Katie - posted on 05/27/2011 ( 31 moms have responded )
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Wow am I excited to find this group! I am in serious need of a good vent!
I am currently 31 weeks ( and one day) pregnant. Since the very start this pregnancy has has been 100% more complicated then my last pregnancy. At 5 weeks my hormone levels weren't high enough. Doctor says to prepare to miscarry because it didn't look like it was going to stick. At 7 weeks I m still pregnant but start having intense pain, I get sent for an ultrasound because the doctor is SURE that it is ectopic and I am going to lose the baby and have to go for surgery. Nope! Just a little sac in the right spot with a teeny little heart beat.
I then proceed to enjoy three months of HARDCORE morning sickness. During this time my husband has moved 15 hours north and has left me behind with our at the time 1 year old to pack up the house as we were to be joining him a few months later. I make it through (barely) and move up north to be with my husband and things were sort of calm for a little while...
At 22 weeks I start having really bad pressure and cramping and go to the ER at the TINY hospital in our rural town. The doctor checks my cervix and gets a really panicked look on his face. 15 minutes later the OBGYN that I see up here shows up and checks me. She says my cervix is low and super soft and they are concerned I am having a threatened abortion. I get sent home on strict bed rest and go back for an ultrasound the next day. The tech says "don't worry your cervix looks looks fine" my husband and I breathe a sigh of relief and head over to the drs office for our follow up. We wait an hour (with my toddler) in the office, the dr finally shows up and she looks like she has been crying. She sits down across from me and says that the ultrasound showed that my cervix (which had been 4cm at my 20 week scan) was measuring at 1.7 cm. My cervix was low and soft and there was really bad funneling. She tells me she has just been on the phone with the provinces leading preemie doctor and because I am only 22 weeks the baby is not technically viable and if I go into labour there is nothing they can do in the tiny hospital in our town. She sends me home on bed rest and tells me that there is a 50/50 chance that I will lose the baby within the week. We go home and the next day I go into labour. Contractions get to 3 minutes apart and I end up on an IV in the hospital. The doctors are asking me if we want to hold the baby when it's born, do we want to have a funeral, do I want to dress it...They are warning us that the baby might live for a few hours without a ventilator and to be prepared to have it die in our arms. I am freaking out and in pain. They pump me full of fluid and I make it through the night and the contractions ease off. I get sent home a few days later still on strict bed rest. They tell me that when I get to 24 weeks the baby will be considered viable and the province will medivac me down to Vancouver (the closest city with a level 4 NICU) where I will stay until the baby is born. I stay on bed rest at home until 24.5 weeks (there was all kinds of confusion about my due date which is a whole other vent!) and the day before I am supposed to be flown across the whole province on the governments dime the drs office calls me at home and says they want to make sure that I have somewhere to stay when I get down to the coast, oh and what time did I book my commercial flight for. WHAT THE FUCK! So I try to calmly explain that I have had every doctor in our town tell me that I was to be flown down in an air ambulance to stay at BC womens until my baby is born. All of a sudden (the day before I am to leave) there are no beds and my lovely doctor hasn't even spoken with anyone about the medivac. So after another week (keeping in mind that this whole time I am having about 12 contractions an hour and constant intense vaginal pressure) during which time my doctor yells at me and tells my husband and I that she can't be the middle man between us and social workers anymore...I didn't even know there were social workers involved. And countless conversations with just about everyone in Vancouver I finally book a commercial flight at our own expense ($700 one way,) we fly down to Van and go to Royal Columbian where there is a doctor I have been referred to who is supposed to have been corresponding with my doctor up north and who knows the situation. Not only is he not even on call the day we are told to go to the hospital, but when we arrive at RCH no one has any idea who we are or why we are there. AWESOME! SO I get to explain the whole long story yet again and because my doctor hadn't sent the records she was supposed to they had to re-do all of the tests I had already had (FFN, gest diabetes, blood, urine, swabs, etc...) After 2 days of being poked and prodded and having to explain to the shocked nurses that I had been sent on a commercial flight 3/4 of the way across the province on my own dime while in threatened pre-term labour I finally see a real doctor who tells me that the ultrasound they have done says my cervix is totally normal...3.2 cm no funneling...BUT I do have polyhydramnios (to much fluid) and at 25 weeks I am measuring at about 30 weeks.
I get sent home from the hospital (luckily I had a place to stay on the coast) and told to come back in 2 weeks to have a follow up ultrasound. After hearing all sorts of horror stories about why I could have so much fluid (ie genetic abnormalities with the baby) I am basically freaking out. My husband had to go back up north and because I was still on bed rest I couldn't take care of my son so he had to go with him. I spent the most depressing 2 weeks ever missing my toddler (who I had only weaned about 3 weeks previous) and being so scared that there was something wrong with my baby.
I go for the 2 weeks follow up and they do another ultrasound (number 9 for this pregnancy...) I get sent up to L&D too see the doctor and she tells me that I have too much fluid but it isn't a dire situation, go home (up north home) and take it easy. The baby looks healthy and all my tests came back negative, the excess fluid is probably nothing. Needless to say I am overjoyed, I get to go home and see my toddler and my husband, and it looks like everything might be ok.
I book my flight (another $500) and fly home on mothers day. I make an appointment for the following week to check in with my OBGYN up here and she tells me she's shocked that I've made it this far (oh what bedside manner) and says she has no records from the hospital on the coast so to come back next week once she's read everything first hand from a doctor. I go back last wednesday and she still hasn't gotten the files and she sits me down and tells me that there is a good chance that there will be something visibly wrong with the baby when he's born because there has to be a reason for the excess fluid. Basically she tells me to prepare myself for there to be a problem and wants to send me for three more ultrasounds before my due date....
Ok I know that was long and I doubt anyone will read all of it, but seriously am I overreacting?!?? What happened to bedside manner. Maybe what I need is someone to say congrats on carrying this baby this far! Not to hear again and again "your baby is going to die" "your baby is going to have a birth defect" after 9 ultrasounds I feel like if there was something serious they probably would have noticed by now...Plus what the fuck can I do about it now????I am 31 weeks pregnant. Even if abortion would have been an option if there was a serious defect it certainly isn't at 31 weeks! Stop bloody poking at me, and prodding me and leave me be. AHHH! Enough with the doomsday attitude. This boy is going to be born and it isn what it is. I wish I could change doctors but this late in the pregnancy in such a small town I literally have no other options (aside from travelling 6+ hours to a different hospital) but after only being in labour with my son for 10 hours I doubt I am going to have the time to make it 6+ hours when the time comes....AHH
Anyways I feel a bit better. Thanks!
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