Episode 42: Anything But Restful, A Bedrest Story: Aileen
Episode 42 SN: Anything But Restful, a Bedrest Story: Aileen
If there’s one thing I can relate to directly, it’s the story of a high risk pregnancy. But the pregnancy that my guest encountered was something I have no first hand knowledge of: she ran into an issue that threatened a premature birth, which caused her doctor to prescribe bedrest–for five months, 150 days for anyone who is counting–of being horizontal, she was more or less plucked out of normal circulation and we talk about what that was like and how she managed it, in the midst of also juggling a move from brooklyn to a farm, which in part means a move from an apartment to a 100 year old farmhouse, and everything that comes with this dramatic change…
You can find more about Aileen and her work at her website www.aileenweintraub.com
Here is the amazon link to Knocked Down: A High Risk Memoir
And here is the link for signed pre-orders
Fibroids
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/uterine-fibroids/symptoms-causes/syc-20354288https://www.uclahealth.org/fibroids/what-are-fibroids
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9130-uterine-fibroids
size of the uterus
Bedrest article by Dr. Mazaki-Tovi (et al.)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198949
Audio Transcript
Paulette: Hi Welcome to War Stories from the Womb. I’m your host Paulette Kamenecka. I’m an economist and a writer, and the mother of two girls. If there’s one thing I can relate to directly, it’s the story of a high risk pregnancy. But the pregnancy that my guest encountered was something I have no first hand knowledge of: she ran into an issue that threatened a premature birth, which caused her doctor to prescribe bedrest–for five months, 150 days for anyone who is counting–of being horizontal, she was more or less plucked out of normal circulation and we talk about what that was like and how she managed it, in the midst of also juggling a move from brooklyn to a farm, which in part means a move from an apartment to a 100 year old farmhouse, and everything that comes with this dramatic change…
I also included a conversation with a researcher and professor of obstetrics and gynecology from Tel Aviv who, with colleagues, recently published some groundbreaking research on bedrest. He is incredibly interesting, and I regret that the recording quality from our conversation is not perfect–but I think you’ll want to hear what he has to say…
So let’s get to this inspiring story.
P: Hi, thanks so much for coming on the show. Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you’re from?
Aileen: Hi, my name is Aileen Weintraub and I’m from Brooklyn, New York. And I moved to the Hudson Valley about 20 years ago. And that’s where my story really starts.
P: Alieen. Thanks so much for coming on the show and I’m excited to hear the story because I read your book Knocked Down, which was awesome. I’m assuming not all the bits made it into the book. So I’m excited to hear the details straight from you. Do you have any siblings?
A: Yes, I have one older brother, who is still in Brooklyn with my family. And we have a great relationship. We didn’t always have a great relationship and actually, my experience with my pregnancy really brought us together.
P: Wow, that’s nice.
A: Yeah.
P: And did having a brother or growing up in your family create a desire you to have a family of your own?
A: Yes, absolutely. So I grew up in a conservative Jewish community. And the emphasis was on family. And I was really born and bred to have a big family. I was taught how to be a good wife, a good mother from a very young age and I wanted a lot of children. And so when I became pregnant and ended up on bedrest and had all these complications, it kind of changed my plans in a big way. And so that was really hard to, to take in and live with.
P: Okay, so that’s totally interesting. So when you were thinking of a big family, were you thinking of like six kids?
A: Exactly. That was the number I had in my head that I was gonna have six kids. I was gonna be like Mary Poppins is going to be amazing. They were all going to just surround me. And you know, the birds would sing when I got up in the morning and it was it was a total fantasy, and obviously it didn’t work out that way. And and that was a lot to come to terms with
P: like you are I have imagined a big family. Not I wasn’t so ambitious for six. Although when I see families like that, I’m like,lucky. So does that mean that you walked into pregnancy, imagining it would be easy?
A: Yes. So by the time I became pregnant, most of my friends already were on their second, third kid. And I just assumed I would get pregnant and have an easy pregnancy and just start popping out kids and, you know, maybe work maybe work part time and that would just be my role for a long time. That’s really what I wanted. And it was shocking to me. And so it was a big disappointment when I was faced with all these complications and realized that that wasn’t going to happen for me.
P: Okay, so let’s walk into this. Was it easy to get pregnant?
A: Yes, it was very easy to get pregnant. And there’s actually a very funny story, which I I talk about a little in my book. It was New Year’s Eve, and my husband had the flu. And he was he was so sick, but you know, we were still newlyweds. So we didn’t even wait we got married. And really, this is the plan. Let’s start right away. And so it’s new year’s eve and I was ovulating. And I was like, Listen, this is it. And, you know, and it was super easy on me. And I got pregnant immediately. And so
P: wow.
A: I thought that was a great omen. And the first few months were typical. I had morning sickness, but nothing I couldn’t deal with. Yeah, that was a little surprising for my husband, you know, he would cook dinner and I would I would be like you’re cooking fish you can’t cook fish in this house. And so that was a learning curve for him. But other than a little things that you you would expect everything was completely fine. And then one day we were walking in New York City we were just strolling It was a beautiful spring day. And suddenly, I felt this pain in my lower belly.
P: wait, how far along are we here?
A: Right so I was four months along. Okay. And we were planning to go to a baby event where they showcase different baby products and, and things like that interview information, pamphlets. And that was the thing I was so into, like all these baby books and I was prepared. I was going in prepared and I was reading everything, researching all the safest products and it was all happening that day. Suddenly I have this pain and I don’t know what to do. So we decided to pack it up and go home. I call the doctor and of course you don’t get to speak to your doctor. You speak to the nurse if you’re lucky. And she kind of dismissed my symptoms. And said your probably find everybody experiences like cramping and things like that. And she wasn’t really taking me seriously but I was also kind of relieved because that’s what I wanted to hear.
P: Totally. Yeah.
A: And it was getting worse and worse and I happen to have had my appointment the next evening anyway, just my regular exam. And I’m assuming that everything’s going to be fine. You know, even though this pain is persisting. As we go into the exam, it’s later in the day. It’s almost evening I think I might have been the last appointment and you can see the doctor looked carried and rushed and wanted to get out of there.
P: Yeah, that’s a bad sign.
A: And I wanted to get out of there too. We had plans to go to this cute little restaurant on the water in Kingston. And all of a sudden, the energy in the room changes she’s saying something, I can’t even process what she’s saying. But I look at my husband’s face and I see the look on his face, and then it all kind of comes together. And I’m being rushed into an emergency sonogram and it turns out that I’ve three huge fibroids in my uterus
P: Okay, so here’s a quick primer on fibroids. If you aren’t familiar with them, uterine fibroids are non cancerous growths of the uterus, thing grow inside the walls or inside the main cavity or outside of yours. Many women have fibroids and don’t know about them because they might not cause any symptoms at all. Researchers from UCLA estimate that 70 to 80% of women will have them in their lifetime and are more likely in your 30s and 40s. And right around menopause. It can be a variety of sizes. To give a sense of dimension here and to maintain consistency with a fruit theme that will emerge later in the episode. At the end of the first trimester, the uterus is the size of a grapefruit and it grows to the size of about a watermelon by the third trimester. fibroids can be the size of a pea or a much bigger mass. So size and placement and the number you have may determine if you run into trouble with them or not. And for the magic question, we have no answer. We don’t know what causes their development
A: and one is pressing on my cervix, causing early effacement. And she basically says to me, you’ll be lucky if your baby makes it to 24 weeks.
P: Good Lord. Oh my God,
A: it was so shocking, because just the day before everything was fine, and we were horrified
P: so let me ask you something ex post. So my fibroids or anything like that, but I also got very direct and not positive news from the OBS. And in retrospect, I understand it as they’re managing my expectations. How do you feel about that kind of response to now do you still think it’s not appropriate or what do you think of it? Now?
A: that’s a really good question, because I think it’s important for doctors to manage expectations. But I also think there’s a way to do it, where you’re not putting so much fear and anxiety into the person you’re talking to.
P: Yeah,
A: who’s already feeling so emotional. So raw and so vulnerable. And I think there’s a balance
P: Yeah, you’re right. The other thing that helped me to process that kind of thing is to remember that my doctor is a person and just like me get’s nervous about stuff and Dr. Raven freaking out and unfortunately she entirely sure that with you.
A: Right, exactly. And you can tell she was already tired and but that’s not an excuse when you’re delivering bad news. You have to have some sense of professionalism and, and she was she was professional and she was a good doctor. I don’t want to say that she wasn’t doing a good job. It was just very overwhelming in that moment. And I’m not one who needs things sugarcoat it, I left information. I understand the doctors job is to be a doctor give me the best care the doctors job isn’t to be a therapist. But the healthcare community I feel like is especially when it comes to women’s health and maternal health has a long way to go. The way they speak to women, the way they speak about women’s bodies and the terms they use. So for example, the word incompetent cervix,
P: yeah,
A: is so offensive to begin with
P: agreed.
A: What it does is it puts shame on the woman before they even understand what’s going on. Yeah, my left feeling I had caused this. Yeah. You’re basically saying there is a part of you that is incompetent.
P: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
A: And they’re these terms are outdated. There’s terms like hustle uterus, geriatric pregnancy. All these terms should be retired and we need to change the dialogue on that.
P: I totally agree. I’m maybe in the shownotes or at the end of the episode, we’ll try to rebrand incompetent cervix. You and I right here. Make it happen. Well, that’s a terrifying prognosis. And then she send you home or what do you do with that?
A: so the next day she had sent me to a specialist. I can see and the specialist basically confirmed what she had said but made it sound a little less tragic. So he did the job of saying okay, you know, we’ve got this going to go on bed rest for five months. And we’ll see how it goes. And hearing that bedrest for five months to just expect a woman to check out of life. Almost half a year to become basically an incubator is a big thing to expect. And it shouldn’t be something that is done lightly and at the time, almost a million women a year were put on bed rest. We are lucky to
P: When I started to research the issue of bedrest, I came upon an article published in 2018 published by a group of doctors out of the Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv and they used a brilliant technique to really get at the heart of what bedrest does and doesn’t do and we are lucky enough to talk to one of the paper’s authors: have Dr. Misaki Toby on the show a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and a researcher who has investigated the efficacy of bedrest for a variety of outcomes. Dr. Mazaki Toby, thanks so much for coming on.
Dr. Mazaki Tovi: Thank you very much for the time. Thank you for having me.
P: the Idea for bedrest came up in the 1830s I can’t remember what that said you know what, what instigated that idea,
Dr. MT: the root of the to do and the the initiative for this bill was actually came from orthopedic issues. We’ll come to think about it. It’s it’s it’s a logic if you broke a leg, somebody that you will not have you’ll have a bedrest and will not put a stress on your broken leg. And then obviously, it was extended to other disciplines in medicine. And another thing that I must say that actually may facilitate the use of bedrest in obstetrics is the fact that 100% of the population is women. So, yes, I must say that well, my my feeling is that if you have to prescribe that was for women and to men and that can be a manifestation of prejudice against women because you said okay, usually, you know, the other spouse in the provider. and the women you know, they should be at home to begin with, so if you’ve discovered bedrest then you didn’t have given harm too much. So my feeling is that said that we’re dealing with women with actually made the dependences so to speak of this treatment to set rates a little bit easier.
P: That’s a whole lot of outdated there. That’s a whole lot.
Dr. MT: Absolutely.
A: and now finally, I’m starting to read a few articles and journals here and there about how doctors are prescribing it a little less, but it’s still very prevalent. And I think we don’t take into account not only the physical aspects of what it means to be on bedrest. The mental load that it’s putting on a person who has to lay there for five months and give up their autonomy. Their finances have to shift their career and that’s another place that the healthcare community can step up and provide resources. I’m not an expert, so I would never ever advise somebody not to listen to their doctor, but I would advise them to do some research and really think about advocating for themselves and making sure that they understand what’s expected and what’s not. And why.
P: and I think what we should be doing is pressing the research community. I mean, the doctor I spoke with yesterday said, part of the reason we do that is because we just don’t know and it’s such a vulnerable period. We want to be as cautious as we can. But there’s all kinds of measurable consequences of bedrest, and we don’t want to works also the way you say it, to say to a woman, okay, now you’re going to leave your job or whatever you’re doing and your family down for five months is crazy.
A: exactly they’re you’re not taking into account that goes along with invest. It’s kind of like the stock app. Oh, we don’t know. What’s wrong with you. We don’t know how to fix it. Yep. All we can offer. And more research really needs to be done and more money needs to be put into research on bed resting women.
P: Consistent with what Aileen is saying, we do need more research on bedrest, and although Dr. Mazaki Tovi’s study focused on preterm labor, and not on the specific issue that brought Aileen to bedrest, he has a lot to teach us.. Dr. Mazaki-Tovi, can you actually define bedrest? I’ve talked to a couple of obese about it. And maybe doctors mean different things when they say bedrest.
Absolutely and this is one of the difficult this therapeutic measures is exactly what do you mean by by bed rest. For some it means only that doing the work. Others is just decrease, you know the household it is for others is just practically to be a bit weird. And so there is a lot of confusion about it. And actually this so called therapeutic visual is ill defined. So the poor woman don’t exactly know what they have to do.
P: Yeah, I’m assuming that there are multiple reasons for bed rest. Why doctors prescribe bed rest?
Dr. MT: Yes, actually. The so called bed was has numerous indication it looks different than it was to prevent discourage twins. Or triplets. Also had an abortion, placenta previa. Sure, it seems that bedrest for many, many physicians and healthcare providers will seem like a silver bullet like medical therapeutic measure,that can prevent all complications indication of pregnancy and the tourists is actually the other way around.
P: So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your study on bed rest and what makes it so unique and so important in the literature on bed rest?
Dr. MT: I will say that the implicit argument bedrest is that you won’t increase your level of activity, then you will harm your pregnancy and you will harm your baby. Nothing can be further from truth. I meet a lot of high risk pregnant women, and I noticed that almost all of them had a self belief guilt, about doing too much physical activity. And this is because of this activity that nothing has happened to him with preterm labor or bleeding will discourage and so on and so forth. And that encouraged us to conduct a study in which we try to quantify the level of activity so until now, activity was not objectively quantified, that means if a physician prescribed to you a bedrest then you know exactly what does it mean and actually there is no way we can follow up and see whether or not you are indeed in bed rest.
So what we decided to do is to try to objectively quantify it and we did it by pedometer, a special device that can count the number of steps that you do a day. And we give this device to pregnant women with extremely high risk for preterm labor and we ask them to wear it for at least one week, including one weekend. It wasn’t them actually use it for two weeks or more. And one important thing that I have to do to remind you that didn’t have access to the data and also dependents women have access to the data. So we are completely blinded. How many steps each and every woman took during the study. And what we found was actually amazing, but what’s surprising I must say, found that more steps you’ve taken the the lesser risk for preterm labor. So it’s counterintuitive.
P: Yeah,
Dr. MT: so don’t do that we’re bedridden, and it takes to actually deliver earlier. So not only is not helpful can be dangerous. So we found out that if you do approximately like 4000 steps a day, that’s fine, to be no harm.
P: One thing that’s so interesting about your study is when you said you’re objectively quantifying activity, what I understand that to mean is that other studies are basically asking women to self report how much did you walk around but then I’m guessing that happens with like a survey to say a lot a little not much. Which is a super hard thing to keep track of right it’s it’s not even a
DrMT: that was the initiative. For the study, we try to quantify. We thought about the load how we how can you quantify physical activity, because as you mentioned correctly, until the study, they will only questionnaire that the dependent living had to to fill in, usually days and weeks and months. After the pregnancy and you know there is a recall bias, you don’t think that you remember what you did when you didn’t do is obviously some activities like swimming, so on were less unreported. So we decided to have a very, very objective way to measure the activity in the book actually uniqueness of the study.
P: That’s amazing. That was such a good idea. The other thing that makes you think when when I read your paper was, Oh, we don’t really understand what causes preterm labor. So it’s weird to think if you lay down it won’t happen.
Dr. MT: Absolutely. You’re absolutely correct. You know, if you if you ask the leading individual that investigate preterm labor understand that preterm labor would actually syndrome. So, you can have preterm labor because you have problems with the service and you can you may have become able to cause a problem with the uterus or with the placenta. Because you’re having to triplets. It’s all because you’re having an infection. And the idea that one solution will solve all these problems scientifically is absolutely ridiculous.
A: I Think there’s a scene in my book where I actually Google bedrest and research and there are no studies at that time where there’s so few studies but so I started just researching like, stupid studies just to see what people are actually studying. Right. And so there’s a line in my book that says, Oh, well, we now know that spider man isn’t real because someone put time and money into researching, but these bed resting women who cares about them, they’re not as important and that’s really what needs to change.
P: Yeah, I mean, your story is a good one to spotlight many things that should absolutely be known or studied at this point that are not….but let’s focus on your particular story: so you’re told you have to go on bed rest and what what actually happens.
A: So it’s really interesting because now I live in the Hudson Valley and New to the Hudson Valley. I just recently moved from Brooklyn to my husband’s rickety old farmhouse that’s possibly haunted. In the middle of nowhere, and he has just bought a power equipment business, and actually the timing couldn’t have been worse. The day we got home from the specialist was the day he signed the papers of ownership.
P: Wow,
A: this and he had to go like he’s like he dropped me off. We ate lunch and he’s like, I have this business now. I gotta get the keys and, and that just plunged us into chaos. And we had all these plans that I worked at the business, I would be part of it. I was still doing freelancing. We were financially struggling just because we invested all our money but we had a plan and that plan just fell apart and I didn’t have a support system, my whole community was in Brooklyn. So that day, I’m alone in the house. And I’m about to get into bed and I’m like, Am I really going to do this and I pull back the sheets and I was like what let’s think about this for a minute and it was a really hard decision. Especially for someone who wasn’t used to staying put for so long.
P: Are you still in pain? Or how’s that going?
A: So I was in pain for a very long time and then it would kind of come and go for a while because your uterus ships. And so sometimes there’ll be a lot of pressure. Sometimes there will be less pressure, but I was always incredibly uncomfortable. And as I’m bed resting, my body is continuing to fail my muscles start to atrophy. I develop hip dysplasia. So even if I want to walk can’t walk my hips freeze up. I develop gestational diabetes, and I have to prick myself with a needle five times a day.
P: Oh, that’s so terrible.
A: Just one thing after another.
P: I brought a question about the physical toll of bedrest to Dr. MT. So one specific issue that Aileen dealt with was hip dysplasia. Can you kind of walk us through why that would be a consequence of bed rest?
Dr. MT: Well, absolutely. You know, when you are bedridden the I mean, you have to understand that that was prescribed by the physician. So as far as we were concerned, this is this is the a theraputic measurement like taking a pill or taking the short women will do missing dependency to be successful. And the will of the women to help the dependency successful is absolutely see the dramatic power. In fact I this is the most powerful thing I ever made. So they’re very devoted to dependency are committed to dependency and then we’ll do that and then we’ll come to bed with someone will just lie down all day that not integrate only, you know only only for photonic period. Yes and nothing more. That can be disastrous for the for the musculoskeletal system, it because it can cause dysplasia and also decrease the intensity of the bones and decrease the frequency of the muscle tone and all the thing can definitely happen from just lying in bed all day
A: And theres also a scene in in the book you know, we’re in bed and I’m not getting very many visitors I did have one or two people come and bring lunch or a scone and that was life saving one of my friends actually brought me the happy days DVD at the time and and it was the most beautiful gift like just hours and hours of Happy Days. And but other than that I was really alone. You know, my mother was still working at the time. She hadn’t retired yet, and she would come up from the city and she was my saving grace and her relationship just blossomed during that time and I learned to appreciate her and all she was doing and all she had done for me that I never really understood when she came up to visit and we would talk about so many things we would talk about marriage and how hard it was to be married and understand each other especially during difficult times. She cleans she would cook she was really my savior.
P: Yeah, parenting has taught me so much about my mom that makes me appreciate all these things I look at differently now.
A: Right? All of a sudden my mother was one of the smartest people in the world.
P: That’s awesome. Yeah. So beggars sounds unbelievably hard, especially in this context where you’re away from everyone and your husband’s gone and you’re just alone in the house with the ghosts all day, right? Is there any magic? How did you get through it?
A: How did I get through it? I get through it one day at a time and actually one of the things that helped me get through it was writing about it. You know, I’m a writer, and suddenly I couldn’t spend a lot of time writing. I couldn’t balance the laptop laying down. I was in too much pain. And so I began writing these little journals about my day and trying to find humor in my day. Even though things were so hard because I really feel like even when there’s so much trauma, if you can find a little joy or something a little ironic or little funny, really helps you get through and so I started writing these one or two paragraph journals, and I emailed them to my brother or my friend just as kind of a connection. And that was really when my book was born. Those were the seeds from my book and from those journals. Years later I went back and read them and each chapter was basically from a journal.
P: That’s very cool. I will say that the medical experience provides a lot of absurdity. So there’s it’s right there’s things that I think people in medicine experience daily which are new to civilians like us when we go in. I feel like there’s a there’s a pretty wide divide between those two things which can sometimes be entertaining unintentionally.
A: Absolutely. And I’ve had so many doctors because out my practice, had this rule that you had to see every doctor in the practice because you didn’t know who’s going to be on call. So you wanted to know them all. And each doctor would tell me something different.
P: Yeah.
A: And give me some different directives. And it was driving me bananas because I was able to do this. Well, this doctor said that and we’re saying this. And so I finally decided to say I need to have one doctor. And that’s how I started to advocate for myself along the way. So instead of just accepting the diagnosis, accepting everything, people were telling me I hit the brakes on that I began to empower myself. Okay, I am in control of my body and I’m going to have a say in how this goes what happens to my body and so I picked one doctor, who I felt was a really good surgeon who I had a good rapport with, and that definitely made things go a lot more smoothly.
