You must advocate for yourself. Never become complacent and just assume medical professionals know what they are doing. if you recall my last baby came quickly and unexpectedly at 34 weeks at HOME with no warning. My blood pressure was awful and had been for weeks. But that’s not why. But I wasn’t aware of the issues we were actually dealing with back then until here recently when he was 20 months old.
When I was 28 weeks with Khyzen I got extremely sick. Vomiting uncontrollably with the most severe pain in my lower back on both sides that I have ever felt in my life. I had birthed 7 babies without a single pain medication during or after and had outpatient surgery on a spider bite on my arm without ANY local at all so that I could drive myself home. I am not a person with low pain tolerance. I actually needed morphine to get the pain to a point that the vomiting would stop. Four days I was in the hospital on fluids. They did scans, said kidneys are fine, liver looks fine, baby looks fine. They did a 24 hour urine collection - no protein… so just upped the IV bolus.
After 4 days I was keeping down food and the pain had passed. So the Dr. released me, no real instruction, nothing. I went home. Resumed life, resumed my gestational diabetes diet to try to stay nice and diet controlled and I thought ok this is fixed. Then again at 29.5 weeks one evening the pain struck again, the vomiting started again. I couldn’t even walk without help. This time same tests, more fluids, another check of the urine, but just in case they did steroids for the baby’s lungs. Five days it took this time for me to be able to hold down food.
After being released this time I had no appetite and barely was able to eat for the next few weeks. All of this was conveyed to my Dr. but he seemed unconcerned. Then my water broke at 34 weeks after a day of mostly resting and watching some movies with the kids because my blood pressure had shot up awful and I just couldn’t get up that day. I thought I peed myself because there was not enough fluid to be certain it was my water. Then he simply “arrived” no labor and no warning.
Fast forward through the roughest 6 weeks ever teaching him to eat properly and dealing with bad jaundice since he was early. And we are now expecting baby number 9. It seemed to be fine aside from blood pressure issues from the start. So I did have to start blood pressure medication strait away. At 9 weeks I began to have the most horrid sharp pain in my upper shoulder and back then in my chest. It finally became unbearable so I went to the ER. Lucky me a pulmonary embolism. This it turns out means I needed to do injections of Lovenox twice a day until this baby is 2-3 months old. The shots are awful as my body is simply not a fan of heparins at all. The bruising and knots are painful and having a toddler who thinks he is a fucking Billy goat and greets you with his damn head does not help.
Fine we could deal, injections and blood pressure meds we can make it work. They did check the baby, baby looked great, I felt like shit but baby was perfectly content. Since I had Gestational Diabetes with Khyzen I went ahead and grabbed a meter and began testing occasionally after meals. For several weeks no issue in the readings. Then at 12 weeks it started creeping up and I knew it was gonna be an issue again. I informed the Dr. and the nurse called in the prescription so I could get a meter from insurance and get test strips.
I did end up needing to go to my PCP because the OB seemed uninterested in dealing with managing the dosage of the blood thinner. But this is a high high dose I am on due to my weight and my PCP was not either so she referred to a Hematologist. This is where I learned of what had actually occurred before and was now occurring again. The hematologist ran a full metabolic panel. This included the ALT levels. (liver enzyme levels) normal is 25 or less. I looked back after the shocking number popped up in my test results and when I was hospitalized at 9 weeks with the blood clot my ALT was 21. Seeing 283 for my ALT value I recalled my Ob mentioning high liver levels last baby at the hospital. it was a passing mentions but I went back into my records and pulled up that stay and went through the panels…. When I was so sick I could barely move my ALT was 487….. How that did not register to the Dr. as the damn cause in and of itself of my issues I simply don’t even understand.
I immediately called the OB and mentions all the results, the labs from my previous pregnancy, current results, the results at 9 weeks of pregnancy …. His response… call your PCP that’s not pregnancy related…. THE FUCK IT ISN”T????? IF it is ONLY occurring during pregnancy then it is fucking well pregnancy related. I did call my PCP I asked her opinion. And after some thought IO chose to switch dr.s. I then hit the internet and researched to find out WHAT THE FUCK was going on. The ONLY condition that fit the symptoms, test results and other criteria was Acute Fatty Liver Of Pregnancy. Its got a fairly shitty prognosis if undiagnosed. Its similar to Fatty liver but its caused by pregnancy hormones not liver damage. Which explains why my hospital labs from the last baby show normal levels 2 days after delivery. It literally disappears after the baby. But during the pregnancy it can be very dangerous.
For 8 weeks I went through the process to get in with a new dr. So no prenatal care from 12-20 weeks because switching your OB is not the same process as just being a new patient. The Ob has to read your files and records and agree then to transfer. I had 8 children my OB records are not a small file. I spent that time researching and working to find a solution that did not end in early delivery or death.
My research showed the treatments recommended for fatty liver were helpful. That meant eating ZERO beef, pork, egg, cheese, dairy of any kind really, sugars, rice…. anything with starch and fat was out. Then increase water to a floating feeling level and add ALL the olive oil to everything cooked. So I did it.. Funny isn’t it the fact that both times I had levels rise it was right after going on the gestational diabetes diet. What are the go to snacks they recommend???? Oh yeah… cheese and eggs... I really think more should be researched into the connection there.
But after 2 weeks on the diet I had my PCP run the labs again. SUCCESS to an extent, levels dropped to 187. Continued the diet and the hematologist ran it again and it popped back to 234 so I got more aggressive with the water and olive oil. I also started finding ways to work half a banana or half a sweet potato (both liver healing foods) into my diet without having awful blood sugar readings. It’s not always working perfectly. Sometimes my sugar goes to high but that simply is not as dangerous as the ALT climbing so I had to make choices.
Then finally my apt with the new OB. He agreed with my assessment and referred to MFM. (maternal fetal medicine) Get there and their first words after reading the files… Fatty liver of pregnancy. yeah I fucking new the other Dr. missed that shit. Though It took so long to get any actual help from a Dr. I would have been violently ill and hospitalized long ago had I not done my own research and taken matters into my own hands.
We have a long way to go. The levels are ok at the moment I have been super diligent with all the methods I am using. Its still high, 114 last check but nothing crazy right now. It’s gonna get worse further along and at only 22 weeks there is a LOT of time left to get through. I will not give up trying to get to full term. I will manage it as best as I can. Research in other countries shows using a weekly IV bolus helps manage it to get the baby more time. I am failing horribly and getting my fasting blood sugar under control. This does mean I likely will need insulin for that. But I have a plan now at least. And this baby will have to be the caboose unless I can guarantee a safe full term delivery in the future and that looks likely to not be possible to guarantee.
ADVOCATE !!! RESEACH !!!! NEVER EVER just accept what they say and think you have to take that as the answer if something seems wrong. Ignoring this like my last OB did literally could have killed me or my baby or both.
