Second trimester - week 25

Second trimester 

Week 25, time to visit my gynae for the regular check up, and this time round, we got a bad news. My amniotic fluid is low, it's lower that average, a symptom called oligohydramnios, that my doctor has certain concern, and referred us to another specialist Dr Ravi, at Hospital Sultanah Aminah. Dr Ravi is the head of specialist of the O&G department in the whole Malaysia, according to our gynae, he's the best to consult for second opinion. Luckily he's the best friend of my gynae, if not the waiting queue can be weeks. We manage to secure an appointment in 2 days time. 

We went home with a heavy heart and I started Google about oligohydramnios and reading about the effects of it on newborn, and stories from different mummies that has got this issue. I broke down and cried, why it just need to be me? Haven't I gone through enough? Why now this thing has to happen to my little bud. Apparently there is no diagnose as in why low amniotic fluid can happen during the course of pregnancy, however it can indicates there could be chromosomes defects or birth defects that causes it. Hence we need to see Dr Ravi to get a detailed scan of the baby. 

I read that some mothers drink like 3-4 liters of water a day to increase the AF level, I don't care whether it is true a not, I just drink and drink and drink, hoping that it worked! 

On the day of appointment with Dr Ravi, apparently drinking so much water for the past 2 days didn't help, my AFI is still low. He took a good 30 minutes to scan everything, checked all the vital organs and the placenta. Dr Ravi said everything seemed fine, baby is growing despite the fact that little bud is not the biggest size, meaning little bud is on the small side. However my placenta looked huge, the blood transfusion heartbeat from the placenta to the cord to the baby appeared to be normal too. He took a good 5 minutes scanning little bud's heart and said the valves and chambers did form nicely and the blood flow is ok. He even showed us and counted all the baby's toes and fingers to us, and tried taking a 3D image of little bud, and we saw the 1/2 profile of the face for the first time, I think he has daddy's nose. Dr Ravi wanted us to do a placenta infection blood test to check whether there's any infection to the placenta which caused the low AFI, and referred us to fetal cardiologist to have a detailed scan of little bud's heart in 2 days times. Meanwhile, he told us that everything seemed fine and stay positive! He will see us back in 3 weeks time.

I cried myself to sleep at night, thinking and wondering what have I done wrong, and blaming myself of not taking good care of myself and my baby. I was totally depressed, going through social media looking at others' healthy cute baby, I felt so envy and worried that mine won't be healthy like the rest. Hubby has been very positive and given me a lot of support and encouragement, he said doctors all said that baby is fine and doing well, and kept telling me happy mummy = happy healthy baby. He kept calling me at work to check on my well being, but I was just down, very very down. 

2 days later, we went to see the fetal cardiologist to do a detailed scan of little bud's heart, the specialist said everything is good, chambers and valves all functioning well according to the scan. I felt much relieve hearing this, but still I'm worried about my baby, I want nothing but just a healthy baby. All we can do now is wait for the result, and our next appointment with my gynae to see if there is any improvement.