P: Okay, good. Good. And Are they checking you every week? Or what’s the schedule like?
A: That was the only time I got to be released from my bed rest sentence was to go to the doctor so I didn’t even mind it so much. And I would go every two weeks, either to the specialist or to my doctor. There was always an appointment to go to. And you know, then there was the gestational diabetes appointment, which was in a lab where I had to stay for I think was three hours because I failed the first test and then they give you a second testing and drink this awful fluid and they take your blood every hour. I can’t remember exactly, but there was a lot of blood being drawn. And those were really the only times I left the house.
P: Yeah, so I can see how they became special.
A: It’s very sad as special..
P: as forms of escape.
P: The one saving grace before that was that my husband would come home for five minutes with a milkshake every day, and then I would get to see his beautiful face. He was so busy. And half the time he would come home and the phone would be propped up to his ear and he just kind of dropped it for me and he didn’t have any time at all. The lady used to know exactly what time he was going to be there and just have it on the counter. So you have to waste a single minute, but it was so important to me that milkshake. It was the connection I really needed during the day. And then when I got diabetes, it was really hard and I began to have to deal with prenatal depression, prenatal anxiety. That was a whole other experience I had no plan for
P: Yeah, that seems unbelievably hard.
P: As Aileen suggests, bedrest can be really mentally taxing, an issue that Dr. Mazaki Tovi addresses.
Aileen was slotted into bedrest because her cervix was opening prematurely. But I’m guessing that this only happens thanks to a complicated series of signalling, so she was saying that her doctors prescribed bedrest because they didn’t have a better way to manage those problems and it probably wouldn’t make the problem worse.
Dr. MT: Exactly. So actually, this is a very common misconception because Okay, so if you go to a physician or healthcare provider will describe bandwidth. The idea is that, okay, if it won’t help will hurt. Again, this is a this is a huge mistake, because bedrest is a tremendous toll from the woman It has physical toll, like dramatic emotional impact of talking about stress, and depression and feeling of of course, about all the economic importance, and all those things that are actually affecting them dramatically without providing help.. Tragedy of this treatment.
P: bedrest does seem like a sentence, right? I think people who don’t experience it and from the outside might say, Oh, it’s so nice. You can watch TV or do what you want. And that’s fine, probably for like two days. And then
A: and I think people understand that now much more with the pandemic.
P: yeah, totally.
A: I wrote this piece for the Washington Post about how bed rest prepared me for this pandemic. What I had to do every day is self care. And it was really just starting to appreciate small things that you don’t notice. So for example, I began to realize that there were these birds that would come every day at noon and circle the yard. They were the same birds every day and this was their territory. And I had never noticed that before. I began to appreciating the smell of the lilacs on the tree outside on my deck. You know, there was a tree right by my deck. So there were small things that I started to really notice. And so that was a little bit of a saving grace and growing experience for me.
P: yeah I can imagine coming from Brooklyn, moving to a rural area, and being on bedrest is a pretty dramatic slowdown. I’m assuming life in Brooklyn is much faster
A: than it was terrifying. So out of my comfort zone living in an old farmhouse to begin with, yeah, and then not to be able to leave that farmhouse. No to see people was so hard for me because in Brooklyn, you walk outside your door, and you see people and there’s a hustle and bustle
At one point by marriage really just starts to crumble under the strain. There’s such a financial strain. We’re trying to renovate the house for the baby. There’s the house has been renovated in probably almost 100 years
P: Oh Good Lord,
A: it was my husband’s family’s farm. There were so many ridiculous things that you can’t even imagine going on his house, and we were having a baby we needed to kind of get up to speed. At one point. Things got so bad. I had to leave. And I went back to Brooklyn and I stayed with my mom and just being in her apartment in Brooklyn and smelling the food from the neighbors and hearing the sirens and the traffic and the kids playing outside. It was so cathartic and my friends came to visit and we talked about things other than pregnancy and other than bedrest and that made me feel whole again.
P: Yeah. That’s, that’s true. Now that you mentioned that I can see how your world has shrunk to this. You know bed that you’re on. You don’t have reminders in that new house of kind of your life before pregnancy,
A: right. And the other thing is this house because it was a family farmhouse. There were so many memories in it that weren’t mine.
P: Yeah.
A: so the paintings on the wall, the furniture, none of that was ours. And it was really like being in a stranger’s house and we were trying to make it our own. And we knew it would take time, but we had a plan and then the plan kind of fell apart.
P: Yeah, yeah, it sounds like you’re relieved or bed rest at some point. How does that happen?
A: I wasn’t relieved of bed rest, at the very end I was given an hour a day to be right, who’s like parole like you get an hour a day to be out in the world. And now I’m nine months pregnant, and I can barely walk and now I’m afraid to go out. I’m depressed I have anxiety. I am petrified How did they expect me to just pick up my life and start over so then I was able to
P: wait so let’s talk about that a little bit what happens about appointment and because that does seem like they so don’t understand what your life is like on bedrest to say like, oh, we put you on pause, but now we’ll hit play.
A: Right You know, I was seeing a specialist and I was seeing my OBGYN. They didn’t always agree. The specialist said at some point, I’m not sure you need to be on bedrest. And my OBGYN was like let’s hold up on that you’re doing really well. So why mess with it now you’re almost at the finish line. And I kind of agreed with that. And I had so much fear that I was gonna mess it up. Yeah, do something and be responsible for something going wrong. So I was like, Well, you’re right. This is working.
P: What’s the way forward?
What do we do now? Now that we have a sense that but rest is not the answer. What what do you do?
Dr. MT: Well, it’s extremely hard because you know, discovering business is actually entrenched into the DNA of the medical system. It’s extremely, extremely hard to take it out. But I would start with just approaching the women is complication of pregnancy and let them know that they cannot hurt the pregnancy. They don’t. Any complication that happened in pregnancy is not because of the woman is not because they work too much or the rain, or the babies or the client service. It has nothing to do with the complication of pregnancy. First and foremost, and this is more important to be from educating the medical staff is to educate women and let them know that they are not guilty of anything, this is the most important thing. The other thing is to educate and change in the perception of the asker and that unfortunately will take at least a decade or so. More and more studies that we did are coming in hopefully that will change the indications in the in the widespread use of bedrest and the therapeutic measures, but unfortunately I must say that will take place a decade.
A: So I was like your right. away, we still inside my body. So that’s where my baby needs to stay right now. And so I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. So my OBGYN said well, you can have an hour a day. Right? That helped with my mental health. A lot
P: And what WHAT WAS THAT based on? Why did they change their their mind? To some degree?
A: They didn’t really share that with me so much.
P: Oh, wow.
A: That’s the thing. Like it’s like you are a magician like one day. This is what I’m supposed to do one day, this is what I’m supposed to do. And there were no clear answers. But my feeling is that I had made it far enough along the same for me to start adding in more activity. I was past the danger zone
P: and how are you feeling now emotionally about that? Because I imagine some amount of pressure has lifted so that in this point if the baby is born from that day on, we think there’ll be okay.
A: In my book, you’ll see that it’s broken up by week. Each chapter is a different week. As I check off the weeks I feel safer that my baby will make it and survive and live and that’s my one and only goal on bedrest is to keep this baby alive. So I’m checking off weeks and I actually start watching morning show with produce Pete who talks about vegetables and he tells you what the week vegetable is and what’s in season. I’m like if I can only get to Apple season when my baby supposed to be born. And that’s what I was basing it on fruit and vegetable
P: that gives us a sense of state of mind. Okay, and then do you make it to 40 weeks or how do you how far do you make it
A: I do you make it to 40 weeks?
P: Wow.
A: And that was really shocking to me because all I can think was that moment when my doctor said you will be lucky if your baby makes it till 24 weeks and to make it to 40 Weeks was amazing. I went into the doctor’s office and all of a sudden they’re saying maybe late, like prepare for being late. And I’m like what are you talking about?
P: Oh, by the way, you have triplets we forgot to mention.
A: Exactly. I’m like so then I started to really question the whole medical community, like, how could I go from being on bedrest Because he thought I was gonna give birth any second to not giving birth for another three, three weeks.
P: So that is so now that we’ve had this conversation that puts in context for me that first scary phrase, and they should never give you a date. They may say like you may go too early because your cervix is a face to say 24 weeks now seems nuts because how would you know how would you know the you know magic?
A: And that’s what I learned is that doctors don’t always know as much as we think they know or want them to know. And that’s okay. They don’t always have the answers and there isn’t the research. I don’t put the blame on doctors at all for that. It’s just how that information is communicated.
P: I totally agree. And actually the way I picked doctors is if they say they don’t know something, I think you’re the doctor for me. I want to hear you. I want to hear you don’t know, right? I don’t I don’t expect you to know everything and I want us to be honest about the boundary.
A: Absolutely.
P: You want to feel totally different if that first doctor had said, I don’t know how this is gonna go. But your cervix is facing too much and we’re gonna have to like change up what we’re doing.
A: Right. Well, these are my concerns. Right? Right.
P: So I can’t believe you’re going to be late. Take us to the day that baby is born like how do you know today’s the day? Are you late? How does that all go?
A: This is actually very funny story. It’s four o’clock in the morning. I wake up and I’m wide open and I feel this kind of swirly feeling. And that’s the best I can explain it and it’s just like a feeling I’ve never had before I don’t have any pain. I just feel swirly. I can’t go back to sleep. I finally kind of doze off a little my husband gets up goes to work. And I spend the day watching movies and taking baths.
P: feeling swirly the whole time
A: the swirling starts to change into excruciating back pain. Wow. And goes now I’ve been on bed rest for five months. I’ve had so many aches and pains. There was one point in this whole experience where my fibroids start shrinking. The pain from that was so excruciating. I didn’t know how I was going to get through it. So I just assumed that this was just another pain that I had to work through. My doctor told me I was going to be late and I’m not feeling any contractions and so the whole day passes like this and they’re getting worse and worse these pains in my back. Finally my husband comes home later in the evening. And at one point I think the pain is so bad I end up on the floor.
P: Oh Wow,
A: I kind of have this idea that maybe I should check in with my Doula who I hired to advise me and she says to me, it sounds like you’re in pre labor. And so I take your word for it. And I’ve tried to pretend nothing’s happening, but I I just can’t get off the floor now. And my husband’s preoccupied. He’s on the phone. He’s doing all this work stuff. And my Doula happened to be at a party that day when I called her that evening and so I didn’t want to bother her again. And this is something women do right. Like they’re they could be having a medical emergency but they don’t want to upset anybody else, or help themselves by imposing on somebody. How do I say I’m going to call my doctor and the doctor was like, to come in and I was like, No, it’s kind of late, I don’t really want to…. And Doctor is insisting and I’m like, What is wrong with you? This is good. There’s no reason for me to come in and just giving you a heads up. So finally, the doctor says, Tell me the hospitals. Let’s just take a look.
So now everyone knows something that I have yet to discover for myself. And we’re trying to get out the door and I can’t get out the door because the pain is so bad. Every time we start to leave I have to get on the floor. And at one point the dog gets so upset with me. The dog is pawing at my face kind of woke me. Why is everyone acting so strange? I just have some back pain with my husband kind of herds me to the car, and he’s like you just gonna take the bag we packed and I’m like, don’t be ridiculous. We’ll be home in an hour. I didn’t just in case I finally get into the backseat. I can’t even get into the front seat. And laying down in the back of this car and we’re going over the Kingston Rhinecliff bridge and my husband says to me, Listen, I don’t want you to be upset, but I have something to tell you. And I’m like, what could you possibly have to say right now that would upset me.
And he says just listen to my thoughts on this. I think you might be in labor. I’ve been timing you and it seems like maybe you’re having some contractions. And then I think about it for a minute and I’m like, wow, this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. Since I was a four year old child in Brooklyn learning how to swaddle my Holly Hobbie doll. This is it. This is happening. So we get to the Birthing Center, which is absolutely beautiful. It’s attached to the hospital, but it’s like a little house with a beautiful porch. And by this time, I think I could let my Doula know that we’re heading over to the hospital and she meets me in the parking lot. And she’s like I want you to breathe and want me to take a deep grounding breath and I basically push her aside and say, lady, I don’t have time for this I gotta get to the hospital. So so that’s how it started. That was that was how I finally acknowledged that this was finally happening.
P: I remember asking people, What do contractions feel like? And every single person said, Oh, you’ll know and also back Labor’s not what you expect are not what I would expect. I wouldn’t know what to do with that either.
A: Absolutely. And no one told me anything about back labor but didn’t have a single traditional contraction. Yeah, it was it was hard. It was very painful. And they said that the reason that I was in Back labor was because of my fibroids. I don’t know if that was true. I didn’t really have time to research it in the moment but they said your this is because of your fibroids that you’re not having traditional contractions.
P: wow so when you get to the birthing center, are you imagining a vaginal delivery or where are we on the delivery
A: right? So did you happen and I obviously don’t want to give away the whole story for my book, but the doctors had gone back and forth about that quite a few times whether I was going to have a plan C section because of the fibroids, whether I could deliver vaginally and pretty much towards the end of my pregnancy. They switched it up and said you can deliver vaginally and I wasn’t at all prepared for that. Because I had been planning on a C section, okay. And so that’s what I was going for, and I was going for that for 36 hours.
P: Oh my God.
A: And so here I am in the hospital, 36 hours of labor, and I’ve been in bed for five months. And now I’m going to have a baby on a sleep deficit.
P: I was gonna say you must be like Looney Tunes at this point. Right? That’s
A: And it’s so ironic. I spent five months in bed and now I’m having this baby completely exhausted.
P: Yeah.
A: I will never catch up from this. And it took a long time to catch up.
P: before you encountered any trouble with your pregnancy. Had you imagined no waterbirth or angels with harps coming just from by your ears or like what was your picture of what delivery be like
A: I had planned to be in a hospital with a doula from the start. We hired the doula before there were any issues. We had checked out the birthing center. It was really a comfortable homey place attached to a hospital so it was the perfect ideal place to give birth and I did I did get to give birth there luckily.
P: Oh Good, good. And that was a success. I’m imagining.
A: Yes. So we’re in labor for 36 hours. They have a birthing tub. We’re trying everything. And most of this time up until 25 hours I’m doing this without any drugs. And I finally call it and say Listen, I need some relief. And so they gave me all sorts of different things at various points. And now we’re an hour maybe 34 and the doctor says you’re nine centimeters dilated. I just had some sort of cocktail. I don’t know if it’s an epidural and I don’t even know what they’re giving me at this point. But I can’t feel anything. And the doctor says I can kind of push that last meter for you. So you can start pushing but I don’t think you can. I think you’re exhausted and I think that your baby’s heart rate is climbing and we need to get this baby out now. I was like I can push. She’s like you can’t push. And I was like no no I can push and she was like, Man, I’m things and she was right there. I couldn’t feel a thing. There was no way I was pushing but in my mind, I felt like I could reel this baby out of my body.
P: Well you willed it in. Also, like are you appreciating the irony of like, we’re worried your cervix will pop open at any moment and now you’re like at nine and it’s not
A: and the baby will come out babies like and I think honestly I’m it’s been so much time and energy holding this baby in.
P: Yeah,
A: that in truth it was hard for me to let go and understand that it was okay to give birth and they will be in for a C section and everything went pretty smoothly from there and I had a beautiful baby boy
P: such a great ending. And how old is the baby now?
A: Well, let me start by saying that it took a very long time to process this story and to write it took even longer. My son is 15 now so
P: awesome. It does take a long time to process this is a good long runway now that you’ve had this time to process it. Is there anything you would have told young Aileen into this process that would help her
A: I try to think of it. What would I tell a woman on bedrest? Yeah and what I would say is the most important thing is to say this is your body and you need to advocate for yourself and make sure you are heard and do your own research and that no matter what happens You’re a strong woman and you will get through this because I didn’t know any of that at the time.
P: Yeah, yeah. There’s no test like this test right? It is like physical and emotional and in pressing in ways that nothing else is.
A: Right. And I think that what is important to understand is when you go on bed rest it’s not just laying down for five months and reading some book, Your whole life changes and that’s important to know and to be prepared for continued steps and also to acknowledge your emotions and feelings and know that they’re real and that you have a right to feel those things and that there are people you can talk to about it. And you should reach out for help. And I had felt so much shame that I had somehow caused this that embarrassed by my fibroids by my incompetent cervix. I didn’t know if I could talk to anybody about it. And I think that would have made a big difference if I felt more supported in that way.
P: It does sound like you’re toughing it out by yourself in in a space that you shouldn’t be alone. And it’s such good advice to tell other women that having more support around you can make a difference. It’s challenging to be pregnant and it’s hard to live in a body that’s not always compliant. All you can do is adjust when things don’t go as planned–and you made major adjustments to see this pregnancy through, and in the end your body cooperated with that… To honor the pledge i made at the beginning of our conversation, I am thinking about enthusiastic cervix instead of incompetent cervix, but we can we can work on that and your book is called knock down. Is there a subtitle?
A: Yes, it’s called knock down a high risk memoir and it is available for pre order now it is out on March 1 wherever books are sold for signed copies if someone would like to order from rough draft barn books is an amazing indie bookstore in Kingston, New York and the link is on their website. And they’re fantastic. Anyone is local to Kingston. I suggest you go visit them the bread the coffee they want most amazing books. It’s one of my favorite places.
P: I will put a link to that in the show notes and this sounds like the perfect book for many people but if you are on bed rest and wondering if you are alone in this might pick up knock down
A: I think this is a book for women who’ve had children for bed resting women and for Gen X women and any woman really who wants to hear a funny story about a very serious topic. And I think that this is something that most people can relate to. There are also aspects of growing up in a Jewish community growing up in Brooklyn dealing with trauma marriage, so there’s something for everybody in this book.
P: that sounds awesome So those when I read it and thought it was great, it’s really emotional, which I think is a hard thing to communicate as a writer and I think that like I will remember this book. This will stay with me because it I definitely felt it
A: thanks so much.
P: Thanks so much for sharing it. Thanks so much for coming on the show and good luck.
A: Thank you so much for having me this was a great conversation.
P: I want to again thank Dr. Mazaki Tovi for taking the time to come on the show and talk about his research. I think one important take away from his work is that if you are prescribed bedrest it’s a good idea to talk very specifically about what that means in your own case…and thanks also to Aileen for sharing her story and her book. I will put links in the show notes to the research on bedrest and to the bookstores that Aileen mentioned. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Feel free to subscribe to the show and share it with friends.
We’ll be back soon with another story of overcoming
Episode 41: A Pandemic Pregnancy with Surprises Large and Small: Kaila’s story
Episode 41 SN: A Pandemic Pregnancy with Surprises Large and Small: Kaila’s story
Today’s guest stepped into pregnancy relatively easily, and while she had some pretty common early challenges–extreme fatigue, congestion, and sensitivity to smell (her husband called her a blood hound–which feels like high praise in the right context… ). The challenges really picked up at the birth, which was visited by a hemorrhage after a vaginal delivery and a bad reaction to morphine. And by the way, all of this went down during Covid before vaccines. After taking some time to settle after the physical and emotional turmoil, she is now enjoying chasing after her nearly two year old.
You can find Kaila at Parent Tell podcast, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/parent-tell/id1539221609
Postpartum hemorrhage
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7375891/
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pregnancy-complications-data.htm
https://www.medscape.com/answers/275038-187540/what-are-risk-factors-for-postpartum-hemorrhage-pph
Audio Transcript
Paulette: Hi, Welcome to War Stories from the Womb. I’m your host Paulette Kamenecka. I’m an economist, a writer and the mother of two girls.
Today’s guest stepped into pregnancy relatively easily, and while she had some pretty common early challenges–extreme fatigue, congestion, and sensitivity to smell (her husband called her a blood hound–which feels like high praise in the right context… ). The challenges really picked up at the birth, which was visited by a hemorrhage after a vaginal delivery and a bad reaction to morphine. And by the way, all of this went down during Covid before vaccines. After taking some time to settle after the physical and emotional turmoil, she is now enjoying chasing after her nearly two year old.
Let’s get to her inspiring story.
P: So today we’re lucky enough to have a fellow podcaster Kaila on who’s got the podcast parent tell which is an awesome podcast about birth and parenting and everything else that goes with it. Is that right Kaila?
Kaila: Yes, we are talking about before you have the baby after you have the baby when you’re thinking about having the baby, everything, everything all parenting because I feel like in a sense it does start when you are pregnant,
P: Yeah, agreed. I read a post somewhere. Maybe it was Instagram that said just to be clear postpartum is every day after the birth forever. So yeah. Your podcast is an accurate reflection of that.
K: Yes, I am. 18 months postpartum. Thank you.
P: wow, good lord
K: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which like sounds like so much. But when you think about it, and also when you look at how little he still is, it’s not a lot of time at all.
P: want to hear all about him now. We’ll save that for later it was four times. So two questions before the before times you have any siblings?
K: Yes, I do. I’m the middle child. I have one older sister and one younger sister.
P: Are you guys spaced far apart? Yeah. My older sister is a little over two years older than me and I am five years older than my younger sister. Yeah. So the gap between my younger sister my older sister is gosh, so it’s like seven years. Yeah, but for me, I’m kind of right there in the middle.
P: Nice. And Did you always know you would have a family?
K: I think so. I would say yes. I’ve always known that one a family, but not in the like, and no shade at all to people who are like this. It’s just not how I relate to it. I have not, you know, kept like my clothes to give to my children since I was like 10. That’s not something that I necessarily like day dreamed of when I was a kid. But it was something that I did see myself doing. For sure.
P: So before you ever got pregnant what what did you imagine pregnancy be like?
