
then finally the last time they wanted to keep me in for 23 hour
observation after stopping labor again, I said no I want to go home. I
will go see the doctor in the morning if that is okay with him. I was
exhausted, being poked and prodded all night over and over, I just
wanted my bed, at my home. The next morning I went to the doctor, I was
sitting in the office and noticed that I started having timeable
contractions. I calmly went to the front desk and told them I was
contracting and they brought me in back quickly. I was dialated 2
stretchable to a 3 and 70% effaced. The doctor sent me over to the
hospital and told them to stop my labor with an IV drug
terbutaline. This gave me time to get my
husband home and rested since he was on midnights and had gone back and
forth telling work each time I was in labor that indeed that day was
baby day. He didn't want to call in to his boss with another false
alarm. At this point I felt like the boy who cried wolf. :) The next
morning when Dr W made his rounds he went to check me and my bag of
waters broke. He calmly said well you are staying, and will have the
baby sometime tonight. That was 6 hours and 7 minutes before my first
child was born. SO not only do I get pregnant easy and have a great
uterus I have babies quickly... (Although my sister holds the
record in our family for fastest 1st baby with 3 hours.) When Froggy came
out he was very yellow, the nurses evaluating him never slipped him
into my arms, they wrapped him quickly and said "say hi to mommy and
daddy" as they whisked him out of the delivery room in into the nursery
where he could be better evaluated. Froggy had a very severe case of
jaundice caused by my Rh sensitivity. I wasn't allowed to see Froggy for
about 7 hours.
So here is where it gets interesting I
guess... What do all those antibodies do when passed from the Rh
negative mother to the positive blood typed child? Well my body became
aware that a foreign blood type that was potentially harmful to my health
was inside me. In normal response my bloodstream sent antibodies built
against the "intruder" across the placenta to attach to the red blood
cell to "buffer" it and make it safe for me. The baby's white blood
cells then acted on that when they recognized something is wrong with
that red blood cell. White blood cells fight against infections in our
body. SO in this case the white blood cells killed the red blood cells
with antibodies attached to them. This is a vicious cycle. In my latter
pregnancies when we knew that this was happening they would do
amniocentesis to check the level and color of the fluid and then when it
was time the doctors would bring me in for Percutaneous
Umbilical Blood Sampling (
PUBS) with a follow up
transfusion. In effect they would transfuse the baby through me. They
waited as late as possible to start this process because once you do
this process it pollutes the amnionic fluic and you can't go back to the
less invasive testing. Each pregnancy gets worse because the anitbodies
do not go away they build from where they left off last time. the
higher the antibody count the more high risk and potentially fatal to
the unborn child. Froggy received 2 exchange transfusions at the hospital
before coming home, then another at 11 days old. Babies do not break
down iron to make red blood cells while in-utero so as the white blood
cells killed the red blood cells there were no new red blood cells being
made. We had to wait for Froggy to make them on his own. It was very
scary and quite touch and go. With Bug's pregnancy I was moved
immediately to Loyola University and the MFM group there watched over
our progress. I was text book, followed all directions, residents
learned to do amnios on me. Calm as a cucumber. The pregnancy was
documented and used during one of the doctors talks at a continuing ed
seminar he gave. Bug was born 6 weeks early and the MFM Group said
they thought with how well this pregnancy went I could go through one
more. Bug had 4 PUBS with followup transfusions, and 2 transfusions
after birth. This ended my successful pregnancies. I became pregnant
with my son Little Bean, who was born at just 26 weeks gestation, he lived
just 55 minutes. He was in distress shortly after the first PUBS and
transfusion. I had to have an emergency c-section. That's not the end of
my story but it definitely shows how each pregnancy gets worse until
the babies are not safe and there is nothing the specialists can do to
help once antibodies grow to huge proportions.
I went on to have many more losses but these first three pregnancies
show clearly what happens in Rh sensitization cases. Each one gets
worse, until the baby can not possibly reach a viable stage in the
pregnancy.
I walk the road of an infertile, knowing that I don't truly fit into
either category "Fertile" or "Infertile". What I know is the intense
desire to have children, and not be able to. What I've learned is that
when infertiles go month after month experiencing periods hating that
their bodies are telling them they can't have the one thing they desire
most. A baby. They mourn not for the lost child as I have with Little Bean, but
the hopes and dreams for that little boy or girl that seems so out of
reach. She was going to be the first woman president, he was going to be
a wonderful business man or the researcher that found the cure to
cancer. We all mourn the hopes, and dreams we had for that child or
children and that is our common bond. I don't share the struggle to
conceive but I do share the struggle to mother and bring life into
existence.
When my son Little Bean died, I became angry at God. I felt cold and dead
inside. I remember driving to the cemetery and weeping as I lay across
his grave. I thought my arms would forever feel empty.Years later I
started going back to church, and reclaimed my relationship with
Heavenly Father. Now I am remarried, to a wonderful man. He is here
everyday, telling, showing and guiding me toward fulfilling our dream of
a family together. Hand in hand, with our eyes fixed on Him we walk in
faith. Do I feel sad still about past choices, and mistakes? Yes. Do I
beat myself up about them? Not anymore. I know that I could have made
different choices, better ones perhaps, but maybe making those choices,
going through that growth has made me who I am today. I love the me I am
today, and I can not wait to tell my little one the story of how we
brought them to be, against the odds with faith in Heavenly Father's
greater plan.
