33 Weeks Pregnant - you don’t need permission to change your mind!
I have never been anti-water birth. I’ve always believed that water is a fantastic tool for pain relief during labour and birth, and studies are quite convincing that birthing in water significantly lowers the chance of perineal tears. However, it’s just never felt right for me.
30 Weeks Pregnant - good news!
This is going to be a very brief post today, but in keeping with the festive season I am celebrating some good news! Not only did my latest tests come up negative for any pathologies that could have been linked to the low platelets, but my platelet levels have gone up already, and are actually back into the acceptable range!
28 Weeks Pregnant - my diagnosis of gestational thrombocytopaenia and iron deficiency
If you’re asking “Thrombo...umm, what even is that??”, that’s a perfectly valid question! It’s a fancy name for “low platelets”, and no, I wasn’t familiar with the term before either! It’s a relatively common condition in pregnancy, although the diagnosis is quite subjective. In Australia, the accepted “healthy minimum” level of platelets shows up as 150 on your blood test results, so anything below that is diagnosed as thrombocytopaenia. In Italy, where I had my first baby, they calculate the minimum as 130, so the level of 145 on my latest blood test results wouldn’t have even raised an eyebrow there.