K: I imagined it was gonna be a lot easier physically. Where it was almost just like something that you don’t really notice until of course, you know, right before your due date. And then you’re like, oh, okay, yeah, now I am really like fat and miserable and pregnant. But I did not anticipate it just my body feeling so different. Right away. And then for the next 10 months, like that was not something I thought it would almost just be like not an afterthought that makes it sound really flippant, but just kind of like this thing. And it’s not necessarily altering my life in any way. But for me, it did and that was before I was super big and bad and couldn’t bend over.
P: you see pregnant women doing everything that everyone else does. And so I think it would be easy to infer from that. Okay, just just a thing that happens. Yeah. So was it easy to get pregnant?
K: For me? It was it took it was two months. Yeah. Yeah, pretty fast. Yeah. It’s when you know, you’re not supposed to stress about it, right? Because then if you’re stressed about even I get pregnant. That was really hard for me. Like the not stressing about it, but it kind of worked out that we were in the middle of moving from the West Coast to the East Coast. So my brain was preoccupied enough but not too stressed to kind of just have it work I guess at least that’s, you know, that’s what I tell myself.
P: That’s awesome. And so, did you find out with a home kit?
K: I did. I was still teaching at the time kindergarten teacher and so again, we just moved so like brand new state city, house, school everything so it was a really busy time and I knew my period was supposed to start soon. And my boobs hurt so bad, like three or four days before my period. But this was on another level. Like I would sit down and the gravity I’d be like, Oh, okay, so I was at school and I remember it was a Friday. In the first six weeks of kindergarten every Friday is like a different color day. So it was red days, like all the teachers were wearing red T shirts. And I remember this so clearly because we took a picture and that’s the last picture that I have of myself when I was pregnant and I didn’t know it.
K: Oh, wow.
P: Yeah. So like I have photographic evidence of my giant sore boobs and my tired face and I was pregnant. I just didn’t know. Got home. It was a long day since beginning of school year and it’s very much survival in the kindergarten level. Like get them on the right bus. Get them to the right adult at the end of the day. You did a great job. So I was congratulating myself for a job well done. My husband just had to leave the house for work even though his evening time and I went to pour myself a glass of wine and we have a lot of plastic wine glasses for a reason because I am very clumsy and I will they’ll break in the dishwasher or I’ll just like accidentally knock it over. And that’s exactly what I did. I poured a glass and I turned to put the bottle back in the fridge and I like knocked it off the counter. It was plastic. So like, okay, sad, whatever. And I remember being sad about the windings build. I was like I really like yeah, I’m gonna put another one. So I pour another glass and I go to sit down and drink it. And it tasted like rubbing alcohol.
P: Oh, wow.
K: Yeah. And I just was like, Who, what? And I was just really thrown off and like, kind of confused and didn’t really want to drink it. And I didn’t really I didn’t think like oh, this means I’m pregnant. I was just kind of like, okay, that’s really weird. And then I’m sitting watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy and like tear jerker on a standard like on a level one to 10 Probably like a six or seven for some people. I was full on like, Niagara Falls, and it wasn’t even a super sad part. And that’s why I was like, whoo, I really am about to start my period like okay, whoo, this is this is heavy. There’s something happening. And I went to sleep like didn’t that I didn’t really think about it. I took the test the next day. My husband, I were hanging out in the living rooms, we had just moved into this house. We’re renting and so we were unpacking stuff and like, you know, our TV was like on the floor and we’re eating like sitting on coolers and stuff and like travel chairs. And I was like, I’m just gonna go do it. Because my boobs hurt. So like, there’s no way I’m just gonna go do it. And I didn’t say anything to him. I just like walked out the room, went to the bathroom, took the test and you have to wait two minutes, three minutes.
P: Yeah. yeah
K: The longest, you know, three minutes of your life. And I told myself I was like no, I’m I’m gonna like, I’ll wash my hands and I’ll leave the bathroom and I’ll go do something like I’m not going to sit in here and wait, that’s not going to work for me. I’ll just come back. It’s not going to move. And I came back and I looked at it and I kind of expected it to be negative. Especially I feel like I’ve never had you know, I’ve never had a kid before. So it’s not I didn’t really had enough no idea what I was walking into. And I lift it up and I said oh shit. And I ran out to the front living room and I showed my house and he only has been eating breakfast because he had a doughnut in his mouth. And as I’m like, I’m like welling up I’m holding it and I’m like, I’m pregnant and his mouth is full. And he’s like, Oh my God…. So that’s like a really happy funny memory that I have. And I remember we hugged and we cried. And then I posed with the stick and he took my picture. And yeah, and that’s how I found out and I had to wait. It was like two weeks to go to the doctor or for them to confirm so funny. I went to the doctor. They’re like all right, we’ll probably call you tomorrow because it was an evening appointment. And they called me like 30 minutes later, they’re like, Yep, you’re really pregnant.
P: Wow, that’s a good call to get.
K: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for me it was it was easy to get pregnant. And it was like a happy, positive initial experience. It was very like, I mean, I said oh shit for a reason. Like I was excited but also at the same time, like, what have we done? You know, like, it’s very like, oh, oh, okay, here we go.
P: There’s this sense of like hearing a door closed behind you. Right, like so then what was it? What was the first trimester like it feels like your body’s kind of sensitive because you are getting all these signs early. So how did that go?
K: yeah, I’m very, I’m very in tune with my body. And I feel like I’ve kind of always been that way, which is good and bad though, because you just feel everything. The first trimester overall, it really wasn’t that bad. The fatigue though. was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. I felt like a literal zombie. And I had just never
P: Yeah,
K: never felt like that knockdown drag out, tired in my life. And of course, again, beginning of the school year, I was also in grad school at the time, and I was just like, barely keeping my eyes open for at least eight to nine weeks. It was It was rough. I didn’t puke. I picked one time. This is really gross. Can I say gross things?
P: Yeah.
K: Okay. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this except for my husband is here to witness it. We had like cauliflower pizza and it just like didn’t sit well with me and I also didn’t like the smell of it. Smell was a big thing for me. It was pre was pre pregnancy. So then I was basically a bloodhound when I was pregnant. And it was really rough some time. Not my words, my husband’s words. He’s going to call his bloodhound which like, that’s fine. Thank you. I just was like, Oh, I really really don’t like that smell. I need to leave. I think we had had it. Maybe the previous days. Maybe it was like leftovers. Maybe that’s why it smelled extra funky. So I went to go do number two. The smell of my own poop made me vomit. And that’s the only time I vomited during my pregnancy. And it was because of me. So I was double dragoning at about like, six, seven weeks pregnant and that was like one of the lowest lows.
P: That’s pretty bad. I feel like I would love to top you. I can’t.
K: It was yeah, it was it was really gross. And it was I mean me screaming like, can you come bring me a bag? Because you know as I’m like, Oh no, this is not this is not good. This is not good. But other than that, I got nauseous, probably like around the same time every morning and I no longer liked to drink the tea that I normally drink. I can drink it now but it tastes like cigarettes at the time.
P: Oh wow.
K: other than that, I didn’t have any any effects that like, made me have to leave my classroom and run to the bathroom or anything. I was super fucking tired. And also just constantly felt like I had eaten a ginormous dinner. Like 24/7 Like just the bloat.
P: Right, despite the fact that the embryos still is so tiny and I unlike you, I’m not in tune with my body at all at that point in my life. But I remember I was in grad school. I just remember waking up and lifting my head from the keyboard I have like, like keys and printed on my forehead and just be confused about like, what am I doing in the computer room surrounded by people you know, I have just fallen dead asleep. Yeah. It is a different kind of weariness.
K: yeah, it’s not just this is not just like mentally tired. Like you’re deeply physically exhausted. Yeah. Yeah. And that was hard. That was hard for me to be teaching and then come home and in school myself. That was a rough rough time. For me.
P: That seems amazing because kindergarten looks like you know, the center of chaos. So
K: it is an active Yeah, I mean, it’s herding cats. Especially Oh my god. So I am not the beginning of the school year type of gal. I despise the school. Year in kindergarten, because they just don’t know anything. That’s like I’m literally teaching them how to stand on the line, which is exhausting. You know, so it was I’m glad I got pregnant when I did. You know everything worked out. But it was very, very difficult at the time just so tired and then try not to be stressed because stress is bad for the baby. Because cortisol is such a powerful hormone. And yeah, that was another thing running through my head too.
P: Yeah, that’s a tricky dual space to occupy where you’re like I’m not freaking out because freaking out was bad but I’m not not freaking out. Cause I’m pregnant.
K: Yeah, yeah.
P: Was the rest of the pregnancy smooth?
K: Yeah, honestly pretty much it. second trimester I fully understood. I was called honeymoon trimester because starting around week i members week 11 I woke up one day and it was like I was awake for the first time in about 11 or 12 weeks and it was just like whoa, I can sit here and not want to fall asleep and it was kind of like I not got my life back but I was just awake again. And that made a huge difference for me.
My brother in law has this big or pre COVID had this big Halloween party at his house every single year. And I had kind of coerced all of my husband’s family into doing a big group costume because it was our first time on the East Coast in three years. So we did Marvel.
P: Well, that’s fun.
K: Yeah. And so I told Jimmy my husband I was like okay, we’re going to take a picture like in our costumes. So I’m going to say like, Oh, we’re gonna take a picture in our costumes, like, let’s all stand in the same position. Like before without our costumes and I have gotten this shirt that said, you can stop asking when I’m having a baby now because my mother in law is classic. She loves babies and she loves her grandchildren. And she’s just so excited. And I was like, okay, lady, leave me alone. I love her but I was like, okay, back off. we convinced everyone to take this picture. And we had like when the neighborhood kids took the picture and I gave him my phone I think and I was like, make sure you say one two three before you take the picture, which is like, good practice anyway. Because right after he said three, I yelled, I’m pregnant. And so we caught everyone’s reaction.
P: Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, it was well done.
K: Thank you. You know, I wasn’t thinking about being a mom when I was 10. But when I was 26, 27, I was thinking about stuff like that, like, oh my gosh, like what would be a really cute way to tell our families that I’m pregnant. So that was a really cute moment. Yeah, second trimester was easy
P: let me just say that you’re you’re nailing it so far. Everything here is I like the pregnancy reveal to your husband and to the family. This is going swimmingly. Okay. Keep going. Yeah.
K: Thank you. Thank you to my dad. It was much more just like, right it was because also like know your audience like yeah, it’s not, you know, like, he’s a very like cut and dry, stoic kind of person. And so he came to visit us and we were just talking and he said something like, Oh, why aren’t you going to drink or something like that? And I like slightly lift up my shirt. And I was like, because I’m praying you know, it’s very chill, or very chill person.
P: Yeah,
K: I got really bad. sinus congestion, though. Oh, my words. Yeah. Towards the end of my second trimester, like couldn’t breathe out of my nose for two months. Three months. Wow. It was awful. And so, you know, your nasal passages swell up when you are pregnant naturally, because you have more blood running through your body and it’s just how it works. But for me, it just completely blocked me up. So I was pretty miserable for a little while. And of course, when you are pregnant that you can’t take anything so I could take flown days. So I mean, I was shooting up that flown is at least at least two or three times a day like just to have any sort of relief. I had heartburn really wasn’t anything that was overtly hard. I would say that I had a harder time with my body image.
P: Yeah,
K: so it was harder on me mentally in terms of my body is changing and I did not give you permission to change necessarily.
P: It’s dramatic and strange, right? I remember in the second trimester for the first child. I kept showing my husband my belly saying I’m doing it wrong. It can’t be this is what everyone looks like. This is bizarre. I look like I’m a pear. Like it’s just weird, right?
K: Yeah. And everyone carries differently, which is I think something else that I learned too. While it was happening to me and I, because I would receive so many comments, which again, did not help my body image at that time. I would get my god you’re so tiny. Are you even pregnant? In the same day? I would get Wow, you look really pregnant today. I’m just like cool, cool, cool….. Oh, please, please, please stop talking about my body.
P: Yeah,
K: and I think pregnancy actually brought up a lot of dormant feelings that I maybe had when I was in early college late high school and or feelings that I didn’t necessarily know that I had about my own body and not feeling comfortable in it and also really not wanting and not being open to accepting comments about my body from other people. And I mean, you’re basically a moving target when you’re pregnant. So it was that’s really hard,
P: that’s a weird thing right? Is it is you somehow become like public property and people want to feel your belly. It’s a weird time. Your disdain for that seems right on. Yeah, it shouldn’t be. That shouldn’t be right.
K: Yeah, it was very cringy sometimes for me and I felt like it was very much like Don’t look at me like Can you can you stop How can I concave my chest to make myself smaller? So maybe people don’t even notice? You know, I wasn’t thinking those thoughts all the time.
And I feel like it’s after. I mean, really starting for me, like at week 25. You’re like, your body is different every day, like every week, and it’s really it’s really hard to keep up not only like in terms of clothing, but mentally preparing yourself or like getting used to what you’re going to see in the mirror which is completely different from what you have seen. For the past 1015 20 years. It was very, that was very jarring for me.
P: it’s also weird to have something like an autopilot installed in your body in a way that has never been used before. So your body is different in ways that you have no control over and it’s not like working out or going running where you’re making changes to your body in this very blunt, purposeful way. It’s kind of happening to you, right? So it’s weird.
K: Yeah. To wake up one day and just be you know, walking the same path from your bed, to your bathroom and all of a sudden you’re hit with lightning. crotch and you’re just like, fuck, like, yeah, now we have to deal with this. And I already am dealing with all of these different things. No one told me those things. No one told me that it was going to be I love your analogy of the autopilot because that that is what it is.
Your body already came equipped with that you just didn’t know you’ve never used it. You’ve never read the manual and so you have no idea how it’s gonna work. And so it’s going to completely throw you off. And I just was so caught off guard by that but I will say by right around like late February, early March. So right before the pandemic hit and everything really shut down here. I was able to kind of let go and just be at peace and also appreciate the fact that my body is doing something amazing.
P: Yeah.
K: And yes, it’s without my permission. But it’s so strong and so resilient to be able to do these things while I basically just go about living my life. Like I’m laying on the couch, and I’m growing a foot. Yeah, hello. Yeah, I mean, I was able, yeah, I was able at the end to just learn to embrace it, essentially, and still complain and still struggle with it. But at the same time, I was able to see the beauty in my own physical body. And it took me I mean, a solid three or four months so like, basically, I would say, almost the entire second trimester but I got there and now looking back any and all pictures of me pregnant. My first thought is like, oh my god, so cute. You know, like, I’m not sitting there like, Oh, I’m so fat and ugly or like, I hated that. I’m not sitting there picking it picking it apart. I don’t think of the negative things. I just look at the pictures and I smile and I’m filled with almost this like peace. Like oh my gosh, I did that
P: well that’s amazing. What did you want for yourself? Are you imagining did you write a whole birth plan or what did it look like for you?
K: I wanted to go as unmedicated as possible. I read this great book one of my my cousin’s wife recommended to me it’s called Ina may’s guide to childbirth and Ina May is this like world renowned midwife. She’s done like, hundreds of 1000s of births at this point. And I liked the book because she is very centered on like home births. Homeopathic, but real people wrote in to her. Most of the people that she had helped give birth and a few people who she had not, and it ranged from. I gave birth at this birth center on a farm in Kentucky. And it was beautiful and I was out in the forest underneath the night sky. I had a C section like it ran the gamut. So it gave me a really good picture of what I could expect I guess.
And then at the same time she also provided information about like, what is Pitocin what is an induction everything you kind of as a soon to be parent who’s the person you’re going to get you’re the ones giving birth and you might not know these things, because I’ve said many times before on my podcast like our sex education system is trash in our country. It’s really a sad it really is sad but so we go more than half our lives, just not really knowing what is actually going to happen and also not knowing like how to advocate for ourselves. So I think the book taught me a lot about like, okay, here are all of my options. Cool. Here I’m gonna like cherry pick the ones that I would like to use knowing full well it might not go the way I want it to go. And then also, here’s a way that I can advocate for myself. I wanted to go as unmedicated as possible for as long as possible. I was open to the idea of getting an epidural. I wanted to just try my hardest not to and because the pandemic happened towards the end, it changed how often I went to the doctor because they were just trying to keep us pregnant people home as much as possible. So at I think one of my second to last appointments, I said you know I really want to go unmedicated you know, but I was told you know, you go, they said go to the hospital when your contractions are three to five minutes apart if you’re a first timer. And I said, you know, I really don’t want to feel pressure to get any sort of intervention. And one of the nurse midwives she was really, really good. She said, Stay home, stay home as long as you can. Because if you’re in your comfort zone, you’re going to be able to push through more. And you’ll also if you want to avoid any interventions, and being at home is an amazing way for you to do that. So that’s what I tried my hardest to do
P: Okay so the day your husband was born: how do we know today’s the day?
K: so my due date was May 12 and all these people texting me on May 12 me my DD one they were texting me happy today, which was like, I didn’t know that was thing but I love that like that’s so fun. So cute. But then of course, other people. So you have the baby like it’s not you know, hold the switch I wish now and my son was born one week Exactly. So later so may 19. But that whole week, basically just people like pregnant so you’re pregnant so as I’m just like, angry typing, like, leave me alone, but I’m really saying yes, I’m so pregnant. Thank you like when you don’t hear from me when there’s like some radio silence. That’s what I’m busy pushing a baby out. Of my vagina. Thank you.
I was feeling very done. And so I actually I was avoiding it. But I scheduled an induction for Tuesday evening, Tuesday, May 19. The day he was born. I was supposed to go in at like 5pm and I was doing all the things I was eating the spicy foods. I was drinking the raspberry leaf tea. I was sitting on the bouncy ball I was going on walks and nothing was happening. I was walking around one to two centimeters centimeters dilated for a week or two. So like it was happening.
P: Yeah
K: progressing. But I was just so over it. And then Monday, the 18th it was the afternoon I was like huh. And again like contractions that’s a whole nother thing where it’s like, what is the contraction? Like how do I know what does the contraction feel like?
P: I kept asking people when they wouldn’t tell me. I’m like yes, I helpful.
K: So many people said, oh, yeah, you’ll know the one person one of my teammates on my kindergarten team. She said honestly, it’s gonna feel like you have to poop. It’s like a poop cramp. And then when you have to push that it literally feels like you’re about to poop your pants. So I was like, Okay, thank you for at least. Yeah, so I was thankful that someone explained it at you know, at least a way that I finally was like, Okay, I think now I might know what you’re talking about. And it was like the early afternoon and you know, essentially my husband was at work but he was on call, essentially. I was feeling like almost crampy and so I texted him is maybe like 2pm I was like yeah, I think maybe I’m having like having a contraction or two these like okay, and an hour later, they were a little more intense still very far apart. So I texted I was like,
P: Yeah,
K: I mean, like if you want to come home now, so I’m not here by myself. That’d be nice. Yeah. So he came home and we did an episode where it was just he and I talking we were talking about like basically my birth story and he said I didn’t know before but on the episode he said that like he was racing home just like speeding home and very nervous, very anxious. And I said I mean, I had no idea when you walked in the door you seem very cool. Like that. So thank you for like providing that energy to me that I really just hung out. I think I was like watching the office laying on the couch for a couple hours. Dinnertime came, they were getting stronger. And I was not hungry obviously because my body had other things in mind.
But my husband kept saying like, you know you need to eat like you’re going to need the energy like you shouldn’t have a completely empty stomach. You know, like, you don’t need to be there right now. Like let’s eat something, let’s eat something. And I just couldn’t have some fruit. And I was there’s video evidence because I asked him I was like, Look, I just especially you know, COVID were completely by ourselves, which is kind of what we had wanted before anyway, but it felt even more isolated because of COVID I said you know, please take as many videos and photos as I will let you take in the moment so there is a video of me. I think I’m like getting fruit out of the fridge. And again looking at I’m just like, holy crap. I was so pregnant. And I’m like joking and like oh, and like, you know, you need to eat like, you’re going to need the energy like you shouldn’t have a completely empty stomach. You know, like, you don’t need to be there right now. Like, let’s eat something, let’s eat something. And I just couldn’t have some fruit. And I was, there’s video evidence because I asked him I was like, Look, I just especially, you know, COVID were completely by ourselves, which is kind of what we had wanted before anyway, but it felt even more isolated because of COVID. I said, you know, please take as many videos and photos as I will let you take in the moment so there is a video of me. I think I’m like getting fruit out of the fridge. And again, looking at it like holy crap, I was so great. And I’m like joking and like oh, contraction like messing around with him. We just like LOL, cuz five hours later, it was not so funny. And I was just kind of hanging out. It was probably around 10 o’clock, where it got to the point where again, this is on video and that’s I feel like that helps my memory where I no longer was talking while I was having a contraction and instead was just like closing my eyes and trying to breathe through them. I took a shower. And we were trying to wait, maybe until like midnight to go to the hospital just to see like Alright, how long can I push it? How long am I comfortable doing this until I feel like I need to have medical professionals in the room just for my peace of mind.
We left our house right around like 1245 1am and the hospital was very close. Like less than 10 minutes away. I gave birth. My husband’s in the military. I gave birth on base. It’s actually the same base that he was born at. So
P: oh Wow. that’s fun
K: Yeah. Yeah. So super cute. And we get there and I’m having contractions like walking to the hospital door. And when we got there I was five centimeters dilated.
P: well done
K: Oh yeah. So like, I mean, I remember feeling relieved like okay, halfway. Yeah, fine. Okay. And it had been like just under 12 hours. Okay. All right, doing okay, you know, like triage checked in all that stuff. They started to get very very painful for me probably around 4am And I was so exhausted. I was falling asleep in between the contractions. They’re probably only about two minutes apart, one to two minutes apart. Yeah, I was sitting on the exercise ball and my husband was behind me kind of like supporting me. And he was literally having to like, I’d be like, Hmm, like in pain and pain, Awake, awake, asleep. It was almost like narcolepsy.
