Pregnancy Diaries #2 – No fetal pole

The video and blog can be slightly different in content.

It’s the night before my 2nd scan and I’m feeling incredibly nervous. My heart has been physically racing most of the night something I haven’t experienced for some time. My legs have felt shaky and weak and I have had gut pain. I feel short tempered and utterly confused with my life.

I went for my ultrasound at 6 weeks 2 days (6+2) as they requested for me to do. A full bladder after having a natural birth has done me no favours. Waiting with a delay, then trying to walk into the room when they called me in was painful.

I just wanted the scan done before all the checks because of the need to pee. She saw I was in pain and invited me to climb onto the examination couch, which was almost impossible but I did, to find my bladder was too full. I returned empty but the abdomen scan was not picking anything up. The familiar feeling, I had with my first pregnancy when it was a missed miscarriage – dread – transvaginal ultrasound being the only option that was sensitive enough to detect.  This is common in early stages of pregnancy and was used to confirm the first miscarriage. I still had that moment of silence hoping while I waited for her voice.

There it was a lovely round gestational sac she said. Then the yolk sac, but there’s no fetal pole. I had to ask what that meant, to remind myself off the terminology, being a few years ago. There’s no heartbeat.
It’s perfectly normal, they see this a lot, perhaps my dates are wrong (which I know they are not) but it could be as she suggested just a couple of days difference with ovulation in delaying seeing the heartbeat. So, we will see you in 2 weeks she says. Two whole weeks off not knowing, of wondering if I am carrying a viable or non-viable embryo.

It’s heart breaking. I negotiated 10 days because actually I had changed my appointment anyway so I would be on track to when they originally wanted to scan me.

Looking at my history and reassuring myself I did point out in my last post (which is rare for me) that my cycle had arrived a few days earlier which then enabled me to have the opportunity to be with my partner when ovulation occurred. However, based on the sonographer’s comments, it would mean that the sperm survived and I ovulated later that I thought. I have explained previously about the window of opportunity in another post and how sperm can survive for around 5 days looking to fertilize the egg. Incredible.

This would then mean the scan (although gestational calculations say 6+2) would actually make me earlier on in the pregnancy and would fit in with no fetal pole being visible.

When you fall pregnant, they calculate your dates based on the first day of your last menstrual period. Biologically you cannot get pregnant while on your period, the first day of your bleed being day 1, by day 9 for me I start showing signs of ovulation and in most of my pregnancies have been caught earlier than later (up to day 14 for me). This is the gestational age which is why I get so caught up on estimated due dates, because it is based on this calculation.

Anything from 38 weeks up to 42 weeks is the text book norm in this country (UK) for full term pregnancy. That doesn’t mean to say all pregnancies should last up till then and you have to ensure your baby and you are well. But getting passed a due date for me is not relevant- that’s all. What’s important is that baby comes when baby is ready, unless there are medical reasons when intervention would be crucial.  I talk about this in earlier posts one of them here.

Anyway, I did a video earlier posted above and it’s raw because it’s my feelings at that moment. Because I have now reflected on dates and times, I have put myself in a more positive frame of mind for tomorrow.

Fingers crossed for me.

I mention in the video about % of expectation in seeing the 3 features

• Gestational sac
• Yolk sac
• Fetal pole + FHT’s (heartbeat)

1. I estimated it based on what I could remember I think I got them slightly wrong.  These are the figures taken from a screenshot of the website here.