Jennifer's son

I found out about two and a half years ago I have FVL. I was around 7 months pregnant with my 4th son. I started getting these pains on the inside of my legs from my ankles all the way up. I told my dr. I was getting these weird red bruises but no one was hurting me and I wasn't hurting myself and they weren't going away. He simply stated they were not bruises and that was all he said. I thought they would go away but two weeks later on my next visit I saw a different dr. in the same practice and I also told her about my mysterious bruises. She took a look at my legs and had me go get an ultrasound on my legs (a venus doppler or something like that?). After that I never got the official results of the test but the dr. scheduled me for an induced birth at 37 weeks because she believe I just needed to get the extra weight off my legs.

It worked. 5 weeks later I had no signs of those "bruises" and I was enjoying my little son. I decided to go back to work early because we needed the money and so 5 and a half weeks after having my little boy on my first night at work I started having some pain when I breathed in on my left side under my ribs. I worked the rest of my shift and tried to go home and sleep it off but the pain was getting worse and worse. I couldn't breathe in very well without pain. I went to the hospital. The first diagnosis I got was pnuemonia. Then the drs did a CT scan and found out it was a PE. I was put in the hospital for a week on heparin and then released after finding out the cause of my clotting was FVL.

I went on to have one more son. He was born 6 months ago at 38 weeks. Very healthy. I was on lovenox twice a day and have had no more clotting problems. His labor and delivery were very normal except I was not allowed to have an epidural because I had taken my last shot within a few hours of having him.

Jennifer