And he said in the moment it was scary for him because it was just very strange to have screaming in pain and out like a light but I did that for probably two hours and actually remember, yeah, sucked. But I actually remember I was having bad dreams. Like when I fell asleep, not nightmares, but it was just like, I was not even you know, like was even having pleasant dreams. I would have a contraction, fall asleep and I would I would sleep so hard. And that minute to two minutes, that I would dream and I remember it’d be a bad dream to
P: Well, that’s gonna make sense, right? I mean, yeah, the life is being squished out of you. Yeah. It’s hard to think of, you know, unicorns, and roses, right? It’s
K: Yes, yes. And I’m already naturally like, not a unicorny person. So yeah, I was doing it. I had made a playlist in the moment. It was not playing, looking back and I just brought this up with my husband. I asked him I was like, we didn’t have the playlist playing until after I got the after all right. He said, Yeah. And I said, Man, you know, I wish we had thought of it. We were obviously a little busy. But I wish we had thought about it. Because I am very responsive to music. I love music. And I made that playlist, you know, chose the songs that I chose for a reason and most of them were actually like, feel good like 90s Hip hop like dance party songs on purpose to kind of distract me. So I do wish we had had the wherewithal to put the music on but that’s okay. Obviously, we didn’t
P: my husband and I made a playlist to and then after, you know, my crazy birth story, but after my birth, we laughed at the people who made that playlist. We’re like, Haha, you fools. Who would’ve played that playlist? Not me…
K: yeah. Yeah. Like, whoa, hold on. Let me open my Spotify real quick. Sorry, baby. Hold on one second.
P: Very funny.
K: Yeah, so we were we were not mentally in playlists land until afterwards when I got the epidural and it was around closer to like seven or eight. I looked at the nurse and I said I can’t do this anymore. And I was near tears and I because I just was in so much pain and it wouldn’t stop it was for me like I can’t even maybe I could keep going if I could get a break for a second. Yeah, there was no break. And you know, she’s obviously trained and she just said it was so simple, but it was the tone in which she said it and she like met my eyes. And she said yes, you can and I was like, not taking it back. But I was like, okay, like, Okay, thank you like, you’re right. Yes, I can, but I will take that epidural, please.
So I got an epidural. I had to sit still through two massive contractions as they put the epidural on my back. And I’m like, bruising my husband’s hands because I’m squeezing them so hard because it’s an anesthesiologist. Yeah, and he’s like, Okay, you cannot move you have to stay still, us I’m like, oh, fuck, okay. Yeah, so I’m just like, clenching with all of my night. And then I mean, 20 minutes later, I took a nap. And it was amazing.
P: Oh, nice.
K: Yes. My husband says that when I was sleeping. He was you know, sitting there awake. The nurse came in. Like look, I saw him sleeping she said and she turned her down like yep, I knew that’s exactly yeah, that’s what you needed. You just needed to sleep and my son was born 6:36pm So the epidural, definitely, yes. slowed me on down so I bought I mean I lay there and we’re watching the monitor. As I mean, these giant as contractions. I’m just like, Can I have another popsicle, please? You know, I’m just like sitting there. That was like first time ever experiencing medicine that powerful.
P: Yeah.
K: And my first time ever being numb from like, the midriff down, which was very strange. And I was trying to explain it to my husband. I was like, No, I literally can’t and not move my legs. Like, my brain is saying like, okay, come on. And I can’t so he said. So he was like You mean if I pick your leg up, it’s going to fall? Yeah, do it. My son Robin. His heart rate was like dipping here and there sometimes. So I was my legs were on the peanut ball, and I would be on my left side and I switched my right side. So he lifted at one almost like a clamshell exercise lifted up one leg like go and it comes crashing down. He’s like, Oh, I guess I told you like it’s cool when it’s like strange and kind of scary at the same time. Mostly cool though.
I pushed for two hours which flew by, like did not seem like two hours at all. It was almost exactly I think it was like two hours and four minutes. They told me or something like that. And I I always responded well to a deadline. The shift change was coming. The shift change was coming and I loved my nurse. And she made a joke. She was like, alright, like I’m out of here at 730. So what are we doing? And that was probably at like 530 and my son was born an hour later it took a couple pushes to like that’s a you know, that’s a learning curve in itself, pushing out a baby and then pushing out a baby when you can’t feel it.
P: Yeah,
K: I did feel that urge of like, Oh, I’m gonna poop. I’m gonna put my pants right now. But I remember telling her like, Hey, I’m not like it feels like I’m about to poop like here we go. We need we need to start but it did take some coaching from her and just like some experimenting to figure out. How do you do this? And especially how do you do it when you cannot feel they gave me like a big mirror on wheels. So using a mirror like being able to see that really, really helped me to have a visual and then that’s also like a motivator because as I saw his head crowning it was like, Oh my gosh, like okay, like, here we go. Here we go. So close. So close. So a birthday came out. Everything was great. Everything’s cool. He had like a 10 on the Apgar. Score, and I was like, yes, that’s my child. And I gave birth to the placenta, no problem. And they were still down there like sewing me up. And I noticed it, but obviously I’m very distracted by my son and really just enjoying that moment. And it was almost like the unspoken thing between myself and my husband where we were both like they’re still there. 20 minutes later, they’re still there. 20 minutes later, they’re still there. That’s not there’s something more more doctors coming into the room. When you are far outnumbered. Yeah, by the medical professionals, never a good sign.
P: Yeah, no kidding.
K: And yeah, so we’re both kind of just like looking at each other
P: wait, no one’s telling you what’s going on?
Oh, it took a while for them to say anything. And my husband first was like, hey, whoa, like what’s going on? And they said so like, she’s still bleeding too much for our comfort. You know, like, it’s just more than normal. So we’re trying to maybe see where’s the source of the bleed? They couldn’t find the source of the bleed for probably like the first 30 minutes to an hour. Yeah. And then so in total, I was laying there for two hours pleading
P: And they didn’t call it hemorrhagin or they did call it hemorrhaging.
K: So they did call it hemorrhaging by the I would say like, if I had to estimate again, I have very little concept of time and this is also where, because of the blood loss My memory is a little hazy, which really, that’s something that’s like been really hard for me because I wanted to remember this stuff so badly. So it’s been frustrating that because, you know, losing blood just takes that it literally takes everything out of you and it affects your memory.
P: Remembering your birth is so important because it’s so much a part of your own story too so I took this question about people’s memories of their births to a fantastic OB. Hi, Dr. Matityah. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Dr. Matityahu: thanks for inviting me again. I love coming to the show.
P: Today we’re going to talk about Kayla and hers is actually a story of hemorrhage. Kayla’s disappointed after the birth that she doesn’t have the sharpest memory of everything that happened. How typical is this for after birth experiences
Dr. Matityahu: when you’re lying there. He just pushed out a baby. You’re exhausted. We’re exhausted because now you’re losing even more blood than your normal blood loss from a vaginal delivery. All the sudden you’re launched into a new phase of life. Most of us our brains don’t process everything that’s going on around us. I mean, I think it makes sense that you’d be lying there. You’re looking at your baby. You’re wondering, what are they doing down there for so long? Most of us don’t remember the exact details of our birth I can say that I’ve retold my birth story and my husband basically said no, that’s not what happened.
K: I don’t remember a whole lot of a lot of my husband a lot to tell me what happened. So like the head surgeon came in because it was a teaching hospital so the head surgeon came in and she said okay, so cervical tear, not abnormal, not ideal, not super normal. And they couldn’t fully confirm where it was and they could not stitch it up. Me laying in the bed like that.
P: I Wondered why it was so hard to identify where the terror was to this question to Dr.Matityahu. Can you give us any sense of like what you’re looking at after a vaginal delivery, and why it’s so hard to identify as a source of the bleed and one thing I should add is that there were tears she had second degree tearing.
Dr. Matityahu: So after vaginal delivery, there’s a few different places where you can have bleeding. One is from inside of the uterus or the placenta detached other is there could be a tear on the cervix which is less common but could be a source of bleeding. Could be a tear deeper inside the vagina is causing bleeding that’s hard to see and there could be just bleeding from there the vagina tour. There’s a couple of different places where you can have a tear and or a source of bleeding. And after delivery of that tissue is it stretched or torn? Not always easy to identify exactly where bleeding is coming from because a lot of times there’s a fair amount of blood anyway. After vaginal delivery from the uterus so that bleeding which is normal bleeding, be obscuring or places that might bleeding in addition to that. It makes sense that it would be at times hard to find the exact source of the bleeding.
K: Jimmy always says yeah, like that one surgeon came in she was like what like, move like what are you guys doing? Like this is and I that I do remember her attitude being not towards me at all towards the other doctors in being like why is she been laying here for this long like what are we doing? So I was told I needed to go to the OR and they would be able to fix it nilar Because they have better equipment and they would be able to tilt my bodies they could actually see to cauterize it basically and so I’m like, okay, as I’m, you know, basically in shock, I just gave birth to a baby. I’m exhausted. I’ve also been bleeding for two hours. I’m really weak. I’m just like, alright, well, I’m like the brakes. Here we go. Yeah. And I remember I do remember being wheeled out of the room and Jimmy is holding Robin as I’m sure he’s internally like really like and I literally just waved like I I was very much in shock but I think I also a little bit was like, let me comfort him like it’s okay. Like, I will see you like it’s okay, casual. It’s fine. See in an hour.
P: That’s why you’re getting the I’m on the deck of a ship kind of wave.
K: It’s just like, Fine. Have a great boy. Yeah, so it was about an hour and end up having to cervical tears. So that might have been why there was so much blood and both of them they just could not see them when I was laying in the bed like the way my body was. So what they did have you ever seen like a like an old school meat locker, like those giant hooks and they like have the meat hanging from the giant hooks.
P: please don’t tell me they hung you upside down?
K: Yeah. Okay, so I wasn’t upside down but literally, my like, from my lower back down was up in the air if that makes sense. It’s almost like I can’t remember the name of the yoga pose when like your mid back and up on the mat. And everything else
P: it’s like a shoulder stand.
K: Yes, yes. Yes. I remember at the time I was just like, this is in sane.
P: Are they a ladder like I don’t understand how that’s helping.
K: So they put my legs in even my legs in and they explained everything and was so out of it from I think the blood loss and all of the above that I had them I was like I’m so sorry. Can you tell me please one more time like what you’re about to do? I remember they’re like oh my god for like poor girl. Yeah, like are you okay? So they were like so you have to cervical tears. We cannot access them with your body laying on the table are going to need to lift your body up and then the doctor will be able to access and cauterize them from there. Okay, cool.
P: Kaila, so they are hung her at a pretty steep incline and the surgeon is on like a stepladder and wondering how that helps with axcess.
Dr. Matityahu: One reason to put her in that position is maybe maybe her blood pressure was dropping a little bit and that helps her blood flow to her head and her heart number two if the bleeding from the uterus is obscuring whatever you’re able to see inside of the vagina, sort of hanging her little bit upside down might just keep some of the blood in the uterus so that it’s not flowing out as briskly so that you can probably see more of what’s happening in the vagina and the cervix. I agree with them going to the operating room. Usually we don’t wait two hours to take someone to an operating room if they’re if they’re bleeding and we can’t figure it out. Yours will go much faster to the operating room because number one you can give the person more anesthesia so they’re more comfortable and the lighting is better. And we have instruments that you know instruments and additional hands that can sort of help open up the area and get a much better look inside the vagina because most of the time when we’re in the room, it’s us and a scrub nurse and usually hands and sometimes their hands helping but when you’re in the operating room, you can kind of call in more people and you have different instruments in the operating room that we obtained in the delivery room and so you can really issue in the container and really look inside and get a better view of what might be happening.
K: So So couldn’t feel anything. Thank God completely numb. They gave me like a little shot of morphine to to kind of like make sure I stay chill and not in any pain. And I think she might have been standing like on a stepladder and she had one of the headlamps. It was like 45 minutes an hour max. And there were compression pads like on my legs.
P: Yeah.
K: So that was actually really nice like that felt nice and I remember the his anesthesiologist but he wasn’t you know, he’s want to give me the morphine. He was so nice because you know, they sit at your head and it was so nice and he was constantly like, are you okay? Are you cold? Like, please let me know like the second you’re in any pain and I wasn’t I think I even like almost tried to go to sleep. Because I was just like, I’m just gonna close my eyes because I was getting kind of nervous. I was like, yeah, just gonna let me close my eyes.
But you know, surgery was great. It was unexpected, like emergency hemorrhaging surgery, but I didn’t have to go the pacu they wheeled me back to the delivery room. I had a bad reaction to the morphine. I’m sit Yeah, I’m sitting there talking like talking to Jimmy, talking to the nurse and all of a sudden everything slowed down. I felt like I had just gone to a concert. They’re ringing in my ears. And Jimmy told me I was slurring my speech. Like I was super super drunk.
P: that’s terrifying… good lord.
K: Yeah. And I remember just saying like, I don’t feel good, but it probably came out like oh no, like it was because I saw their faces like and I knew this is the only other time I vomited, but I knew it was coming. Of course me being like, this shows you let me like get on my feminist stepstool real quick. This shows you just like how ingrained it is in us to take up as little space as possible and to make everything more convenient for everyone else. Because how dare we take up space? Like how dare I puke right after I gave birth. So I’m literally trying to hold it in my hands covering my mouth. And I’m pointing like huh, like it’s about to go down. And just in the nick of time, I’m given a bag and so we’re all good. But then you know, of course they’re really concerned. So they kind of scrambled for a little bit and they found out I had a bad reaction to the morphine and I was pretty out of it. For the next I like the next almost 24 hours. I would fall asleep like while the doctors were talking to me, because I just I couldn’t stay awake and they said you know like fatigue. This type of fatigue is obviously a symptom of your blood loss.
P: Yeah,
K: so you’re gonna feel this way for a little while and it wasn’t. It wasn’t ideal, but I do remember probably like 12 hours before we got discharged from the hospital. I started to feel a whole lot better and could actually like keep food down. But it was really those first 48 hours after giving birth. Were just a cluster and kind of like one thing after another, not to mention learning how to breastfeed and try and you know, like all those other things having to do with the baby while I’m also dealing with all of these things of my body. So that was really, it was a really hard time and I think I actually was in shock about the hemorrhaging for a long time and almost in denial to the point where I was like it was so traumatic that I just kind of shoved it away. And I didn’t really come to terms with it until gosh, like almost a year ago when my son was already almost seven months old. When I started to learn more about hemorrhaging and how common it is
P: really common. Yeah. Yeah. Worldwide, postpartum hemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal mortality. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists report that roughly 11% of maternal deaths in the US are due to hemorrhage. And then a giant share of these deaths are later deemed preventable. The rates in the US have been on the rise, but it’s not obvious what’s driving this increase could be a number of factors. I brought this question to Dr. Matityahu. When I looked on the CDC webpage about birth complications statistics, it looks like the incidence of hemorrhage has increased pretty dramatically in the last 20 years. I’m wondering if this is like a counting issue like it actually hasn’t increased, but we are more aware of it or if something else is going on?
Dr. Matityahu: It’s a great question. I’m not sure I know that in the last few years we’ve been tested being much more diligent at measuring blood loss after vaginal delivery and C sections are either will even weigh the gause pads to see how much blood they collected. In the past we used to just eyeball and make an educated guess. I was being a little bit more specific at recording blood loss. So so it could be just an account like a difference in how we’re accounting for the blood loss and how we how we calculate it, or noticing like, Oh, this is much more than we thought it was.
P: One final note on this: A lot of things make the list of risk factors for postpartum hemorrhage, including things like lacerations retained placenta instrumental delivery, and some studies suggest that other factors like obesity and age could be contributing factors for the risk of postpartum hemorrhage. Both obesity and age at first birth have been increasing over time.
K: It’s taken me a while to kind of talk about it without trying to just humor my way out of it and like disregard it because I used to say like, oh my god, you know, like, it’s fine. I still say that but at the same time, I still in my head know how serious it was and how potentially life threatening it really was. And I think that really impacted my initial postpartum experience as well. That was really hard like the baby blues hit me so so hard. Another thing that I wasn’t, wasn’t expecting and also, it’s that thing where you don’t fully understand it until it happens to you and you’re like, Well, God,
P: it’s experiential for sure.
K: And I remember when I was in labor, they’re like, Oh, your blood pressure. A little highs is not fair at the epidural, but I was just kind of like, I don’t want to be rude. So I didn’t say I just okay. Thank you. In my head. I’m like I’m in labor.
P: Yeah,
K: yes. My blood. Yes. Yes. It is a little high right now. Thank you. Thank you. But then looking back on it. That is one of the signs of preeclampsia and I did not have that. Thankfully, it was kind of you know, it’s a separate issue. Having cervical tears is different than having preeclampsia. But if I was willing to kind of blow it off in my head like, it’s fine. That’s what we all do, especially women be Oh, like that that big, scary things are happening to me. No, no, like that happens to other people. It’s fine. I’m fine.
P: that’s totally true
K: it’s still a more extensive change and transformation than you think it is. No matter how much research you’ve done, no matter how many people you’ve talked to, that are how many people have been real and honest with you. You still are not going to fully grasp what it is. Until it’s happening.
P: it took me 10 months to get into this state. It’s gonna take a while to get back and I think the six week mark, which is the first gynecology appointment Yeah, that’s only the amount of time it takes for your uterus to shrink down to its size. But 1000 Other things have not gone back. Right so
K: yeah, or and never will potentially. Yeah, yeah, talking about disappointing. I don’t know about you, but my six week appointment was nothing like I thought it was going to be I thought it was going to be very like how are you Yeah, it was not it was literally Alright, let’s see if your stitches have healed. Okay, you’re looking great. What kind of birth control do you want? None…I’m good. I’m not even like, I’m not having sex right now and be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway like I’m so good. And I also know like, the military culture, the stereotype, it’s a stereotype for a reason because it’s true. Well, there’s a lot of babies walking around. So they were pushing extra hard like, Are you sure you don’t want birth control? Are you sure we have the birth to clinic from this time of this time this day this day? And I I had to kind of get like, hey, stop, I’m fine. I’m telling you. I’m fine. I’m really not going to be pregnant in a month from now. I can guarantee you like I’m good again. I know my body. You know, they didn’t ask me like your breastfeeding. Like how’s it going? Would you like to at least talk about that with someone it was it was also a doctor who I had never met before. You know, they’re on a rotation. I had never met them before. So I didn’t necessarily even feel comfortable being like on can we talk to this for a second. It was just so bare bones.
P: Yeah,
K: when needed so much more than that and all birthing people need so much more than like, Oh, let me just check your incision site. Let me check your vagina. Okay, here’s a patch. Here’s the pill. See you later you know, like we deserve so much more than that. And the six week postpartum appointment is not a one size fits all deal. That’s really what we’re given. And I remember just be walking out of there and just being like, the fuck, like what just happened? Like that was just not what I expected.
P: Yeah, it feels like a box checking exercise as a medical front, right?
K: Yeah, yep, that’s exactly what it was. And that’s exactly what I felt like, like you weren’t even. This was not an individualized personalized appointment. This was my name was on the paper. You checked it. You signed it. And you said Have a great day. Very disappointing…
P: Kayla and I talked a bit about postpartum care. And she said when she went to see her doctor at six weeks, essentially it was a very medical visit it does that surprise you. And do you think that postpartum care is in any sort of transition away from something more medical, there’s something more holistic,
Dr. Matityahu: I would like to think that it’s going towards something more holistic, and There’s, I think more of a trend toward really connecting and having compassion and being empathic and you know, asking people how they’re doing and so I think that there’s much more of a trend that way especially in my hospital, and that’s kind of sad to hear that you know, she she wanted more and wasn’t wasn’t able to express herself, or talk to her experience with her doctor.
P: It was disappointing and she said, she felt exhausted and overwhelmed and sad at times and there’s really nowhere to put those feelings.
Dr. Matityahu: You’re exhausted anyway after a vaginal delivery, you know, or any delivery, you know, between the hormone changes. You’re up all night, all of us lose. Load when we deliver and that’s a normal part of delivery and then leaving a significantly larger amount of blood that makes her even more exhausted. I don’t know about you, but when I’m exhausted, my emotions are all over the place. I cry much more easily when I’m exhausted like that. And so all makes sense to how it just all of the exhaustion and the life change and not sleeping and low blood count. I mean, it all leads to just being tired and sad. And I mean, it’s hard and so it’s even harder when you don’t even have you know, when you’re anemic. You don’t even have enough blood volume to keep you focused and awake. It makes sense that it would be incredibly hard for her. I feel terrible.
P: This postpartum thing is really a tricky issue. It seems like because it’s more than medical
Dr. Matityahu: 100% and the hard part is we have 15 minutes. Yeah, to do it all to check in you know, to check someone medically to check in with them. If it’s someone that has never met her before. They’re probably looking to see okay, you lost a lot of blood. How’s your blood? How are you feeling? Are you bleeding anymore? Is everything okay? Like, medically Are you like, okay, or do I have to do anything? And then I think sometimes people forget like, wow, I lost a ton of blood or going you know, lying on the table for two hours. Like when we look at the note that’s not always we noticed or what was obvious to us, like, we’ll see. Okay, there’s blood loss and now you’re doing Fine, thank goodness, but we don’t know the emotional journey that someone has taken. Unless we’re someone that’s going to ask and then sometimes, if you’re like, Well, I have 15 minutes. I don’t want to get into that. I don’t have the time and then what am I going to do about it anyway? I think some people will consider approaching physicians and providers and midwives. Sometimes we forget that just asking and validating and expressing our compassion about what they’re going through is sufficient. Like, that’s what people need. And that doesn’t take long. A lot of people are afraid to do it because they don’t realize that it’s not going to take time that they think it’s gonna take and the impact that has is huge.
