I didn’t realize people would find this interesting, but a few of you requested my pregnancy story for Rachel. So here it is.
I was sick before I realized I was pregnant. It was a convenient form of morning sickness—sweets were repulsive. Veggies and fruits were all I could eat. (Got over that pretty quickly, though.) And if I ate, the morning sickness obeyed and I felt okay.
I found out I was pregnant the week of my mother’s birthday. I decided to save the surprise for that day, Saturday. I called my parents’ house, but no one answered. I called my mom’s cell phone. No answer. I figured my dad was out, so I called my youngest sister, who still lived at home. She didn’t answer, but my next youngest sister texted me back.
Dad’s in the hospital. He passed out this morning. We’re waiting to hear what’s wrong.
It took most of the day to find out what had happened and that my dad was mostly okay (he made a full recovery and is fine now). I finally tracked down a phone number for his room and called him. I was planning to tell my mother first, but she wasn’t there, so I told my dad. I called my mom at home next and told her, then my sisters. We needed the good news that day.
It was just the beginning of hospital visits for this pregnancy.
Since my last OB passed away a year before this, I changed doctors. At my first visit, they performed an ultrasound—the baby wasn’t due in mid-May as I’d calculated: the baby was due June 9. It should be illegal to prolong a pregnancy three weeks, especially in the midst of morning sickness!
My new doctor didn’t have a blood lab on site, so I had to go to the hospital for the routine blood tests, including the quad screen. I visited my parents for Christmas. While I was there, I got a call from my doctor. We played a few rounds of phone tag, and the nurses said the doctor wanted to talk to me himself.
Which, of course, means something is wrong.
And it was and it wasn’t. The baby had an elevated risk of Down syndrome. It was a week before I came home and visited with the doctor. I spent that week trying not to worry (because worrying wouldn’t change anything, right?) It turned out that “elevated risk” meant a 1 in 132 chance. Less than one percent. And this test is notorious for false positives.
But we went to the appointment with the perinatologist (at the hospital. Again.) anyway. They didn’t see any signs of Down syndrome in the baby, but they discovered something else—instead of the normal three blood vessels in the umbilical cord, the baby only had two blood vessels.
Then, of course, they laid out all the risks and had to act as if the worst was happening. A two-vessel cord (single umbilical artery or SUA) is correlated with chromosomal defects. Down syndrome is a chromosomal defect. Therefore, we couldn’t rule out Down syndrome without amniocentisis. (Big needle, big fun.) (We opted not to do the amnio, especially after our research found no correlation between SUA and Down syndrome specifically.)
Additionally, SUA can lead to intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR. Lots of letters!), where the baby can’t grow well in the womb. My doctor said that if the baby went three weeks without growing, we would deliver the baby as early as 33 weeks. Induced labor, c-sections and premature babies are my three biggest fears for pregnancies, so this is exactly what I wanted to hear. Not.
So every three to four weeks, I got to haul two kids to the hospital, through admitting, to the radiology office. Wait. Entertain kids. (Okay, to be fair, helpful neighbors did watch them for three of the visits, so I only had to take them half the time. And Ryan came to every ultrasound, so I wasn’t alone.) We’d decided to let the baby’s gender be a surprise—but monthly ultrasounds make that a little more challenging than normal. And then in the last month of pregnancy, I had weekly nonstress tests and amniotic fluid indices (measuring the fluid in the womb via ultrasound), to make sure the baby was okay. I had up to three doctor/hospital appointments a week at the end. Hooray.
Rachel passed every exam, chose not to be an exhibitionist, and ended up being my largest baby to date. I can’t wait to see the insurance charges. (And neither can the hospital, apparently. After waiting five months to bill us for the quad screen that started all this trouble, they’re now claiming that our insurance isn’t paying on charges made six weeks ago and we have to pay it all. Yeah, right. But in addition to the health concerns, we had so much trouble with a new insurance company that it stresses me out thinking about it still.)
Next time: labor and delivery!