Not pregnant, but wondering what the risks are

[lishers]

Hello! I'm sure you've heard this before, but I'm so glad I found this board.

I honestly JUST became concerned about a repeat accreta today after deciding to look into the complications with future pregnancies.

Here's my story: I had a fairly normal pregnancy and went into labor at 39 weeks. After 35 hours of labor and fully dialating, my water never broke nor did my daughter, Avery (now 22 months), drop down the birth canal. I was then given pitocin and given the opportunity to push to try to get her to move down. After an hour and no progress the doctor decided a c-section needed to be performed.

Everything seemed fine at that time and the doctor didn't really know why Avery didn't drop. Three opinions were give: 1. her head was lodged on top of my pelvis; 2. she was lying on the placenta; and 3. she was possibly a little transverse breech (diagonal).

At my 4 week post-partum check up the dr. was unable to perform the vag. check due to excessive bleeding. He never mentioned that anything could be wrong and suggested I start on birth control in hopes to stop the bleeding. All that did was diminish my already low breast milk supply.

Ten weeks post-partum, I returned to the dr. (another in the practice) because I still hadn't stopped bleeding. I was given some sort of medication that was supposed to stop the bleeding within a day and that didn't work. After an ultrasound they discovered I had a mass in my uterus and scheduled me for a D&C. I was also told by the dr. that if he couldn't stop the bleeding that he would perform a hysterectomy. I was scared to death because Avery was our 1st and we knew we wanted at least 1 more. The D&C was successful and they determined I had retained placenta due to an accreta. He told me some info about accretas and told me that during any subsequent pregnancy I will be monitored via ultrasounds.

I was fine with all of that information until today. Until I learned that the c-section and D&C scar tissue could put me at an even greater risk of an accreta or worse. We had already planned to try to conceive this summer, but now I'm wondering what risks we need to think about before doing so. How likely is it that I will develop an accreta again? We live in a rural community and my guess is I would have to be sent out of town with any high risk pregnancy and need to get all my options out there before I get pregnant.

Any help and opinions are greatly appreciated.

Elisha

[coachjodi]

Elisha,

I'm glad you found this board too!!! First let me say that I am sorry that you have to be here....placenta accreta can be a very scary thing, especially since most docs don't really have a clue as to what to do with it.

The very first thing you should do is track down an RE (reproductive endocrinologist). Most of them do fertility work, if you can find one that has experience with Ashermans you will be better off. You need a sonahistogram which is a procedure in which they shoot dye into your uterus in order to see what kind of shape it is in. You need to know how much, if any, scar tissue is in your uterus. Depending on those results you might need an operative hysteroscopy during which the scar tissue is removed.

Bottom line is this.....once you have an accreta you go from 1 in 2500 chances to 1 in 3 of having it again. Other complications from scar tissue include premature birth or placenta abruption. This is not to scare you because a totally healthy pregnancy is very possible (even probable) as long as you take precautions and go into it with the best looking uterus possible.

Please visit www.ashermans.org for more information on scar tissue.

I hope this helps! Please keep me posted and feel free to email me with any other questions or concerns

Jodi

[lishers]

Jodi,

Thank you SO much for the information. It was EXACTLY what I was looking for. Again, I live in a rural community but the yellowpages show 2 RE's 25 minutes from me which isn't bad. I will definitely give them a call and get checked out before we decide to try for baby #2.

My dr. just didn't make a big deal out of it the first time and I freaked when I started reading on my own. Knowledge definitely is power, and I feel a whole lot better now that I know what I'm dealing with.

Thanks so much and I'll be sure to update you when we decide the time is right.

Elisha

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 11, 2006 08:29 AM: Message edited by: lishers ]</font>