P: So now, Robin is 18 months,
K: he’ll be actually 19 months and about in less than two weeks. Oh my gosh, what
P: so what are his tricks? What can he do?
K: he’s fluent in four languages.
P: Can he walk?
K: He started Yeah, I started walking around 11 months. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he was walking by his first birthday. I mean, I feel like I can’t remember the last time I saw like it walk. He just runs everywhere now. Like
P: oh my god, that’s awesome.
K: That’s yeah, that’s so fast. I genuinely can’t remember. Like he does not walk. And he’s really heavy footed do so you just have to think oh, here comes Robin.
P: Very cute. Feel thanks so much for coming on the show. This is such a great story and I so appreciate you sharing it.
K: And thank you so much for having me. It’s always nice to talk about my birth story a little bit more because it always just gives me a clearer perspective about it each time I bring it up out loud and it’s, you know, it’s not really something I talk about that often so it’s been nice to kind of just revisit and think about how it was and it’s so funny, because on some level, it almost feels like a dream. Yeah, you know, like, What do you mean like he’s always been here? Yeah. Yeah, like he’s just been around forever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The best. The best reality because I don’t know. Yeah, like, I don’t know what I would be doing. If I didn’t have him, which is really wonderful to think about because it just makes me think of like, well, then it’s so I don’t know what I would doing but in that case, it’s so amazing that I have him.
P: Yeah, that’s awesome.
Episode 39: A Birth that Requires Stamina: Kristen
Episode 39 SN: A Birth that Requires Stamina: Kristen
Every person has their super power. Yours could be patience or wit or strength. I am guessing that among the things that today’s guest could list as her super power, toughness and or stamina are probably near the top of the list. She contends with a fair amount of uncertainty about elemental issues, like the timing of both pregnancies, and then manages a stack of challenges beginning with birthing a baby who is not situated in the birth canal in a friendly way, tending to said baby, who is getting fed too often to make restorative sleep a viable goal in the early postpartum, and then carefully dissecting her own diet to manage a food allergy …and she does it all with a certain grace and good humor.
Weight gain during pregnancy
https://www.webmd.com/baby/guide/healthy-weight-gain#1
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pregnancy-weight-gain.htm
Sweeping membranes
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/21900-membrane-sweep
Vernix
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763724/
https://www.nature.com/articles/7211305
Audio Transcript
Paulette: Hi, Welcome to War Stories from the Womb. I’m your host Paulette Kamenecka. I’m an economist and a writer, and the mother of two girls.
Every person has their super power. When my kids were little, I’d say my super power was being entertained by almost every mishap. One time the older one was potty training and she got mad at me in the car and peed in her carseat and my initial reaction was to laugh (to myself) and think “well played toddler–use the tools at your disposal”. Message received.
Yours could be patience or wit or strength. I am guessing that among the things that today’s guest could list as her super power, toughness and or stamina are probably near the top of the list. She contends with a fair amount of uncertainty about elemental issues, like the timing of both pregnancies, and then manages a stack of challenges beginning with birthing a baby who is not situated in the birth canal in a friendly way, tending to said baby, who is getting fed too often to make restorative sleep a viable goal in the early postpartum, and then carefully dissecting her own diet to manage a food allergy …and she does it all with a certain grace and good humor.
After our conversation, I went back into the interview to add some details when medical issues came up.
Let’s get to this inspiring story.
Hi, thanks for coming on the show. Can you tell us your name and where you’re from?
Kristen: My name is Kristen and I am from a small town called cooks Creek Manitoba in Canada.
P: Oh, wow. Nice.
K: How many kids do you have?
K: I have two biological children and I have two stepchildren so I have four
P: that sounds like a full house.
K: Always.
P: What’s the age range?
K: Our youngest is seven. He just turns to Oh, he’ll be eight in August and our oldest just turned 12 in October.
P: Oh, so are pretty tight.
K: Yes, my two are oh, he just turned 12 actually on the ninth of January and my daughter will be 11 this coming September. And then my husband’s two are 12 and seven.
P: that’s a band. That’s awesome
K: Yeah, they and they all get along so incredibly. Well. We get so lucky with these four.
P: That’s awesome. What’s the gender mix?
K: We have two girls and two boys.
P: Oh, nice. God it’s really balanced.
K: Yeah, and in fact, it actually made from oldest to youngest. We go girl boy, girl boy.
P: Well done. I don’t know how you did it. But that’s well done. So before you got pregnant, what did you imagine pregnancy would be Like?
K: I was I was relatively young. I was 24 when I got pregnant with my son, so I’m 23 I guess I was 24 when I had them. I really hadn’t given it a lot of thought before getting pregnant. I was probably one of my first friends. My best friend. At the time had a terrible pregnancy and terrible birth experience. She was sick all the time I was there while she had her daughter and it was less than ideal birth experience. So I had worries that my birth might go the same way as first had put on got pregnant, but before then, I’d really give it a lot of thought
P: yeah there’s was probably something to be said about that approach. So the first time did you get pregnant easily?
K: Yeah, I actually I had gone off. I got off birth control for health reasons and told my boyfriend at the time that it was not his responsibility to take care of birth control and I ended up pregnant three months later.
P: Already, then that’s pretty easy. Yes.
K: Yeah. it wasn’t. There was no training involved. There was no planning involved. It was just kind of like, this is my this is why I met I had given him the speech of this is my five year plan. If it’s not yours, that’s okay. But this is mine. You’re in charge and wasn’t in charge.
P: I’m assuming having a baby immediately was not the top of the five year plan.
K: No, no, it wasn’t. My long term plan. My long term five year plan was to buy a house have kids, but apparently my son decided it was time for him anyway.
P: I assume you found out with like a home test?
K: I did. Yeah. And I actually had thought I was pregnant the month before. Yeah, and I was just feeling off. I was working one day and I made a comment to my partner that my boobs are really sore and the the nurse or the assistant healthcare and I think that we had with us that day. She she’s pregnant to sit No, I don’t think so. But it really got me thinking about it. And actually that day after work, I went and picked up a test and went home did it and lo and behold, I actually was pregnant. So the only real thing that kind of tipped me off was like I hadn’t missed my period yet. I was yes, I had maybe a little bit but I wasn’t unusual for me to be late. That’s why I had been on birth control for so long was to regulate my my periods. So the just the the soreness of my boobs was kind of the giveaway that I might be pregnant and I wouldn’t have even thought about it had somebody else not suggested it
P:Oh wow.
There’s some common signs you might be pregnant, like this period or tender breasts or fatigue. And according to the Mayo Clinic Another symptom that makes the list is increased urination from the increase in blood volume. Other signs of pregnancy include moodiness, bloating, cramping, food aversions, these are also kind of what you’d expect, but symptoms I’d never heard of before are constipation which may arise thanks to hormone changes and nasal congestion, which could also be related to hormone changes and or increased blood production which can cause nasal passages as well.
P: And what was the pregnancy like?
K: It was was pretty well uneventful with the exception of the fact that I’m a paramedic. That’s I was, I was I’ve been a paramedic now for 15 years and when I got pregnant with my son, I was still working on the truck. I stayed on the truck, but every time I would go and do a heavy lift, I was spotting. So I actually ended up having to come off the truck around 20 weeks I might have been 20 weeks pregnant. My doctors said that’s enough. You’re done because I had at that point gone in probably four or five times with spotting worried that something was going wrong. And all I could think about for months, all those times was like I’m losing my baby. I had had probably around the 10 week mark I had a long conversation with my aunt who’s a nurse about about it and come to terms with the fact that if I was going to lose my beanie, there was a reason for it. And yes, it was gonna suck but that meant that there was something that wasn’t working. And there was a reason why that that was supposed to happen. But lucky for me that didn’t happen.
P: did they link the spotting to the heavy lifting is gonna pay off.
K: later down the road, they discovered that my placenta was fairly low lying, laying near my cervix. So every time I would lift there was too much pressure. And that’s what caused the spotting. The the following 20 Weeks was pretty uneventful. I gained a lot of weight. Please, for me anyway, I gained about 40 pounds in my pregnancy and having been a very active person who was very weight conscious all my life. It was really difficult to get behind the idea that this was weight I needed to gain. When that was really tough to get up on the scale and see more weight, more weight more weight.
P:Yeah.
Okay let’s talk about weight gain during pregnancy. according to webmd and the CDC, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, someone who’s quote unquote average weight and average is defined by BMI, she gained 25 to 35 pounds during the pregnancy. And someone who’s underweight should gained 28 to 40 pounds. For those who are overweight, the window of 15 to 25 pounds. How’s that window determined? Where’s the weight going? Here’s some estimates. Let’s just look at the lower bound. Let’s say the baby’s eight pounds add the placenta that’s another two three pounds so now we’re at 10. At ml fluid. That’s another two three pounds an hour 12 fresh tissue increases that adds to three pounds. Now we’re at 14 and the blood supply that increase that could cause nasal congestion. That’s four pounds so now we’re 18 uterus expanded to a growing baby as two to five pounds. So now we’re already up to 20. And then you’re going to need some stored fat for breastfeeding because that fuels milk production, which has another five to nine pounds, which gets us pretty easily to 25 pounds. And that’s just the lower bound
K: you know, but the rest of that pregnancy was was pretty easy. was about the 32 week mark when my placenta finally moved enough that the doctor decided I could get back in the gym and I could do light working out, which was fantastic because I really needed to get moving after doing nothing for 12 weeks.
P: Yeah, that’s hard. You rest right. You just couldn’t do a lot of stuff.
K: Right? I just couldn’t do any any lifting and anyone didn’t want me working out. Anything strenuous really.
P: it’s interesting that Your placenta just moved.
K: Yeah. And the way they explained it is it’s kind of kind of not that it moved but that it’s you know the uterus gets bigger right so naturally, where it was positioned with move as the uterus is expanding. This way I understood what they were explaining to me so that was interesting, because I didn’t I thought that once it implanted itself where it was it was it was just a stay there.
P: Yeah, yeah, I agree. That’s cool.
K: I guess it wasn’t it wasn’t covering my cervix. It was just low enough that it was causing grief.
P; Tell us about the birth. How did you know you were in labor?
K: I have had my membranes stripped.
P: So your doctor might suggest stripping your membranes aka sweeping membranes to try to induce labor if you’re near or over your duty. And this procedure Doctor separates the amniotic sac from the wall of the uterus. And this separation encourages your body to produce prostaglandins. Chemicals that soften your cervix and repair your body fileserver know that it can only be done if your cervix is a little bit dilated, and it doesn’t always bring on labor.
K: at my last appointment I was like 39 weeks three days movie and the opposite like I was already two centimeters dilated so she gave it a good good sweep, which is probably not the most comfortable thing in the world. But she she did that and I went home and I had a lot of back pain over the course of the night and I didn’t really think much of it until about 530 in the morning when my water broke. I actually sent my my boyfriend to work and said you don’t go to work. I have no labor at home. I’ll be fine until I can’t walk or talk through these contractions and they’ll call you and you can come home.
P: and was the water breaking like a Hollywood event or
K: no I was actually in bed and all of a sudden I kind of felt a little bit wet nose like I think that’s my water and I got up to go to the washroom. It wasn’t the big gush or anything it was a little bit of a trickle but he and he went off to work and I hopped in the shower I had some breakfast and then I got in the shower and knowing knowing what I know from my from my job I knew that once I got to work or to the to the hospital, they’re not gonna let me eat. Let me do anything. They’re just gonna let the labor and I wanted to make sure I had food in my system before I went in.
So I had my breakfast say hey, had my shower stood in there for a while. By the time I was getting out of the hot shower, only about an hour after I sent him to work. I was calling him saying you know what? I actually think it’s a good idea. If we go by the time you get there, it should be ready to go. So he came back and he got me we went off to the hospital and they got me triaged but they had no bed so they had me walk the hallway. And when I got there around 11 o’clock in the morning, and I walked and I walked in I walked that they had a room and then
P: how are you? How are you feeling during all this walking?
K: Not overly comfortable but I had to bet I had decided at the beginning of the pregnancy that the as a result of my friends negative experience with an epidural and and medications that I was going to do this all natural. I had many people ask me are you sure that’s what you want to do? Are you like are too afraid it’s gonna hurt tonight I would respond with Well, I know it’s gonna hurt. There’s no, there’s no, there’s no, no two ways about that. It is what it is and I’m expecting that so it was uncomfortable to say the least but not intolerable.
P: okay
K: walking the hallways. I would stop every once in a while have a contraction and keep going. Once they had a space for me, I got to labor in the birthing tub. I should say birthing tub it’s just a tub because they won’t allow you to have your baby in the tub. I labored in there for a while and then I I went into the shower and I stood in the shower for a while they got me a birthing ball and they sat on that. So my water had broken about 530 in the morning and by about 430 In the afternoon I was ready to push the I was 10 centimeters dilated and they had this lovely little rail that they were able to attach to my bed if I wanted to get up and use that as a as an option to bear down and I pushed for so long it was five hours
P: oh my god that’s super long. Wow.
K: enduring that that whole process while I was laboring in my room I actually one of my friends and co workers had popped into the hospital knew I was in labor pop came upstairs and the nurse comes in she’s like your friend is here is wondering and I’m like can I let him in sewing for a while. That was that was before it was pushing but then. So by the time I was ready to push, the nurse was convinced that every time I push she could see his head so she figured this was going to be a short process but an hour and a half later I was still pushing in the resident came in to take a look and see what was going on. And it turns out that my son was situated sideways so he was shoulders instead of being held facedown he was facing sideways. Oh, square peg round hole doesn’t work.
P: Yes. Yeah.
K: So she she tried to turn him and was unsuccessful. He was too far down into that birth canal for him to be successfully turned.
P: That sounds like a not super comfortable procedure.
K: No, no, it’s definitely not I don’t I don’t have a lot of memory about how it went down but I just remember it being kind of an uncomfortable push. But at that point I’d already been pushing for an hour and a half so it didn’t really that much different. So she she tried and she was unsuccessful. And she said you know what? he might still turn on his own so we’re gonna give you to about a three hour mark usually at about three hours that’s when we come in and assist delivery. Okay, and off she left and I continued to push for another hour and a half. My mom was there my my mother in law my other half and my aunt and my sister were all there in the room with us. And obviously, by the time I got to three hours he still hadn’t come out. And the resident and the physician were both in C sections. So there was nobody to come and help me at three hour mark. So at that point, the nurse says to me, she says do you want the nitrous and I said, Well, is it gonna is that going to stop my contractions really because she said at this point she’s saying tried to breathe through your contractions and I’ve been pushing for three hours you want me to breathe through my contractions…that’s not a thing that is going to happen. And slowly we can offer you the nitrous. They said they’re going to do what’s not going to do for me so that might decrease the intensity of the contraction. I said okay, well I’ll give it a try. Because at this point my my eyelids were swollen
P: oh my God
K: and purple because I’ve been pushing so hard for so long. It looked like I was wearing eyeshadow and I could barely you barely keep my eyes open. So I took that first hit of nitrous and it’s subdued my contractions for about four minutes. It was the most brilliant four minutes of my entire life. It was nice to just kind of relax and chill for a couple of minutes after, you know, screaming pushing for so long. But it didn’t obviously stop the contractions and definitely but it did it did make them a little bit less intense. I didn’t think it was doing a lot but the nurse was insistent that yes, absolutely. You’re not squeezing your eyes shut as hard. You’re not pushing as hard. It’s doing something for you. He’s always ready to give it back because like this is useless. I’m not getting anything after that first shot. So by another another hour and a half goes by or whatever and the doc the doc finally comes in at about the five almost five hour mark and then resident at that point suggests taking me to an OR because just in case. Anything goes awry and my nurse was wonderful and she actually advocated for me. She says, Do we really need to take her somewhere else like she’s gotten this far without drugs because of these five people here.
P: Yeah
K: These people have been helping her through this. She’s only here because of that. We need to take her somewhere else and then the OB she says you know what? You’re right. We’ll get the NICU called the NICU team bring them here because our room was nice and big.
P: Yeah.
K: So they brought them in and they ended up having to do an episiotomy. And then vacuum deliver him which
P: you’re not anesthetized for the episiotomy?
K: No, not at all she said that the pressure from the head will cause enough to have you not feel really the episiotomy and I don’t remember feeling the episiotomy So,
P: okay, good.
K: It wasn’t it wasn’t an overly traumatic experience there. But when the the suction delivered him there was actually a pop as he came out, because of the just the pressure from him being there and he was his head was very bruised afterwards just from being and cone like from being stuck in the birth, birth now for long. My My first thought after he came out was oh my god, thank goodness that’s over.
P: Yeah.
K: But at the same time they I was I was thankful that it was over but I also the first things out of my mouth. Were that wasn’t so bad. And the nurse and the doctors are looking at me and I really just pushed for five hours that you’re saying that wasn’t that bad. Really, it wasn’t too over. They put them only on my chest for about 30 seconds. And I knew I remember saying to him like you I’m sure you’re beautiful but mommy can’t even see you because I couldn’t open my eyes.
P: Oh my god. Wow.
K: And he was crying very quietly and I said if this is all I have to deal with, I can deal with this. The doctor was like, That’s not normal. We’re actually going to take him Now, he wasn’t trying very loudly. He was very, very quiet. So the NICU team ended up taking him and suctioning him and taking him off to the NICU for a while. What had happened was because he was stuck for so long in the birth canal he was full of mucus
P: Oh Wow.
K: They had to take took him away to make sure that the other they got all of that out. They kept him on his stomach for a little while he was making. I didn’t see him for that entire time that he was in the NICU. His dad went in and walked down the hallway but they really didn’t give him a much opportunity to see him. While they were dealing with it. He ended up having his first bath without me and being all cleaned up and he came back to me all wrapped up wearing a diaper.And it was probably a couple hours from the time that I had until the time he came back to my room.
P: When they returned them to you. He was fine.
K: he was fine. Yeah. But in that in that hour and a half I remember saying to my mom Mom I want I need something to eat go and get me a big extra which she’s all I wanted after having that experience was she what she’s from?
P: I mean, you basically just run like two marathons right? That makes sense. Yeah.
K: When he when he came back, it took him a little bit of time to learn how to latch and I actually ended up in the hospital for four days postpartum because he lost 11% of his body weight his birth weight and the they were really kind of reluctant to send us home until he gains back some of that. He ended up on phototherapy because he was jaundice. So they had him in an incubator with phototherapy going but he was not having any of that he didn’t want to be that far away from mom so he ended up with a phototherapy blanket. And this is just basically like a UV light that they put inside his his blanket. He doesn’t keep on clothes. He just kept through this diaper and wrapped up in a blanket with that UV light behind him. And he hadn’t quite gained back his birth weight by the time we left but he was he was significantly better but I had to nurse him and then supplement him and then pump and I did that for every hour every couple hours or the first couple of days. And I remember it being about 60 hours that I hadn’t slept from the time when my water broke until the time I finally got a good nap in. And that was me saying to the nurses please take my baby so that I can sleep.
P: yeah, no kidding, Good Lord,
K: can you do something because this is this has been over two two and a half days here and I I need a good rest because every time I would just fall asleep they would come in to be doing vitals on me or the baby.
P: Yeah.
K: And then just they finally they took him for a couple hours so that I could get a solid sleep in the in the night. They’ve just brought it back to me when it was time to feed him. Yeah, by the end by the time he took me home I had to I had to keep doing that. The nurse supplement pump every three hours and that process took about I don’t know an hour an hour and a half. So I would do that every every three hours for the whole day for 10 days. So those first 10 days of his life are pretty much a blur of sleepless everything
P: that just seems like an unbelievable task. I mean, I don’t know how you slept or ate.
K: I guess they just I can’t even remember at this point. It was it was it’s just a blur. He slept in my bed. I co slept with him because it was impossible. I had I had a bassinet beside my bed but it was so much easier to just, you know he would sleep there for the first block of sleep and he didn’t sleep my son did not sleep very well. He only ever really slept for two or three hours at a time. And he didn’t nap during the day if he nap during the day. It was short. Unless I was holding him if I was holding him he would sleep.
P: Yeah,
K: so at nighttime it was just, you know do what I needed to do to get some sleep which meant he usually slept with me that worked out alright because his dad he wasn’t homeless. He was he worked out of town. So a lot of the time he he wasn’t there. It was just me and my son in bed. It worked out alright.
P: wow.. Oh, that’s some initiation into parenthood.
K: Yeah, my second one was so much easier than that. But thank goodness.
P: So he required all that feeding. Was it because of the latch issue or was it something
K: just because he lost so much weight they wanted him to catch up but by the by the time he hit that 10 day mark and the public health nurse had come to check on him. She’s like, you don’t have to do this anymore. my milk head had come in in abundance.
P: I imagine everything else seemed easy after that introduction.
K: Yes, yeah, it was not. Although he the first four months maybe before I figured out what was causing him grief is every night around the same time he would. He would just start crying and crying crying and I remember having to call my mom My mom lives. I lived in a duplex. My mom lived downstairs and I remember getting her to come upstairs and take him and walk with him because I just I needed a break from the crying. I tried so many different things and we were you stopped eating spicy foods. I stopped eating anything with spices. I couldn’t figure out what was the issue until I realized that every morning for breakfast. I was eating yogurt. I stopped eating the yogurt for breakfast and my son stopped being colicky.
P: oh Wow. So it was a food sensitivity on his part
K: And I had tried that when I tried probiotics and I had tried all sorts of thing eliminating everything tasty under my diet try to find out what the problem was. And it was the yogurt and as soon as I ended that he started sleeping a little bit better and he stopped crying in at night. There was always an evening who was okay all day in the evening. It was awful to this day. He still he’s 12 now and he still has a dairy sensitivity, but that knowledge that I had from that experience carried through to my daughter and she had a similar problem when she was first born and she would projectile vomit and shortly after I would nurse her and at least at that point I knew to eliminate the dairy in my diet in that solve the problem for her as well.
