Intrahepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy

If you can say that title three times fast, I'll give you a dollar... Just kidding. So unfortunately the liver test that I wrote about in my Baloo post came back positive and I have the extremly rare (about 0.01%)pregnancy condition called Intrahepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy or ICP. This is a bad thing for sure. You can google it for more information but basically its when the pregnancy hormones cause the liver and gallbladder not to work properly and your bile acids flow over into your blood stream. It is much more common in pregnancies with multiples and women of Scandinavian decent, both of which I am privy to. The symptoms of this disease of course are severe itching and sometimes jaundice (appears two weeks after the itching, so I'm still hoping I don't get this part). The only "cure" for this condition is to have your babies. However, at this point the babies are still safer in my belly than out, so that's not happening...yet. Unfortunately, the real problem is that these bile acids are extremely dangerous to the babies because their placentas cannot filter them. Therefore, it causes an increase in preterm birth, fetal distress and raises the rate of stillbirth 5 times that of a normal pregnancy. To make matters even more fun, it also makes it difficult for my body to absorb Vitamin K which makes the blood clot, thus leading to an increase in maternal hemorrhaging during delivery.

Now, with all of that really bad news, if you search a little deeper into the google database you'll find that first the risk of me actually dying during birth is extremely rare and that they can give me a shot of vitamin K first to ensure my blood clots (thanks goodness for modern medicine). Second, while the risk of the babies dying nears 10%, almost all of those cases are when the mother chooses to wait until after 36 weeks for the babies to be born, which we certainly are not going to do.

So what are we going to do? First, they started me on ursodiol acids yesterday that will help decrease the amount of toxic bile in my system and help the placentas to keep these away from the babies. Second, I will see the high risk doctor on Tuesday and then every other week from now on to make sure the babies are growing OK and that their fluids are OK. Third, beginning at 28 weeks (they can't do this earlier) I will begin doing a Non-Stress Test (NST's) on the babies weekly to bi-weekly to make sure the babies aren't in any sort of danger in regards to their hearts, reflexes or breathing. Around this time I will also begin taking steroid shots to develop the babies lungs quicker in case of an emergency delivery. If any of these test show fetal distress, we will do an immediate C-Section.

So while this is definitely not something we could of ever guessed would happen, we were aware of the high risks that came with a triplet pregnancy. We too were aware that it wouldn't be very comfortable. With that being said, I did think uncomfortable was due to being so freaking big, not because you had severe itching that even extended inside your ears and throat...ah live and learn. But we can handle this. The outcome prognosis is very good if all the proper precautions are taken. I will say though, officially, that I am DONE being the less than 1%, I don't even want the winning lottery ticket, I just want this pregnancy to work out with three healthy babies.