(SUA) Single Umbilical Artery - Can anyone help PLEASE?!

[Angel9610]

Hi ladies

I just came across this thread today as another member pointed it out to me.

I am 19 weeks pregnant with my rainbow baby. Some of you may or may not know, i lost my beautiful daughter due to medical negligence after going into preterm labour at 27 weeks.

This journey so far has been weird and worrying, i have almost shut my mind to everything and treated it all as a process, most of the time trying to think im not even pregnant to stop myself worrying and getting hurt i guess. Well I found out today i have SUA (Single Umbilical Artery). Normally you have 2 arterys and 1 vein in the cord, well this pregnancy has 1 artery and 1 vein. I am getting mixed opinions online, most forums like this one say this is not something to worry too much about just have closer monitoring and growth scans, whereas on medical websites and places it seems more serious?!

What are the risks, what do i need to do? and is there anything i should be prepared for/look out for? Im willing to try anything. I am a worrying wreck !!

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks.
xxx

 

[JaydensMommy1]

At my clinic I work for I see it often with very positive results. Some cases has intrauterine growth restriction but this however will not result (usually) in severe iugr. You will be monitored more I'm sure but I'd really suggest not worrying. Is baby growing fine? So sorry to hear of your previous loss

 

[DarlingMe]

I think this is one of those things that is dependent on the situation. The above post is promising! I used to work with a girl who also had a baby with a heart defect, not sure if it was related to the SUA that she also had. She also found about the heart defect at her 20 week u/s so hopefully if anything else was going on they would have spotted it!

 

[mpgangle]

Hi Angel,

I had this too, with my first. It can be associated with - not the cause of, mind you - heart and renal issues. We had NO problems at all. A two-vessel cord can also be more likely to fold rather than bend and to be weaker in general than a normal three-vessel cord. One vessel could possibly be providing less nutrition to the baby, too, so they'll want to make sure he/she is growing properly.

Let me stress that we had NO problems in our first pregnancy! You will probably be monitored extra-closely and have lots of really super cool pictures to keep.

I was induced because of the concerns about weakness, so that may be the only thing that's different than you expected. Maybe we were too naive to worry, but we didn't really worry much and everything was wonderful. We have an amazing 7-year-old now.

--Patty

 

[Wellington]

I worried about this 2 years ago and have a happy healthy 1 year old. If you delve deeper into the posts there is one started back then that quite a few people have put their comments on and have even popped back after their LOs birth. If you've had enough of the medical scare stories and need some better news to redress the balance, I suggest you have a search and dig it up.

Good luck