P: That’s super interesting. Do you or your husband have a dairy sensitivity?
K: I have always had a dairy sensitivity and it was kind of like an upset stomach. I don’t generally digest animal proteins very well. And I find that dairy products actually caused me to have an asthma attack. So
P: oh Wow.
K: It wasn’t a surprise that my kids would both be have adverse reactions to to dairy. Their dad also was a heel heel he would he would tell you he wasn’t lactose intolerant until he met me but he didn’t he didn’t recognize the gastrointestinal upsets that he was having were as a result of dairy he was eating because once I went sparse done once I realized he was not he was not able to have dairy. I stopped buying it. And we started using alternatives and their dad’s problems also stopped. So he didn’t know until I suggested that this was potentially a problem for
P: Wow, that’s amazing. And so your kids are close together in age. Did you guys play in the second one?
K: Nope. I had one one menstrual cycle in between my kids. I didn’t have any cycles up until I started. Nighttime weaning my son so when I started taking him and he was about 10 months old when I started getting getting him into a routine of not nursing at night because I was going to go back to work at the one year mark. And so I had a cycle at the beginning of this. He was born in January 9th. I had my typical post partum bleeding for about six weeks. And then I had nothing until the beginning of December of that same year, and I ended up pregnant December 23.
P: oh Wow.
K: I knew I knew the day it happened.
P: That sounds like you’re pretty in tune with your body. So my guess is you were you were on it. And were you surprised?
K: again it was one of these situations where I had said to to my ex that you know, like we have to be careful because this is where we’re at like and so I was I wasn’t necessarily surprised that had happened. I was I had a hard time with the idea that I was pregnant again. Right away. I actually was in denial until a new year until I’ve got to a point where I was gonna miss my next period.
P: Yeah, it sounds like your body is still recovering. And so that is kind of a surprise.
K: Yeah, it wasn’t it wasn’t there wasn’t ready for it. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t change it for the world my kids are as his best friends as they could possibly be being multi for the boy and girl. But I definitely remember thinking the day the day after the day I got pregnant like the next day when I was spotting and I was certain it was implantation bleeding. Yeah. I was like, Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. We had planned for a New Year’s Eve party at our house and I sipped on the same beer the whole entire night because I was sure that I was pregnant. Yeah. And lo and behold, I did my test in January, and I picked him up one day, and I said to him, like, yeah, when I was talking on the phone the other day, and I told you, you have children. Yes, yeah. pregnant again. This is well it’s too soon. This time. I will agree with you. Yeah. But here we are. So we’re gonna have another one. And it took me about 16 weeks 16 weeks to be okay with the idea that I was having another baby, because I was so excited that my son would finally sit and play with a bucket of toys. By himself that he will do things he would see was crawling and he was mobile, and I didn’t have to be with him 100% of the time to keep him entertained. And at that point, I’d also discovered that he was allergic to dairy and eggs. So I already had this like worry that now I’m going to have you know, two kids with allergies and I don’t want to have ya I’m just learning how to deal with one I don’t want to have to deal with 2am I gonna do this. I’m gonna have two toddlers in my house. Yeah, but it’s actually a lot easier than I thought it was gonna be.
P: Oh, good. Yeah, that sounds pretty busy. And one benefit of having nine months of pregnancy is it gives you time to adjust the idea.
K: Yes.
P: So how was the second pregnancy
K: uneventful. Oh, I was I was able to maintain my my my gym routines. Maintain my work. I stayed on the on truck until I was I think 28 or 29 weeks and I only came off because my belly was starting to get in the way I didn’t gain as much weight with her. I had like his basketball belly. If he looked at me from behind, you would never know that I was pregnant.
P: and he didn’t have a placenta issue again.
K: No, no problem with the placenta. I had a lot of back pain with my son and I and as a result I had a lot of back leg was back labor. The thing they thought that was big because my placenta or my uterus was tipped backwards to towards my back as opposed towards the front. Whereas if my daughter had after that first pregnancy had put itself in a good position. I didn’t really have much for pregnancy symptoms with her like I had with my son. I had no real knowledge that I was pregnant other than you know that other than that spotting Other than that, like if I wouldn’t have known that just go on about my life like there was nothing Yeah. Blowing up saying he’ll, you know, here’s alarm saying you’re pregnant. I did have a little bit of morning sickness with her which I never had with my son but like very minimal link to the point where like, Oh, I haven’t eaten enough today. So I better eat something and that’s how I felt. That nausea that you get when you have an empty stomach.
P: Yeah, good. Well, that doesn’t sound too bad. And then what was the birth like for her?
K: Oh, that was so good. I was in comparison Lee again. My daughter had gone into my my appointment on the 10th of September. She was she was due on the 15th Avenue and we went in probably on the 10th and she stripped my membranes because again, I was dilated, and I knew from my previous pregnancy that that meant I was probably going to end up having a baby within the next 24 hours. So I went and I did my grocery shopping after that, and I started laboring probably around two o’clock in the afternoon. While I was at superstore actually, and I just picked up all of my groceries, I went home, my ex got home from work and I told him the city. We’re gonna we’re gonna have a baby tonight. So be mindful of what it is you’re choosing to do tonight. Little bit of background as he he was a heavy drinker. And so he actually came home from work and he hit the beer pretty hard. And I kept telling him like, I’m gonna have this baby tonight. And he kept choosing to drink and going to bed around midnight and as about 130 When I said Okay, it’s time to go, but there was no way he could drive me actually to call my mom. My mom was coming to watch my my son so that I could go to the hospital and yeah, I was convinced I was just going to take a taxi to the hospital because there was no way he was going to be able to drive me and my mom actually called my sister and my sister came and picked me up after she woke my my apps up multiple times and told him to get his butt out of bed so that he could come with me in the hospital to have this baby because I was fully prepared to have him have her all by myself.
P: Yeah,
K: you know, he decided he needed to have a shower first and then my sister’s like, hurrying wrong I lucked out that I waited so long to go to the hospital because they actually had no beds that night. They had their just their emergency labor beds and I was five centimeters dilated. By the time I got to the hospital.
P: Wow.
K: And they said well, it’s a good thing. You find that you’re in active labor because if you wouldn’t we would be sending you home or sending you off to another facility to have your baby basically because we don’t have anyone. But because I was an active labor they couldn’t send me anywhere so they put me in a room. That was about 330 in the morning. probably about 630 My nurse said she was going to go for a break and she said to the relief nurse, when I get back she’s going to be ready to push. I was quiet at this this this particular pregnancy was so sick even the labor was so easy. There was no loud pushes there was no screaming there was no anything. I was just calm. I was breathing through the contractions. And her relief nurse was convinced that I had had an epidural or some kind of medication she refused to let me get up and go to the bathroom when I had to pee. The only I guess the only real complication with my daughter there was like she her heart rate got really high. So they ended up giving me an IV they wanted to try to hydrate me to see if that would decrease her heart rate. But I because I had this IV I had to pee in the source was like no way you can’t get up I
P: was like you were she thought you were anesthetized.
K: Right Yeah, and she’s like I’m just gonna catheterized you like I don’t care just empty my bladder like don’t get let me get up. That’s fine. Have to pee somehow, and so she ended up St. Catheter me and my nurse came back from her break and she’s like, oh like catheter I string catheter and emptier blah. She’s like why was that epidural? Like no she hasn’t She’s nothing like she was fine. She couldn’t go she’s been getting up to go to the bathroom all morning. Such as like, really? She’s quiet. Like yes, she’s she’s fine. But the bonus I had here was that she my water never broke. He actually had to I was 10 centimeters dilated. My waters were still intact. And the OB actually had to break the water in order to for me to push.
P: does that feel like anything?
K: it actually it’s more scary to look at because it looks like this big one crochet hook that they’re going to use to break the water and she sticks this up in there and puts a hole in it. And I don’t remember it really feeling like much other than all of a sudden I could feel gosh, oh yeah. And then I actually only pushed four times with her and she was out as a forefront anyway. I don’t even know if it was four to four pushes but every every every push was solid push and she came
P: that is awesome. Some awesome and averaging out over the two to make it reasonable.
K: Yeah, absolutely.
P: And so she didn’t have any mucus issues or anything.
K: She’s totally fine. He was fine. They thought maybe she was a that maybe we got the due date wrong just because the amount of vernix that she was covered in they figured she was more than 30 week baby than the 39 week baby.
P: It’s a quick note here about vernix versus that white pasty material that covers a newborn. It developed from a third trimester and has all kinds of functions during the pregnancy and right after delivery. In Utero it protects fetal skin from amniotic fluid at the same time the fetus swallows vernix in amniotic fluid, and the Fornix is believed to aid in innate immunity and intestinal development. In the first hours after delivery. Researchers think vernix helps with temperature regulation and also acts as a skin moisturizer.
K: But she was super teeny tiny she measured tiny through the whole pregnancy and now she’s 10 years old and she’s like my seven year old and 10 year old rolls and things like that. She’s a tiny little petite thing. And she always has been she she was born like seven pounds 18 and a quarter inches like she was just
P: the year about seven pounds isn’t that tiny? That’s that feels average,
K: seven pounds, definitely average but her her length was very short. Like in comparison, my son was 76 and 19 and a half inches long. So you know, comparatively she was bigger, you know per inch. Yeah, yeah. Then my son was
P: well good. I’m glad that wasn’t easier birth.
K: Oh, yeah.
P: Did you get to leave the next day or how did that work?
K: Yeah, you she they were slightly concerned that her Billy Rubin was a little bit high when we were leaving, but it was still borderline because they had no rooms they could put me actually on a warm and I was sharing a room with four other women.
P: Oh, wow.
K: And and their babies. Yeah. So I actually said to them the next day, so I’d had her at 730 by noon. It was like 900 Yeah, I don’t have to be like No, I have to keep you will keep you today. We’re just to monitor and then you know, everything’s good. You can go home tomorrow. And thank God I got to go home tomorrow because it was it was in the night with four babies other than my own in the bedroom was actually more stressful than being at home with my toddler and infant. Myself.
P: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I shared the room too. And that’s that’s a recipe for no sleep at all.
K: No. And they were giving me a hard time the nurses at that point is I have my daughter had my daughter and my bed and they had her sleeping with me and their policy at the hospital is no co sleeping in the hospital.
P: Yeah,
K: and they kept coming in tell you she can’t sleep with you. I was like, yes, she can. This is my baby. It’s your policy like, I don’t care if it’s your policy that she has to sleep in that bed unless you’re gonna sit here and take care of her every time she wakes up. All these other babies are I’m keeping her in my bed because she’s sleeping and she’s quiet.
P: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s worth a lot. And when you got home with her, how was that?
K: It was it was an easy, relatively easy transition to having two kids. My son was really good with her. He was very excited to have a new sister. He was very helpful and willing to to give me whatever it was I needed. And I learned very quickly how to do everything with one hand because I always had a baby attached to me. She She was my warp speed child though. Like she did everything faster than the speed of light. And as a result, like by the time she was four months old, I didn’t really have to do a ton for she was rolling already. She was sitting already. My son would hang out with her and I could do a lot more than I could when my son was the same age.
P: Yeah.
K: Which was which was wonderful and made for a much easier time having two small kids then I thought it was going to be when she was crawling away by six months and walking by nine months and
P: wow.
K: And learning that she she basically taught herself how to potty train like I was potty training my son and she decided that that was what she wanted to do also so before she I think she might have been 18 months old. 20 months old been potty trained and getting up like she would get up in the middle of the night. Go to the potty in her room and go back to sleep.
P: I hope you all the money you saved on diapers you have given to her for her new car
K: it was it was a dream and she she slept like my son didn’t sleep and my daughter slept I put I ended up putting her crib in my room because I was anticipating her being much like my son.
P: Yeah,
K: and she preferred to sleep in her crib than she did to sleep with me. So once her once she outgrew her bassinet, that’s when the crib made it to our room and that way I still didn’t have to go in and wake up my son every time I wanted. She was waking up. Yeah, but she would she would just get up she would nurse and go back to her bed and she would sleep for six hours stretches at night.
P: wow. Oh my god. That’s awesome.
K: It was a dream. It was a dream after having a child who didn’t sleep.
P: Yeah, it’s also it’s also your kids who’ve done it in the right order as if it had been the reverse. He wouldn’t seem so much more difficult. Yes, absolutely. Well, that’s awesome. So what are they into now?
K: My son plays hockey. And of course with COVID This year we have missed hockey desperately.
P: Yeah,
K: we don’t do any any summertime sports but he plays ice hockey in the winter and ball hockey in the summer. My daughter is curls in the wintertime that she was when she was about six when she decided she wanted to curl and she’s really enjoyed it. She decided a couple years ago that she wanted to play ball hockey in the springtime as well and she used to play soccer and baseball hockey in the spring. They go to school and we have a farm and they help take care of animals occasionally.
P: That sounds awesome. That’s very cool. So if you could give advice to your younger self about pregnancy, what do you think you would tell her?
K: It’s never going to go the way you expect it to go. Or the the everything that you will be thrown curveballs just roll with it.
P: Yeah, that’s good advice. That seems to be a pretty common experience. Right? People come in with a plan and it’s hard to really stick to that.
K: Yeah, I was lucky in the sense of you. Well, maybe my my birth didn’t necessarily make my first birth didn’t necessarily go as I had at home, I was still able to do it without deviating too far off what I was hoping to do, I still had chosen to maintain a natural birth in the sense that I didn’t need any anesthesia or pain control, which I always was thankful for. Because it doesn’t work that way for everybody. My hand and my sister had gone into her first pregnancy with hoping to follow in my footsteps. She’s a I’m not going to do I’m going to do this naturally. I’m not going to do this with any drugs and she got there and she was laboring and she said looked at me and she says I hope you don’t think less of me but I need to take something because I can’t do this. And I said this is your story not mine. Yeah. Well, you you do what works for you. And if it’s not the same as what works for me, that’s okay.
P: For sure everybody’s different right? So yeah, that makes sense. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your stories today.
K; No problem. I really appreciate it. I enjoy I enjoy telling me no problem. Thank you. So much for having me.
Episode 38: Many Challenges can Visit a Pregnancy and Birth (including Covid): Erin’s story
Episode 38 SN: Many Challenges can Visit a Pregnancy and Birth (including Covid): Erin’s story
Having spoken with a lot of women about their experiences with reproduction, many of them report having one or possibly two issues that visit their pregnancy or birth that alert them to the fact that they have very little control over the momentous task of creating another person in the confines of their body. Today’s guest was visited by many, many issues, including miscarriage, hyperemesis, gestational diabetes and the coup de gras, issues with breastfeeding, all of which happened (drumroll please) during Covid….so yeah, it was a lot. But now that she and her partner are on the other side of that experience, and getting to enjoy their beautiful six month old, she can appreciate how many of these challenges taught her valuable things about herself.
Japanese Art of Grieving a Misscarriage
http://deathtalkproject.com/on-the-japanese-art-of-grieving-a-miscarriage/
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/mizuko-kuyo
Engagement
https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/baby-engaged#engagement-explained
Audio Transcript
Paulette: Hi Welcome to War Stories from the Womb. I’m your host Paulette Kamenecka. I’m an economist and a writer, and the mother of two girls. Having spoken with a lot of women about their experiences with reproduction, many of them report having one or possibly two issues that visit their pregnancy or birth that alert them to the fact that they have very little control over the momentous task of creating another person in the confines of their body. Today’s guest was visited by many, many issues, including miscarriage, hyperemesis, gestational diabetes and the coup de gras, issues with breastfeeding, all of which happened (drumroll please) during Covid….so yeah, it was a lot. But now that she and her partner are on the other side of that experience, and getting to enjoy their beautiful six month old, she can appreciate how many of these challenges taught her valuable things about herself.
After we spoke I went back into our conversation and included some details about medical issues that came up, and also had the opportunity to speak to a fantastic midwife and listening to her empathic and intelligent answers to my questions, I can see that she also teaches all of us what we should all be looking for in a midwife.
Let’s get to this inspiring story.
Thanks so much for coming on the show. Can you tell us your name and where you’re from?
Erin: My name is Erin Donaghy, and I’m from Melbourne in Australia.
P: Oh, wow. Cool. I’m jealous. It’s beautiful right?
E: It is very beautiful. We were just in fall at the moment. So it’s gotten very cold all of a sudden but it is a wonderful place in the world. Yeah,
P: I don’t think I realized it ever got that cold…
E: Everyone thinks is always beautiful and sunny. There are some parts which are definitely much warmer. But yeah, we’re right down south. So it does get a bit cool.
P: So Erin, tell us a little bit about yourself. Do you have siblings?
E: I do. Yeah, I am one of three. I have a brother and a sister. So my sister is two years younger than me and my brother is eight years younger than me so he was a little bit of a surprise but a very welcome surprise to the family.
P: I’m the third of four and I have a sister who’s eight years younger than me and she’s like the best one. So thank God for surprises.
E: Thank goodness she came along.
P: Exactly. Did you imagine that you would have a family someday?
E: That’s I think, always probably did you know, my brother being eight years younger than me. I was always called his second mom, you know? So I think now to an eight year old and I’m not sure I would trust an eight year old with what I was trusting during that time. But you know, it was the 80s and maybe things were a little bit different, but I think I probably always did but then as I got into my 20s I became quite career focused and my mum is very maternal and was always has always been having you kids was the best thing ever. Having kids is the best thing you know, you’ll regret it if you don’t, and I was always a little bit different. You know, I was like, Look, I can imagine having a family but I think it’s also possible to that I may not have a family. So yeah. And then that sort of changed as I got into my Well, I suppose I was more towards my mid 30s where I started to think actually, yeah, this is something that I want. So I am an older mum. Just kind of how life has worked out. So
P: Erin and I are on zoom so I can see her and Aaron does not look like an older mom. So I feel skeptical. so before you got pregnant, what did you think pregnancy would evolve?
E: I think that because I am a little bit older. I’ve had lots of friends and you know my sister she has two beautiful boys and so she’d had kids as well. So I sort of I had an idea that could be tough. I didn’t have this vision of this. You know, I’d seen women that look beautiful and growing with a beautiful perfect bump. I didn’t necessarily expect that for me, but I think there’s nothing quite like a lived experience. Right? So no matter how much you can seek, you know, or you think you’ve seen from your friends or your family, nothing like living at yourself. So I think probably the main gap in my expectations was well pregnant during COVID So that was completely and and then I think probably how my birth kind of ended up but that’s a process. You know, it’s a process we go through when we go and so I have this tension. You know, I’m so happy to be here talking to you about this because I think it’s so important that we share our experiences in order to demystify, de stigmatize so many things. And also I understand that there’s nothing quite like doing it, to be able to know what it’s like so,
P: but it’s useful to hear many people’s stories about pregnancy, when very few of us have this Hollywood image of you know, it was easy, and I looked beautiful the whole time and i i loved it, every bit of it. So it’s interesting to hear people’s experience. So did you get pregnant easily?
E: I did. So as I said mid 30s and sort of early to mid 30s I decided something I wanted to do. I was married at the time, and we had started trying for family and then our relationship broke down. So I went through a whole process of grieving that thinking, Well really, maybe I won’t become a mom because I was in my mid 30s. And what did that actually mean? So I went through the whole process of wondering if it was something I wanted to do on my own, but decided that going through that grieving process was not the time to make that kind of decision. So I went through a complete life change left my corporate job, started up my own business, did lots of travel, and then met my now partner we talked for a long time before we actually met in person but I think things are often meant to be in the way that they turn out. So we were together for two months. When I found out I was unexpectedly pregnant, which was a wonderful, beautiful, happy surprise, completely overwhelming but you know, we both very much wanted it. It was earlier than we wanted. Unexpected, but that’s why it happened. But unfortunately that pregnancy ended in miscarriage quite early on around about seven week mark. I had some bleeding, which, you know, led to a prolonged period of bleeding, some scans that were inconclusive, so that I had to wait a couple of weeks and unfortunately the time my partner was overseas so I was dealing with that on my own in a very good health system in Australia, but not particularly empathetic. So I found the process to be quite I mean it was a difficult it’s difficult going through a miscarriage of course, but I think because it happens so early on and in the medical world they deal with it quite regularly. I don’t feel that I got a great amount of support.
P: Yeah, That’s really hard. I’m sorry, they didn’t find someone who had good hands for that job and hard that your partner was gone.
E: Yes, it was. It was a full time as I said it was very early on in our relationship and not at all expected. So yeah, it was one of those things and when I look when I think back now I think I don’t really remember that month post it. I think I was quite numb like I am quite a spiritual person. I’m quite an emotionally self aware person and I’ve learnt to the feelings as they arise but at that time Yeah, I think back to that month I you know, I came back to my business. I just kept going because I thought that was what I had to do. And you know, I think one of the things that again it’s lived experience because I think I probably haven’t been completely very empathetic in the past when it’s happened to people when I’ve known about it. It’s all the hopes and dreams that you attach to a pregnancy this little being that although just a little bean at the time, everything you imagined for that what that means for you your relationship for creating beautiful little life sort of disappears in a flash and I don’t think there’s a lot around to actually deal with that. And because we don’t talk about pregnancy till sort of the 13 week mark when it’s safer to do so I think it’s not until you actually start talking to people that you realize how common it is.
P: I feel like we need some kind of rituals around it to help to help us grieve and just something to help us get some sort of closure on it right because it feels so finished and unexpected and you have no control right one way or the other.
So I took this question of rituals to a midwife. today. We’re really lucky to get to talk to a certified nurse midwife. Her name is Ann Richards Ann thanks so much for coming on the show.
