What does it look & feel like to have no fluid?

I decided that I will write a blog to answer the question I hear the most.  "What does it look and feel like to have no fluid?"  Now that we have been on this journey for almost three months I should be able to answer accurately.  I hope this information better explains our situation and what is going on with me.  I also hope that if any other woman is experiencing what we are going through this will answer some of her questions of "what happens."  I know I would have loved to talk to someone who had gone through everything ahead of me just to give me an idea of what to expect. 

What does it feel like?

I feel like a normal pregnant woman.  I feel fine some days and other days I feel really large :)  I think the big difference for me is that ever since I ruptured at 16 weeks it has not been comfortable for me to sit straight up.  So kitchen tables/church pews are not comfortable for me and I will choose to sit in a recliner with my feet up.  Or whenever we had appointments, I would recline the seat back in the car instead of being upright.  This is largely due to the fact that I feel like I am pinching my stomach when I sit upright.  My only explanation for this discomfort is that because there is little fluid I feel more of her extremities with my own and feel like I am squishing her quicker.  The other major change is that I am not allowed to take any baths - only showers.  So even though it would be so nice to soak in the Jacuzzi tub in my hospital room, I can only look at it :)  This is to eliminate another route that an infection could occur.  There is no membrane of fluid protecting the baby from an infection or virus so I need to take this precaution of protecting the baby myself.

What happens with no fluid?

When I ruptured at 16 weeks I truthfully thought I just didn't make it to the bathroom in time.  I had just been on the road for a few hours without stopping for a bathroom and figured it was my own fault.  No big deal.  This would be a normal assumption since at 16 weeks, when your water breaks, there is not a significant amount of fluid to lose compared to if you are 40 weeks along.

For some reason my body maintains small amounts of fluid, loses that fluid, and regains some more.  The fluid inside a mother's womb is swallowed by the baby and then released by the baby.  So the first few weeks of bed rest I would go 3 to 5 days without leaking any fluid.  Once again, this makes sense since the baby is smaller and not taking in as much so my body could hold on to the small amounts for longer.  As the baby grew I would lose fluid more often.  It is a similar feeling to my water breaking over and over again.  I can not predict when it will happen and I can not tell you how much fluid I will lose.  Now that the baby is larger she can hold more fluid inside of her own stomach.  When she releases that fluid - there is a greater chance I will lose some because my body is not retaining large amounts. 

What does it look like to have no fluid?

At our  ultrasound today I took a picture of the "fluid measuring" screen so that I could try to explain how they measure my fluid and what it looks like to have none.  If you think of an ultrasound, they rely heavily on the fluid to gain good pictures of the baby.  We will never have any great pictures of our daughter since she will never have large amounts of fluid. 

In this picture there are four quadrants.  When the tech performs the ultrasound she mentally divides my stomach into four quadrants.  In each quadrant she looks for a pocket of fluid. They then measure that pocket from top to bottom in centimeters.  The next step is to add up all four quadrants to get a final fluid number.  In this particular ultrasound, they found two pockets of fluid.  Both pictures on the left have a small line that is measuring the pocket in those two quadrants.  One was 1.73 cm and one was 1.3 so my total fluid for this ultrasound was 3 cm.  In a typical pregnancy you will see 9 to 26 cm of fluid around the baby.