I wish I could say that I was unique or led an incredibly fascinating life, but I’d be lying. Yes, the truth is that I’m very ordinary and my life is relatively boring. I’m the mother of a six-year-old and the wife of a great husband. I work as a college professor, teach classes, and write professionally. I don’t get enough sleep, but what mother does?
The only unusual part of my life story has been my pregnancies. They have never been boring. I wish they were uneventful, but that’s not the way they turned out. I expected them to be like the rest of my life — smooth sailing on relatively calm waters. I really did.
The first time around my husband and I were having trouble conceiving. He had to have his sperm tested to see if he had lively swimmers. No trouble there. Then there was me. I had to go in for a procedure that would unblock my fallopian tubes. Before the procedure was done, I had to make sure that I had had my period and had to take pregnancy tests to be sure that I wasn’t pregnant. About a week before, I had a period so the doctor gave me antibiotics to take several days before the procedure to prevent infection. I also took about three at home pregnancy tests, all of which were negative. I was set to go.
The night before my fallopian tube cleaning, I had a dream that I was pregnant. This didn’t seem so unusual. After all, I was hoping to become pregnant and was ready for a procedure that might help. However, this dream was more like a premonition. It tugged at me and stayed with me all morning long into the early afternoon when my husband and I sat awaiting my turn in the medical center. Suddenly, it seemed as if there were neon signs screaming at me: “Tell your technician if you think or could be pregnant. Tell them! Tell them! “
And I thought, what do I tell them? “Oh, by the way, I had a weird dream last night that I was pregnant. Oh, yes. I took three home pregnancy tests and they were all negative, but well, I had this dream.”
I thought they would think that I’d lost my mind and would think that maybe I was better off not having children because I wasn’t playing with a full deck any how.
I sat on the examining table in my oversized paper napkin dress waiting for my doctor who was delivering another baby in another part of the hospital. In the meantime, a young woman came with my chart to ask some questions. She noticed my last name and said, “Hey, my sister had you for English.”
Oh, the horror! At least this was a female student. There is something horrific about one of your students seeing you naked and this was about as close. “I’ll tell her that I saw you,” she said brightly to which I could only respond, “Yeah.”
I waited and waited with my husband for the doctor to arrive and finally she appeared.
“I’m really sorry,” she said, “but I’ve got another emergency upstairs. Do you mind waiting a bit more?”
My husband had already taken the day off work and so had I so I didn’t mind waiting an hour or two more.
It would be easier than rescheduling. It was then that I felt pressed to tell her about my dream, risking the absurdity of it all.
"Dr. Kaufmann, I just thought that I’d mention that I had a really odd dream that I was pregnant. I took about three home pregnancy tests, but they were all negative. I don’t know,” I said sheepishly, “I just thought that I’d mention it.”
She looked at me, but not like I’d lost my mind. “Humph,” she said. “Well, sometimes mothers know things intuitively. How about we get a blood test? It will be back in about an hour and so will I.”
So that’s what happened. I had a blood test and my husband and I waited for another hour. Dr. Kaufman came back into the room and said, “Well, get dressed.”
“Is it too late to do the procedure?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “You don’t need it. You’re already pregnant. Congratulations!”
It turns out that if I had gone through with the procedure, the fetus would have been aborted. Perhaps mothers really do know things that ordinary mortals do not.
I ended up having to take a blood test every week until the fetus was at about eight weeks because I’d had unusual bleeding and low HCG levels. I also had to have an early ultrasound, which the doctor said suggested that I had actually miscarried a fraternal twin early on, which explained the “period” that I thought that I had.
Of course, I had my share of morning sickness after that and made the best of it at work. I found that ziplock bags were the best solution. I’d keep them in my car as I drove to work, puke in the bag in the parking lot, zip it up, pop some breath freshener, and go to my office to retrieve my toothbrush. It was a neat little system, more or less.
I didn’t have any real trouble with my first pregnancy until I grew some hemorrhoids the size of golf balls. They weren't your normal variety either. They became thrombus hemorrhoids, which meant that I had to have them surgically removed or else I would have bled to death during vaginal delivery. Because I was eight months pregnant, I was only given a local anesthetic and that wore off fairly quickly. The surgeon told me that he was so impressed with my pain threshold. He knew that the operation was incredibly painful, that I could feel most of it and yet, I didn’t cry out. To be truthful, the aftermath and recovery from that operation were worse than the delivery of the baby, but that’s really the subject of another column.
After three weeks of recovery from my hemorrhoid surgery and still working through it all, I had to be induced two weeks early. The baby was apparently getting big, maybe too big.
At 7 lbs. 15 oz, they were right. My girl got stuck. Medically, this is called shoulder dystocia, which occurs in less than 1% of all births according to some studies. My delivery was rather long and arduous with lots of ripping and stitches, the bulk of which I didn’t recover from for about three months. Up to this point, I really believed that, like several of my friends, I’d have the baby in 15 minutes and be able to walk around an
hour later. But this wasn’t the way it turned out.
Perhaps even worse than my situation was my daughter’s recovery. She had some bruising to her shoulder and her little head looked like one of the Cone Heads from Saturday Night Live. I kept feeling the urge to tell people that we were from France and plunked a hat on her most of the time. My daughter’s pediatrician kept hoping that her head would reshape into more of a bowling ball shape, but that just didn’t happen.
I spent the next seven months meeting weekly with a neonatal neurosurgeon at Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital in Orlando, which was about an hour from our home. Having taken all of my vacation and sick leave on my unpaid maternity leave, I ended up having to schedule these appointments late in the afternoon on Fridays when I wouldn’t be missed as much. After X-rays CAT-Scans, the surgeon prescribed a specially made helmet that Emily had to wear 23-hours-a-day for about seven months. It was heavy and hot during those Florida days and nights, but the helmet did the trick. My daughter’s head is a lovely round shape, and we all survived.
I have friends who have had worse stories than me and some with better ones. One of my friends who is a CFO of a major corporation had her children in literally 15 minutes with no tearing. She is on child number three while I am ready to have child number two. It only took me about seven years to work up the nerve again.
This time I’m scheduled to have a c-section around the third week of April. The doctor told me that the baby, a boy this time, will likely be large. He’s breech and already weighs almost 7 lbs with about three weeks to go. I admit that I’m frightened out of my mind to have a c-section. I was never a fan of needles or knives, and I guess I’ll be confronting both. Still, the recovery time for me should be less than my vaginal recovery, and the baby is assured not to suffer the problems of shoulder dystocia, an odd-shaped head, or something more dire. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
In the meantime, I can’t wait to go back to my boring life, but I know that won’t be for a long, long while.
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Copyright 2004 Joanne Detore-Nakamura, Ph.D.