Ann Richards: Thank you so much for having me. I am a birth podcast fanatic and listen to them all the time and I’m just giddy that I get to be here on one
P: Erin’s first pregnancy in a miscarriage and instead of about seven weeks, she said she didn’t really think it was dealt with very empathically I’m guessing that you see it often in your practice, and wondering how midwives are trained to deal with miscarriage and if there’s any effort afoot to develop rituals around this because it’s so common,
Ann: that’s interesting. So you know the training for it is very different. I think, depending on where your practices in school, we didn’t learn a whole lot about how to manage it. Oftentimes it’s well if it you know, a fetus in the uterus without a heartbeat, and obviously the body hasn’t passed that that non viable pregnancy then you’re usually just consulting and passing the patient off to an obstetrician who then is talking about management options. And so it’s kind of brushed over to be honest because we call that a missed AB or missed abortion slash missed miscarriage, meaning the body has not recognized that that the pregnancy is no longer viable and so you can kind of lay out how do we help the body to pass this non viable pregnancy? So it wasn’t until I was in my current practice where I worked collaboratively with obstetricians that I got to see those discussions regarding management. But whenever you diagnose someone with a miscarriage, you know, maybe they come in for that very first ultrasound, that very first prenatal appointment and there is no heartbeat. It’s devastating. It is for me personally, knowing that I have no idea how devastating it is for the patient. You know, it’s so hard to say you know, not knowing exactly how that was dealt with by the midwife she saw but I’m I’m just really sorry to hear that. You know, because it is that’s something every time I see a patient for her first visit, I have a huge lump in my throat until we see a viable pregnancy. And if we don’t, it is incredibly hard to navigate because I’m totally tearing up thinking about it. You can’t help but just feel helpless, you know, as a provider, and I can’t even imagine as the patient you know, wondering, why did I do something wrong? You know, which of course the patient hasn’t it’s such a difficult situation to navigate and there’s no right answer. There’s no easy answer in counseling someone but there’s of course, an empathetic way to approach it and recognizing that this for that that person in that family is is a lost life is a lost idea of life and at the last family pains, my midwife Heartseeker that she didn’t receive the compassion that that she needed and certainly deserved.
P: I feel like everyone I speak with agrees that we need some kind of ritual, kind of manage and move on. I don’t know where that’s going to come from. I don’t know if you think that it makes sense that it comes from medical practice or it will come from somewhere else.
Ann: I think it should originate with us. I mean something I actually recommend my patients now that it’s called the Japanese Art of miscarriage is a beautiful, just very raw approach to to miscarriage and helping families it’s from a patient’s perspective but I think it’s called the Japanese art of miscarriage and it’s what I personally use in counseling people if I think they’re ready for that.
P: So If you’re interested in exploring this, I put a link to it in the show notes. Feel free to check that out.
And so did you try to get pregnant immediately again or how’d you handle it?
E: Yeah, so we did to my plan is Filipino so he was in the Philippines when it happened. And so I went over, um, towards the end of his trip to visit him. We spent a bit of time there, recuperating. The advice from the hospital was to at least wait one full cycle, trying again so we started trying again after that. Our relationship went through a bit of a very rocky patch, but we then did become pregnant again. And we found out in February 2020s. So it was six months post. So I think in hindsight that six months felt very long at the time, you know, that every time you’re paying on the stage hoping and wishing and thinking and and you know, the I think you said before, you know, one of the things about pregnancy is that so much out of your control. And so yeah, thinking about the six months was not a long time to wait but it felt excruciatingly wrong at the time, but yeah, we got the wonderful news in February 2020 that we were expecting. And then months later, we went into lockdown. We actually took a holiday to Bali, and it was sort of an early babymoon and I’m so so glad we took it now. Time we were coming and going it was sort of on the precipice of things before they got really crazy. We knew that there was potentially a race I was quite seeking. They sickness but it felt like the right thing to do and it was we got back just in time before everything really kind of shut down.
P: Remind me how far is Bali for you guys not that far.
E: Not too far. So it’s a five and a half hour flight from Melbourne. Okay, so
P: not too bad.
E: Not too bad at all. No. And it was you know, it was lovely. It was a beautiful, beautiful time and as I said, potentially quite risky but it was very different over there at the time, you know wasn’t a lot of precautions happening. It was a little quieter but just not necessarily a great thing about the precautions but it was nice to escape it a little bit. Yeah. Before heading back into what was the year that has been so
P: god yeah, in hindsight, it’s genius. Well done.
E: It worked out beautifully. The universe was definitely protecting us. So then we came back and I ended up admitted to hospital because I was vomiting and I was diagnosed with hyper. Yeah, yes, very, very bad morning slash all day sickness.
P: Do we know what generates hyperemesis?
Ann: It’s very largely suspected to be related to pro pregnancy hormones that HCG are the hormone that is tested for via blood or urine when you do a pregnancy test and the higher that hormone, which tends to be much higher in multiple gestation pregnancies, the higher the nausea I really feel for patients who are going through that a lot of women are prepared to maybe not feel their best or not go well in the first trimester. But hyperemesis is just a different beast. It just lays you up and most women have a singleton Or one baby pregnancy and the gamut of what’s normal for how they feel in early pregnancy is so wide what woman you know, feel mildly nauseous or not nauseous at all and other women have hyperemesis or vomiting multiple times a day every day. It makes no sense. It’s just kind of mind boggling. It really attests to the fact that we know some about pregnancy and birth but we don’t know a lot more than we do know
E: I ended up medic medicated for that up until about 16-17 weeks, I think and that was sort of, I guess the beginning of the discomfort for me around wanting a more natural type of birth. I had a lot of fears around giving birth, but I was working through them. I really don’t like taking medication unless I have to you know, modern medicine is wonderful, but I try to avoid it as much as I can. Particularly when I was pregnant. You know, I didn’t know what these tablets were going to do. But I was just so sick. I couldn’t function without it. So I think that’s probably the first real step of letting go. That, you know, I have to be the best I can be in order to grow the baby the best I can so
P: yeah, not being able to eat is definitely a barrier you’re gonna have to cross right so yes,
E: yes, exactly.
P: So was the second trimester easier.
E: second trimester got better not immediately. You know, I was sort of hanging on to the 13 weeks thinking is going to get better. It’s going to get better. And it didn’t immediately but it did. It did go on to get better. I was in my second trimester and so I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, which was also a pretty average experience because the reason I was sent for early testing was because of my BMI. I’m a size 16 Australian, which I think is like a 14 us sizes. You know so I’m a curvy girl, but I was made to feel bad, to be honest about my size. I understand why, you know, you’ve come up as a risk kind of factor. We flagged this but it was the way in which you know, I got an email from the midwife thing for the very procedurally does why and it’s because of your BMI. And that was kind of it. So that was a that was a tricky experience, too. Because then I went for the testing and the hospital told me I didn’t have it and then they called me back a different person told me I did have it. So I was very borderline. I think the cutoff for the sugar ratings of five or 5.1. And I was just over that, like 5.1 or 5.2. So that was difficult again, I felt like I failed. And it’s sort of ridiculous in hindsight, but I felt like I was being told that I put my baby in danger. You know, there was no sort of questions around how active I was, you know, whether I was healthy, whether I had health issues, it was all sort of based on these numbers that I have a bit of an issue.
P: Of course, we’re in the US and Erin’s in Australia. So other things may be different but in general is BMI, the only marker for screening for gestational diabetes.
Ann: All women, all pregnant women get get screened for gestational diabetes, regardless of their BMI. And that tends to be between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy because that’s when the way the body metabolizes carbohydrates in pregnancy and how sugar crosses the placenta to the fetus is really affected and late second early third trimester, but there are risk factors for developing gestational diabetes being over the age of 35. The Grand Old Age of 35 is is the primary risk factor. And then having a pre pregnancy BMI of 30 or greater. We do encourage women with higher BMI entering pregnancy to get screened a little bit earlier. And so it sounds like what happened in her case, and
P: is there at all genetic components gestational diabetes.
Ann: If you have immediate family members, one or more with non pregnancy, diabetes, non gestational diabetes, that automatically puts you at increased risk. It’s not just BMI like there is definitely a family link.
P: And this is totally speculative. But in the course of four or five months and gets both hyperemesis and gestational diabetes, do you think anything’s going on there?
Ann: It’s really interesting. You wonder if she says really sensitive to pregnancy hormones, including the hormones that affect glucose metabolism. So that could be it.
E: And when I got to the endocrinologist, the specialist specializing National Diabetes, she said that to me, she said no because what he said I was pretty I was a bit of a wreck, to be honest. She said to me, Look, BMI is one of the indicators but she said it’s probably most likely getting your mum may have had it, it’s most likely passed on in that way. And she said the more and more research that I do the less and less I believe it’s related to that. So that helped at the time. I don’t know, she was just trying to appease me, but you know, again, it’s one of those things that I just got to the point where, after a very emotional and rocky time, just got to the point where I accepted that I was going to get extra help through my pregnancy because of this condition and that whatever was good for the baby I needed to do. So again, I was quite resistant to wanting to go on insulin. I was like I can manage this by diet and exercise. And I did for the most part but my sugars overnight, were not well managed, for whatever reason and again, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. So I ended up on very low doses of insulin, you know, to the point that by the time I got to the end, a lot of the risk factors that were associated early with the gestational diabetes didn’t end up sort of being there. So they started to somewhat treat me like a more normal pregnancy as opposed to this higher risk pregnancy.
P: Well this doesn’t sound like an easy trip. Good Lord.
E: I know. But they will say how is the pregnancy like, oh, it was pretty good and there was nothing. There was nothing majorly, you know, big, big issues that happen but there was a lot of small issues. I think it was just kind of this ongoing pace of it felt like a lot of hurdles to jump through. And ironically, you know, where I was sort of sensitive about being an older mom, it never really came up as part of the conversation. You know, I never got called whatever the geriatric pregnancy is. Yeah, it was interesting. I think I was probably a little bit sensitive about that, but it didn’t end up being a thing at all.
P: And so when you get to the end of your pregnancy, it sounds like gestational diabetes is you just being monitored or how are we handling that?
E: Yes. So um, so one of the parts of one of the lots I guess, of being pregnant through COVID Was that access was quite limited to healthcare. So we had a very hard lockdown last year in Melbourne, which is paid benefits now, but we weren’t allowed five kilometers away from our home. And we were only allowed outside for one day of exercise and what that implication was in the medical side of things was that we had to attend appointments on our own. A lot of appointments were transitioned to telehealth, but because of the diabetes, I was able to continue seeing the team so my OB, the OB and the endocrinologist, in person weekly or fortnightly sort of as it went through and I also got extra scans. So I went through our public health system, meaning that I didn’t have a dedicated OB, and I think having had that experience again, taking away the positives from it. Had I been a regular pregnancy or not a high risk pregnancy or may have gotten very, very little care during that time or very, very little face to face care. So take it as that but it was fairly routine from them. The scans were going really well until we sort of got towards the end of the pregnancy and she was so we knew that having a baby girl. She was measuring bigger. So then the kind of alerts the medical kind of alerts go up and the red flags come up. And that was really stressful because again, I was quite conscious of everything that I was doing and what the impact that might have on her throughout the pregnancy and because everything had been going pretty well. You know, Mike was really well controlled small amounts of insulin. And then to get this kind of red flag around. She’s measuring large on the scan, which we think we all know well. I’ve learned that a so so unpredictable and so not accurate. So then the flag sort of went up again and then we were heading down the path of she was also she wasn’t in position. So she was great. So then we headed down the path of discussing C sections, which was not something that I wanted. So I think I mentioned before I had a fear around birth, but I had been working through it, you know, I’d been reading Hypno birthing books. I was really sort of working towards hoping to have as natural as possible birth but then there’s conversations kind of that say section induction and I wasn’t super keen on induction either. So that was quite stressful and my partner wasn’t able to be there. At these appointments, which wasn’t great. And I don’t think it’s great for the partners either. You know, I think sometimes, you know, obviously I used to have this impression that you know, the prime is not the one going through the pregnancy and so, you know, they’re not going through the pain and the carrying, but I think also on the flip side of that they don’t necessarily get that very early connection and the experience that comes through pregnancy. So yeah, that was difficult. I think it was difficult for me not having him there and I felt like it was difficult for him not being there as well. Yeah, I was relaying everything secondhand with all of my emotions and but the next scan I had, you know, sort of closer to the time again, she was measuring back normal again. So that kind of alert went down and it was all calm again. So I was really excited because I was getting to sort of the 36 week mark when that’s often when if you’ve got gestational diabetes, they’ll trying to induce your encourage you to have a C section and everything was going well and it was all fine. And then I went in to on the 37th week wanting to have a meeting with the induction midwife. As I said I wasn’t keen on induction and I was still in this very much in this mindset of if she’s not engaged. And my gestational diabetes is under control. Are we rushing her it was sort of this real challenge because of like, I’ve got these medical people who know what they’re doing and are the risks far more than I do versus the more sort of feminine spiritual side of me that’s really trying to connect with my baby and saying, but hang on, she’s not giving us signs that she’s ready. So it was really it was a tension and no my partner was he was worried he wanted to make sure that both of us were okay. And actually, like the doctors are telling you to do this. So you go in, you do it. So that was really challenging. So I went into the induction meeting and they said, Look, she’s not engaged. You’re almost at full term. We’re not going to induce her…that’s just not advise at this stage because she’s not engaged.
P: Okay, engagement refers to the position of the baby’s head relative to its mother’s pelvis as the pregnancy progresses, the ligaments around the pelvis loosen making space for the baby. This is good and important because to make it out of the mother’s body, the baby will have to travel through the pelvis. Once the widest part of the baby’s head has entered the pelvis, the baby is determined to be engaged. So if the baby’s not engaged, it’s not in a position that suggests that it’s ready to be born.
E: We’re really worried about the risk of if your waters break that her cord will come out first. And one thing I didn’t mention before so my mom had a stillborn baby before me. Who’s done his cord was wrapped around his neck. So in the late 70s It was a very different proposition to things how things are now, they didn’t know that at the time, but so that caused our um for us because this has been a very real experience in my family. So basically three days out. He went on the path of a Plan C section, and I still wasn’t convinced that it was the right thing to do. Had you date was the 18th of October. My 40th birthday was the 14th of October, and the C section was then scheduled for the 15th of October. So which also happens to be my nephew’s birthday. So she shares a birthday with the cousin which is lovely. I went through the whole process of just assessing I guess and accepting the fact that my birth was not going to be I that I wanted it to be. I think it’s it’s that point of letting go of control as a parent you learn pretty quickly you have very little control.
P: Yeah.
E: And I, you know, might have a tendency to like to control things in my life, but that’s one thing that you know, the pregnancy, being quite sick and not having the same amount of energy that I had then COVID and not being able to do what I would normally do. I think probably prepared me beautifully. As tough as it was for how much you need to let go of control as parents so
P: that is a useful lesson. So did you have any contractions when you went in or felt like a business meeting?
E: No. So I did beautifully driving into the hospital. I started having contractions.
P: Oh, wow.
E: So I’ve got goose bumps now so that that made me feel happier. You know, it made me feel like although I know that those early contractions were nothing like what they would have ended up being it made me feel like she was ready to come and it gave me a little bit of a so I’ve been getting Braxton Hicks for quite a while. And so I knew that this felt different you know, that kind of rising up kind of feeling was how I described it and now we’re coming quite close together. So that was nice, but it was very strange kind of waking up in the morning, packing our bags and going we’re going into have a baby today.
P: Yes.
E: But you know, with all of the stress that had come the challenges, I think there was something nice about not having that chaotic rush to the hospital. Oh my gosh, what’s happening? My waters are broken. We need to urgently get there. There was something very nice about the calm way in which we did it. So we popped on in I was very lucky that my partner was able to be there because they were early stages during COVID where Partners weren’t able to be there. It did feel a little bit clinical, you know, you walk into a theater but the anesthetist was wonderful. She talked me through everything. was as I said it was quite calm. You know, I didn’t I couldn’t get my you know, my own burning all my music going or any of that sort of stuff that I didn’t visit envisaged in this beautiful hypnobirth that I wanted, but at the end of the day, we were there together and I held her up over the curtain. That feeling itself was amazing. And whether I went through natural birth or a C section. It was at that point in time that I just realized She’s here and she’s safe. And that is the most important thing. So yes, that magical moment when they’re then passed sort of back to you for that first skin to skin and just the three of us there. Although we were in this surgery theater, just everyone else really disappeared, I guess. Yeah. So that was just beautiful and she’s a beautiful, healthy seven pound nine. So three and a half kilos, good size, you know, good size baby. The babies in my family are nine pounders. So. She was much smaller than I expected. Yeah, just beautiful. Beautiful that that moment. It was a little bit strange because then my partner took went with her as they you know stitch me up and and those sorts of things. So being away from her and feeling a bit groggy and weird and but I knew that she was with her dad, so I was okay. Yeah. And then we headed down to recovery. I heard a baby cry and I’m like, oh, that that might be mine. wasn’t mine. She was so chilled, very, very chilled baby. And they put her on to me to latch and we did a bit of a feed there which seems to go really well. Again, I was fortunate because I’d had the C section. I’ve got a private room so my partner was able to stay again during COVID It was amazing and I don’t know how I would have done it without him you know that first night especially with you know, still not being able to really move a lot. I don’t know how I would have done it. I suppose I would have just had to call the midwives but I mean being that was absolutely amazing. You know,
E: From but it was sort of around the time where the gestational diabetes would happen. And I’d been dealing with so many different people that I felt like bringing another person into my care was would have been difficult. And also I didn’t know if she would be able to be present at the birth because of the COVID restriction. So I decided not to, again, because I was focused so much on the lead up to the birth and the birth itself. I didn’t really appreciate what that support would have been like for us post.
P: yeah, that sounds that sounds smart. I think a doula or other living or some other support system for sure in the US that postpartum care is really, really thin. You don’t see your gynecologist again for six weeks, which is six weeks. Time, right? Yeah, so maybe that’s something we all need to put a little attention on to figure out how that can be. Improved.
E: So we had the midwives visit from the hospital but that was again limited somewhat because of COVID. And we have a maternal child health nurse system here where but that’s really about the baby. That’s about making sure the baby’s okay. I think the six week or eight week mark, they ask you the questions the standard questions about postnatal depression but my nurse as lovely as she was, she was sitting at a computer facing away from me asking this question and sort of a tick box activity. I’m not sure that they’re skilled up to really deal with the gravity of those types of situations and I did not have postnatal depression. I don’t believe there were things in our house that we’re taught, you know, there were we’re dealing with this whole changing dynamic, you know, and I think having a child brings up stuff from your own childhood, whether consciously or unconsciously, so, yeah, so 100% agree with you, I think much more care and particularly focusing on the emotional side of things post birth is something that we could all benefit from.
P: It is a little too medical. I totally agree with that. So how old is your daughter now?
E: She’s six months old Isabella? And she is a delight. She has a beautiful girl she is as I said she came at a very chilled baby. And she is for the most part very chilled, but she sort of goes from zero to 100 She’s also very cheeky and she’s starting to realize that when she does things she gets certain reactions. So she she like this morning she woke up singing now she’s found her voice and she just wakes up smiling every day. So bless her as I said, she’s a very, very good sleeper, which has been wonderful. So we’ve just removed the dream feed. So she’s sleeping from 730 ish to 630 so
P: wow.
E: Yeah, yeah, that definitely definitely helps.
P: That’s awesome. How fun. So you’re so close to this experience. I’m going to ask you this anyway. Is there any advice you would have given to your to your pre pregnant self?
E: Yeah, I think the one around the doula engage a doula. That’s kind of a very practical piece of advice. I think. From a bigger picture perspective. Advice I would give is, don’t be afraid to speak up. I’m not generally a person that’s afraid to speak up but something happens to me when I walk into a hospital. I think hospitals don’t realize how hierarchical and overwhelming they are, you know, the medical side of things is something they do every day, but it’s very new to us. So don’t ever feel bad for asking questions. Don’t ever feel bad for saying that doesn’t feel right to me. I need to think about it. And don’t be afraid to ask for extra help both physical and emotional I think you know, it’s okay to say I’m struggling a little bit with this got to the point where you know, people wouldn’t be offering food and I would normally say no, we are okay because my partner’s a chef by trade. So where I kind of got that covered and I actually got to the point of just saying, actually, that will be lovely. Thank you so much. Because even though you might be okay one day, something might happen that you’re just you know, something might not happen you might just wake up feeling not so great. Yeah. Except the help you know, it is a particularly vulnerable time. I thought I gave myself time to recover despite the fact that we returned to work early. I really was very conscious of being present when I was with her and still am, but your body has been through an amazing and massive thing and we are emotional, spiritual. I went through a big transition when I was pregnant. I knew my life would change when she arrived. But I had underestimated how it would change as soon as I was pregnant. So she kind to yourself, trust your intuition and let go of control, I guess.
P: Yeah, that’s a good that’s a good lesson that you will learn quickly as a parent, right. So
E: absolutely. I was grateful to learn it earlier on. So she, she teaches me every day. Cue reminds me every day but yeah, it is you know, there it’s it’s now much less about any of that than it has been before.
P: It’s such a great story. Thank you so much for coming out and sharing your story. I totally
E: appreciate it. It’s my pleasure. Thank you for allowing me to tell my story.
P: Thanks again to Erin for sharing her story, and to Isabella for doing her part to ease her parents into family life. Thanks also to Ann Richards for her insights about a wide range of issues from miscarriage to breastfeeding–I appreciate your time, expertise and empathy. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode feel free to share it with friends. We’ll be back soon with another inspiring story.
