Hi Meg,
I'm so sorry to hear that you're going through this. We lost our first baby to undiagnosed incompetent cervix and just went through an incredibly challenging pregnancy due to the same thing. Fortunately, we had a pretty good outcome the second time around and welcomed our baby boy, Thomas, to the world 6 weeks early on July 10th. He is perfectly healthy and contentedly sleeping beside me as I write.
You can read my full story, if you want, on "pregnancy complications --> Sludge/Contraction/Short Cervix/Preventative Cerclage - 16 weeks"
Anyways, it sounds like you have a dynamic cervix, which can be incredibly anxiety provoking since your length changes so frequently. Luckily, your doctor has said that the cerclage is holding. When my cervix shortened dramatically at 18 weeks despite a preventative cerclage, my doctor told me the same thing. I didn't believe him when he told me that the main thing is that your cervix is hard and closed, and that the length on its own isn't a good predictor of imminent labour. It wasn't until we made it further into the pregnancy with an incredibly short cervix that I really began to believe that this was true.
One thing that I advocated strongly for was a pessary ring. This is a rubber doughnut shaped implement that is inserted vaginally. It helps to distribute the weight of the uterus on the cervix. It can be inserted clinically in less than a minute, has very little risk, and has similar outcomes as a cerclage. It can be placed even with an existing cerclage, although your doctors might tell you that this may put you at greater risk of infection due to adding another foreign body. Unfortunately, it is not common in NA to use a pessary ring, so it took a lot of convincing to get my OBs to place it. At first they were skeptical that it would help, but in the end, we all agreed that it was the only thing keeping Tommy in. After my pessary was placed, my cervix remained stable for the remainder of the pregnancy. My waters broke only 4 days after the pessary was removed.
Anyways, I would highly recommend doing some research and asking your doctors about a pessary ring. It may be the one thing that helps get you to term!
Check out this website for more info:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4282542Best of luck! I'm glad you found this website.
If you're on Facebook, there's also a great support group for women with Incompetent Cervix.
Both of these supports really helped me get through this pregnancy!