Risk of preterm birth... b/c of short cervix 😭

Hi,

I wanted to write about my journey so far and what I’m currently experiencing and feeling. I am at risk for preterm birth due to having a short cervix.

Here goes nothing...

A little background of myself, I’ve gone through fertility treatments for about 3.5+ years. Had 5 failed IUIs a couple of surgeries later and my first IVF FET took! This is my first pregnancy.

Fast forward to my anatomy scan on week 19 and 21 (had to go in twice as baby wasn’t coorperating)... we found out that I have a short cervix. Week 19 measured at 2.5 cm, week 21 measured at 2.4 cm. The doctor continued to monitor me every other week.

Week 23 measured and dropped to 1.9 cm. Then this concerned my OB so I started going in every week. Week 24 was at 1.7 cm. My OB didn’t want to do a cervical cerclage as at week 23, there’s a risk of it bursting the sac and going right into preterm labour. So we didn’t do a cervical cerclage because of that, which I preferred.

Today at Week 25 it measured at 2.0 cm, which my OB was happy about and said it’s stable now. But I need to go in week 26, 27 and 28. He said they stop monitoring cervix at week 28. But I am still at risk for preterm birth. Meaning birth can happen at anytime.

This scares me a lot and is very stressful. I asked once I stop the cervix measurement at week 28, and the cervix drops again, can I go into preterm labour? He said yes. He said at that point they will give me steroid shots to help speed up the development for the lungs and other medication for brain development. I’m so scared about all of this. I really don’t want to give birth that early, which would make it higher risk at that point.

Has anyone gone through a similar situation? Did your cervix stabilize, or continued to drop and you’ve had a preterm birth? How did your baby turn out? Risk of giving birth too early is a lot of long term health issues with the baby. Praying we don’t need to go through that.

Any advice or comments are appreciated.

Thank you.