We had our follow-up appointment at the high risk clinic on Tuesday to evaluate how the surgical suture went and just to check on things generally. All went really well, and once again we were impressed with the consultation we had with our obstetrician. She is lovely and always takes time to go over everything so thoroughly and doesn’t mind answering all my questions. She talked us through how the suture can cause my body to produce extra mucus which can continue throughout the pregnancy. According to the surgical notes the suture went well but to make doubly sure we are going back for a trans-vaginal ultrasound next week to check it. I guess they will look and make sure the stitch is still in place as it should be and will measure the length of my cervix.
Our appointment with the midwife went really well too. Just lots of common sense advice… and she encouraged me to continue to take it easy and make sure I am not stressed about work etc. which I’m not. Oh, and the obstetrician checked the heartbeat with the doppler which took a bit of time to find, but that was good too.
They have a study currently taking place at the clinic for anyone who has had a previous pre-term labour and is currently pregnant, so of course we are eligible to take part if we want to. It’s to see if progesterone treatment (in the form of pessaries) can help with preventing premature labour. Apparently progesterone is thought to help keep the uterus relaxed and therefore less likely to contract I guess which happens when you go into labour… so that way it may prevent it from happening. We have been given some info to read which we haven’t done yet, but we will evaluate whether we think it is worth while or not. My initial reaction is that it might be worth a go since I have read some stuff on the internet about how it can help to reduce the chances of premature labour. I think in the States they give women progesterone injections to help with reducing the risks. But on the flip side because the study isn’t complete (obviously) they aren’t aware of any risks or side effects resulting from taking the progesterone pessaries but they certainly can’t rule it out. So, the question is, does the potential risk outweigh the benefits? We have a bit of time to make up our mind since they don’t normally start the treatment until 20 weeks pregnant and then it goes on until around 36 weeks I think. Of course not everyone in the study will be given the progesterone anyway, since there needs to be a control group, so it’s not to say we will definitely be getting it anyway.
(I had progesterone pessaries 3 x per day as part of the IVF treatment after our embryo was transferred into me and we were always advised that the pregnancy rates drop off quite rapidly if the pessaries were stopped, so not to stop until they advised us to).
Hard to know what to do, but perhaps we’ll give it a bit of thought and research it for a while before coming to any conclusion… could be a good thing???