If you don't know what blood platelets are, here is a mini biology lesson :) Platelets are what make your blood clot when you get cut. According to the doctors I not only have less platelets than other people, the platelets I do have don't work as efficiently as they are supposed to either. That means that I bruise very easily and when I get cut I bleed a lot more than someone else with regular platelets. It also means there was a risk of bleeding to death when my babies were born. Because this condition is hereditary the doctors told us that all of our children would also have low platelets, which is a concern during delivery because of the risk of a head injury when the baby is being delivered. For some reason when I was pregnant, my platelet count dropped even lower than normal. A regular platelet count is over 200,000. My platelet count is usually around 70,000-90,000. When I was pregnant my count went down as low as 18,000.
When my son, Little Man, was born two years later, things went much better. Despite my platelets dropping again I was able to have a VBAC and although Little Man's platelet count was low at 101,000, he did not need to go to NICU and I was able to keep him with me in my room. (If his platelets had been under 100,000 he would have been put in NICU.)
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