Episode 37 SN: A Look at Pregnancy & Birth from a bygone Era: Lily’s Story
Since it’s Thanksgiving weekend, I decided to make this episode about family. And in that spirit, I interviewed my mother about her experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. My mother, who is in her late 70s, had four kids starting in 1966, and ending in 1978. You’ll hear her reference my two older brothers: Josh who is the first born, and Teddy who is the second. I was the third in line, and there is an 8 year gap between me and my sister Samara. It’s surprising to hear about how much she changed and how much the medical apparatus around pregnancy in general changed in that 12 year period. Of course, this is just one woman’s story, and my father was a doctor, so she had very good access to different medical technologies, which you’ll hear about, but I found it really interesting to hear about how her experiences were so different from how pregnancies and births are managed today. And I hope you do too.
Hypnosis in pregnancy
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hypnosis/about/pac-20394405
Female Gynecologists in the 70s
https://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-male-gynos-20180307-htmlstory.html
Audio Transcript
Paulette: Hi Welcome to War Stories from the Womb. I’m your host, Paulette kamenecka. I’m an economist and a writer and the mother of two girls. Since it’s Thanksgiving weekend, I decided to make this episode about family. And in that spirit, I interviewed my mother about her experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. My mother, who is in her late 70s, had four kids starting in 1966, and ending in 1978. You’ll hear her reference my two older brothers: Josh who is the first born, and Teddy who is the second. I was the third in line, and there is an 8 year gap between me and my sister Samara. It’s surprising to hear about how much she changed and how much the medical apparatus around pregnancy in general changed in that 12 year period.
Of course, this is just one woman’s story, and my father was a doctor, so she had very good access to different medical technologies, which you’ll hear about, but I found it really interesting to hear about how her experiences were so different from how pregnancies and births are managed today. And I hope you do too.
P: So hi, mom. I appreciate you letting me tear you away from Thanksgiving mingling, thanks for coming on the show.
Lily: Thank you for having me, anytime.
P: Exciting. So I thought I would focus on a couple things. with you because you started having kids in 1968 is that when Josh was born 66 Oh, wow. 66 Okay, so you’re you’re pregnant and 65 Right. You obviously wanted a family?
L: Yes.
P: And and you got pregnant easily. I know that part of the story.
L: Yes.
P: Did they have home testing kits when you were pregnant?
L: I’m trying to think no, you sort of found out the hard way. Once you got sick nauseous.
P: Oh, that’s interesting, so you just. You started to feel poorly and then what you went to see the doctor.
L: No, I didn’t I had a doctor in the house.
P: What you need to know here is that my dad’s hematologist.
L: Yeah. So when I started getting nauseous in throwing up, you know, a couple times a day and my lasted like a whole day so my husband figured I’m pregnant. Because after all I was fine before
P: and you guys never thought oh, it’s the flu or Oh, it’s something I ate or
L: well, but you could do that the first day but if you keep on having morning sickness and chucking up at anything that you drink or eat.
P: And then once you think you’re pregnant, then do you have to go to the doctor’s office for a blood test or how does it work?
L: No, no, we really didn’t go right away. Dad at the time was practicing at Kaiser Permanente. So I was sort of the housewife because he was in the house. And first time I met my gynecologist obstetrician, he says, oh, a doctor’s wife like that. Like, oh, boy. They’re difficult patients. So this was my first first meeting. And I told him, I what my symptoms were. But also what happened is that I had a lot of chest pains and we didn’t know what that was for. And that’s the only reason I started going to the obstetrician. And he sort of blew it off. He says, oh, maybe you’re worried you’re anxious, whatever it is. He checked me out and I was fine. And, you know, I was pregnant. And that was it. But yet I was having these these chest pains and I guess later on we found it was more anxiety because of my past experience.
P: Okay,
L: from after the war.
P: So my mom was born in the middle of World War Two in Poland to Polish Jews. That’s what she’s referencing here. Yeah.
L: So he had nothing for me and he didn’t spend any time with me either. He just said, Well, you know, doctors, wives are always difficult. Nice. So, what happened is that we decided to go to another obstetrician. And this one, both my husband and I went to a seminar on hypnosis. And that’s when this obstetrician presented his use of hypnosis during pregnancy. And if he started early enough, you could by the time you’re ready to deliver, you could be so relax and use the auto hypnosis that you could deliver without any medication without spinal.
P; Yeah.
L: So this is this is his reasoning, and he sort of exuded such confidence and warmth. So my husband turns to me, he says, Should we try him? Okay, because I didn’t like the obstetrician at Kaiser. So we made an appointment with him. And I told him my story, and he wanted background. So I told him where I came from and the experiences that I had, and he was fine. He says, Well, he uses auto hypnosis would I be willing to try it? So I said, okay, and he had the kind the chain with a little ball that moves back and forth.
P: Oh, you’re kidding…And I was just asked about that. If you have like a watch on a string.
L: Right, right, with a crystal ball, and he would just go back and forth and you had to concentrate, and he would try to get you under, and I was a good candidate. So I went under. And under hypnosis, he asked me why do I have this tightness in my chest and why does it hurt so much? What am I afraid of? Am I afraid of the pregnancy? And I said to him, it’s my experience of being in the hospital in Germany, and I needed to have my belly button. Because I was born during the war and with my parents running from the woods and everything. They didn’t close my belly button correctly. So with an outie instead of an any, okay,
P: so my mother and her mother survived the war. They’re getting ready to go to America. They need all their medical affairs in order and for some reason, there’s some belly button issue that needs to be fixed before they can board the ship for the US.
L: I wouldn’t be accepted in the US unless it was it was operated on and it was pushed inside. So okay, so that’s what my mother had to do. So she, she took me to the hospital in Germany, but she never told me about it. And I was seven years old, and she said I would get treats. And when she took me to the hospital, she came in the nurses took care of me and she had to leave. Well, I found out that the this doctor’s coming within like a big needle. I was terrified because I didn’t know what was happening. And I ran away so they had to chase me at 7 years and finally they found me and they just held me down, put me on the operating table and there was this big big light up on top. You know, the the light for operations, ya know, within the surgical ward, and all I could remember is that big shiny light, and they’re giving me an injection. And that’s the only thing I remember after that I recovered, and I had the surgery. So I think the idea of going to the hospital for the first time because I didn’t need to go to the hospital ever since.
P; Right
L: So the idea of going to the hospital and seeing that big light and being on a surgical table to deliver. I get that pack petrified. So once he knew that, he could work with that. And through a couple of sessions with the auto hypnosis I recovered and I wasn’t afraid of that anymore. So he just released me from from this this anxiety that I had,
P: but what I love about this story is that it feels very, you know, 60s hippie out in California, which I totally dig. And and amazing that helped him like nice of him to take walk the extra step to say why are you anxious and how can I help you and
L: yes, well, that’s why he was so special. Yeah.
P: So while I’m talking to my mother, I’m enjoying the story of auto hypnosis like it’s from a bygone era. But when I went to look it up, it’s still around now more likely called hypnotherapy. It’s still used to treat anxiety and is used specifically to treat anxiety and pregnancy
L: by auto hypnosis if you were a good patient that you could go under and, and he could ask you questions you would respond. That’s what he did. So after several sessions, I felt more relaxed and I wasn’t fearful of that situation. And my pregnancy moved along very well.
P: That’s awesome. And so after that medical intervention, you don’t have ultrasound, right.
L: No.
P: So what what thing like that was so what’s the doctor’s visit? Like? What do they do when you get there to check you out during the pregnancy?
L: You know, they feel around the size, you know, with their hands and they feel around your belly. They listened to the heartbeats and you could hear them, they let you listen to it. And the only internal exam was right in the beginning and everything was fine. And from then on, it was not every single month till towards the end. And then it was like every two weeks by the eighth month.
P: So did you get to 40 weeks.
L: Oh, yeah, because I was over I was overdue by two
P: by two days?
L: I was over two weeks.
P: Oh my god. Two weeks is a long time at that point. So how did you know that you were going to give birth that day?
L: Oh, well, it was different since I was two weeks overdue. And you know, he figured out a date and when he was he was to be born but it didn’t exactly fit on that day. So he was going to go back to New York for a conference. And he really wanted to deliver me because he had practice with me with the auto hypnosis. Yeah. He didn’t want to turn me over to another obstetrician. So that’s when he induced me
P: so his induction in 1966. Does that involve like an IV with Pitocin? Or what does it look like?
L: Yes. Yes
P: Okay. Yeah, that sounds painful.
L: Well, that wasn’t so painful until the labor really started.
P: Did you get an epidural?
L: I didn’t get an epidural. Because he at the same time because I had a 17 hour labor. So he had given me all the pain medication during that time. And he was worried because the baby was so big. So basically all the pain, pain medication during this, this labor for so long. That when I went on the delivery table at the time that I came in, I had nothing and he gave me laughing gas
P: and didn’t work at all
L; with the laughing gas, but no, not really
P: well, because since then you had your other gym. With epidurals so you can compare
L: Yeah. Oh, yes. Once you got the epidural, it was a nice relief.
P: So he basically had a natural childbirth for your first one.
L: Yes, yes. Yeah. And he was nine and a half pounds. So I had a lot of tears that he had to prepare.
P: Yeah, that sounds hard. And then you stay in the hospital for like a week?
L: No, three, four days. Okay.
P: And in 1966 Where you were, was breastfeeding a thing or it wasn’t a thing?
L: No, it was if you wanted to you you can. But unfortunately, Josh was such a big baby. That I didn’t get enough milk.
P; Yeah.
L: And he was always crying because he was hungry.
P: Yeah.
L: And of course, if you were nursing, you couldn’t give him a bottle as a supplement. Yeah. So eventually, we found a pediatrician who had nine kids of his own so he knows. He knows about babies. So I went we went there. After three weeks. We just couldn’t figure out I was still not getting enough milk to feed, feed a big he was like a three month old baby and they’re in the nursery. Everybody said, What’s I think baby doing? He’s not a newborn. But the pediatrician said, look, he said you’re not getting enough milk. He’s hungry. He said, Give him a bottle of formula and see how much he drinks. And if he drinks, a full eight ounce bottle, then change them over for the sanity of you and the baby.
P; Yeah, yeah.
L: And he did he guzzled up that bottle of formula. And he was happy and he finally went to sleep. So I said, I’m done.
P: sold
L: So yes, exactly. Yeah, I’m one because I’m suffering. I was crying the same time the baby was crying. I didn’t know what to do. Yeah, so yeah, so that’s all
P: A couple of questions here: first, what were the first few months like with with a newborn? I’m assuming that you didn’t get much help.
L: Had no help. No help. Plus, my husband got, you know, he was recruited to the army because of Vietnam. So we had to leave he was a month and we left for Texas
P: Wow.
L: We left for Texas,. Yes. And we were really nervous. And we lived in this terrible terrible rooming house, because we didn’t realize that the Army gave you some kind of funds so that you could stay in a motel, which would have been air conditioned and not plus bucks. You know, real big bucks.
P: Yeah.
L: So it was a very unpleasant experience. Until later we found out that tickets daily pay out for hotel room. So we left that darn place so darn fast we moved into the Holiday Inn and it was like having that
P: that’s awesome. Yes, but the baby but Josh is asleep right is asleep or had all that go.
L: He was wonderful once once he was fed, all that he needed. He was wonderful. So he slept he just got up once or twice during the night. And that eventually changed. And he was so good. Once he was asleep. You could take him anywhere. We used to take him to the officer’s club. Hide him under the table, but the long table clocks were able to eat and nobody realized it was a baby in there. And when we left they sort of
P: I can’t believe you’re going out after the baby’s like two months old.
L: Yeah, yeah, we did. We did. So as long as the baby slept once I put him down at six. And you know, he slept to half the night. It was a big baby and he ate so he was fine.
P: It occurs to me as I will say this that my mother was 21 when she had her first child, so of course she’s going out when a baby is two months old. Were you surprised at how hard it was to take care of a baby or or no, that seemed appropriate.
L: You know what? I’m with the first one that had a baby in my group.
P: Yeah.
L: So I couldn’t ask anybody because nobody had any experience. Right? So mine within and my mother had no idea and no interest.
P: Yeah.
L: in babies So she said if I have to feed him Do not leave him. That was a clear answer. Right?
P: Yeah. Yeah.
L: So I enjoyed it because I really was very happy with him and he was just such a lovely baby. You know, I enjoyed every minute of it. And that’s why I was so broken up when he was crying. I was crying and my husband come home and he said why? Are you crying? I said because she’s crying. And then I don’t know what to do. And I couldn’t call anybody because nobody had children.
P: Yeah. yeah, yeah
L: I was the first one Married and I was the first one that had a baby. Yeah. So I had and I don’t didn’t have cousins or aunts and uncles or whatever task so I was really on my own.
P: Yeah, that sounds tricky. And was it was it cloth diapers or what was that like?
L: It was cloth diapers. It was and we had a service. Thank goodness we had a service. But in the army, they started having plastic diapers. So that’s what I use because I didn’t want cloth diapers because you know who am I going to call? We’re in a motel.
P: Yeah, So it’s like an old time milk man?
L: We’ll get a service. No, no to get a service.
P: No, what’s a service? What does that mean?
L: Oh, the diaper service wouldn’t bring you cloth.
P: You leave them a bag of dirty diapers and then they replace it with clean ones,
L: with clean ones and they count how many I returned and that’s how many I got.
P: Wow, that’s a good deal.
L: Yeah, yeah, that was a saving, saving grace. Because we didn’t have a machine in our apartment.
P: Oh, a washing machine.
L: Yeah, yeah, washing machine. So where was I going to go wash diapers with the baby? Yeah, and I didn’t have a car because my husband’s up the car. So I so I needed something and we didn’t have the paper the paper diapers.
P: Yeah.
L: At that time. So you know, was a whole mess and we just decided that was a good investment.
P: Yeah, that sounds like it so when you’re in the military, that you’re pregnant with number two.
L: Right.
P: And that also, I’m assuming was not planned?
L: Yes. We decided that let’s have a baby in the military so we don’t have to pay anything.
P: Okay. All right. That was planned. And that was the second one easier because you knew what to expect and
L: yeah, I had the same the same episodes with with the nausea. You know, that kind of thing. But, you know, luckily, everything went very smoothly and I had a very nice obstetrician in the army. Very nice.
P: And then so for that birth, this the second one come on time.
L: Ooh, it’s army time. They give you the date. babies delivered. But yes, I was full term I my due date was was February 17. And I came to see my obstetrician. He says okay, you’re ready. Oh, you come in on come break the water and you’re ready to go.
P: Wow.
L: Yeah,
P: now people get really excited if you if you break the water that’s not considered cool for the doctor to break the water unless like things have gone wrong.
L: You know what? I was clueless again. Who knew? Who knew? I certainly was hoping that I wouldn’t have such a long labor as I did with Josh.
P: Yeah.
L: And he felt this baby was big enough.
P: Yeah. So you had an appointment on your due date. And you went in. He broke your water and then did that start contractions? Are you needed to be induced?
L: No, no, I came in on the day before that was my came in the 16. And he says, You know what? You’re ready. Your your due date is tomorrow. Why don’t you go home, make arrangements for your other child and set it up? And come on in. We’ll break the water in and you’ll have the baby. So we did.
P: So you went in like it was a business meeting because you weren’t having contractions. Right, right. And he broke the water and then did your contractions start?
L: In a little while? Yeah, yeah, definitely pretty fast. Labor was was very fast.
P: did you get an epidural for this one.
L: Yes, he did the epidural. He didn’t call him in an anesthesiologist which surprised me but he did it and the only thing I have to say he didn’t stress about drinking water. So I had a lot of spinal headaches when I came home, miserable in the hospital and when I went home, so if I had known that I would have been guzzling water constantly.
P: Yeah.
L: But I didn’t know that in grandma was watching Drush. And she never never heard of it and didn’t know about it either.
P: Well, she didn’t have an epidural. There’s no
L: right but he would think that she’s a general physician. She would have had some idea of women having epidurals and you could have a headache, spinal headache, because you don’t take enough fluids. But she didn’t know anything about that. So
P: that’s totally interesting. And so did you remember how long the labor was with Teddy? Four and a half hours?
L: Oh, that’s quick.
P: Yeah, no, it’s Yeah, yeah.
L: So I like that.
P: No kidding. Yeah, that’s a great reduction. Did you feel the birth or no, because the epidural work,
L: the epidural work, so that was really slow. Everything worked out very well. I said geez, the army.
P: The mission is to get this baby out. Right So did you get to stay in the hospital man Are they kick you out? What do they do?
L: Yes. Oh, no, no, no, I got the royal treatment because my husband was an officer. So unfortunately, the baby got a real treatment. He had his own bassinet in his own room by himself because it was no other officers wives that had babies.
P: Oh they segregated the kids, that’s funny.
L: Yes, yes. Yes, they segregated the wives and segregated the babies.
P: That is strange So what was it like when you brought the second one home because now you have two and you still don’t have much help was my guess.
L: Right? Well, it was work. It was constant constant and you had an almost two year old. You know, when he was a little jealous of the baby. Yeah, he kept pushing when I and I didn’t breastfeed the second one at all. He was 8 12
P: Yeah.
L: But he was a big baby too. And you know what, I didn’t want to go through that and whether he’s getting enough milk or not and I had the two year old. I said, You know what? I’m okay. You know, so I saw with the first one that giving him formula. He turned out pretty well. Yeah, so I just went straight ahead to give him formula for the second one too.
P: Well also this is 1968. So I think the fashion of breastfeeding comes and go
L: oh, at that point. Yeah, at that point, and 66 It wasn’t really an 68 Absolutely not everybody sort of used formula.
P: Yeah. Well imagine postpartum is tricky because you’re exhausted. And have too little babies.
L: You know what, I was just happy to have two healthy kids. And that we were together because Vietnam was hanging over us every single day. Yeah. So in that sense, and and we had, what, six months left, before he got discharged, you know, dad a discharge. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we don’t get any letters.
P: Yeah. I would guess that’s a giant dose of perspective.
L: Yeah, right. Yeah. So all in all, you know, there were too many other stresses around. So I just concentrated on the babies.
P: Okay. And then from there, you move.
L: We went back to California. They had a position waiting for dad because he signed and then he got drafted. So they were holding that position for him.
P: So why did you leave California?
L: And that was other things. This was a general practice and they really didn’t explain that to Dad. And he had to do everything from pediatrics to wow, you know, geriatrics to, you know, everything in between. And he just didn’t like that kind of practice. And there were a lot of wealthy communities there that demanded you to come out for a headache.
P: Yeah.
L: So during the night he’d have to drive in the wilderness to find his house. And he says, oh, Doc, give me something. And he’s there stained by the fireplace with the with the drink. And he says, I have a headache. And I just came back from Japan or whatever. So dad does not like any part of it.
P: Yeah, I can see it was I can see what’s not appealing there.
L: And we decided to go to the east coast because he wanted to go back to New York. Plus, we thought we had family. For Kids. Yeah, and stuff. So yes, we headed to New York.
P: Okay, now I want you to walk very carefully through this next pregnancy which is me. So then planned again, am I planned.
L: No, that just happened in my surprise. What happened is I I had my time, it wasn’t a copper T.
P: It’s some kind of birth control.
L: Yeah. So I had, you know, different things inserted. What was on 68? Yeah, but I decided since we’re going east coast, and I was having issues with these new new thing that I would have it removed. Not thinking, yeah, you can get pregnant again.
P: Yeah. Yeah.
L: And that’s what happened on our way across.
P: Oh, wow.
L: Yeah. So I found out that I was very tired and sleepy and totally exhausted to New York. And I didn’t realize that’s one of the symptoms to have early pregnancy. So that’s, that’s when you came around.
P: wait So there’s still no home pregnancy test.
L: And no, we didn’t do anything like that. Okay, we didn’t do anything. So yeah. So we came to New York, and we thought of the heat and the humidity. It was during the summer. And of course, you know, I wasn’t used to that. And that’s why I was so exhausted and everything. But eventually, I got nauseous again. That was one little symbol of what’s what’s coming.
P: I was trying to send several signals at first, but no one was getting it.
L: Nobody was listening. I’m sorry.
P: That’s okay.
L: So how was that pregnancy that pregnancy? It was normal in that sense. It’s just that we were stuck in a motel room with, you know, with four of us. Yeah, two little ones and I was pregnant again, and I was sick. And dad was starting this new practice. So he was gone all day.
P: Yeah.
L: Sometimes in the evening, too. So I was just, you know, it was just hard there. It was very hard, and to be stuck in the motel with the heat and the air conditioning, not working and no car you know, so yeah. So that that was a difficult kind of thing, but not because of the pregnancy.
P: Okay. And then okay, and then for my birthday, do you? How did that happen? How did you know? My birthday was the day
L: well, that really annoyed me because I my obstetrician who I loved, and I think he was so great, but he wasn’t available. He had emergency, you know, delivery or something. So I saw his partner. And he he said, oh your Do you know and I was you know, maybe closing in on my ninth month. And he says, Why don’t you come on in and because you tend to have big babies and we don’t want to worry about that. Make it easier. Just come on in. And you know, we’ll give you some and we’ll induce labor. So I said no, I don’t want to do that. I said, Maybe this time I will wait till the baby is telling me yes, I’m ready.
P: Yes. Now you’ve got wise. Yes.
L: Yes. Yes. You know, you learn from each one. Yeah, but the thing is in the army, I was really due. Yeah. And everything was was just just the right timing. But what happened is that Dad told his mother, that this is what the doctor said. And we had to figure out if she would come and help us take care of the two kids at home. And that’s when I could go in the hospital. And at the time to was February, and he wanted me to come in on the 17th. I said, No. I said I’m not having two kids. Born on the same day.
P: Yeah.
L: it’s Not necessary. I’m not sure we due. feel any. I felt Braxton Hicks kind of things, but not labor.
P: Your kids appreciate that. Way to stand your ground.
L: Yeah. So then, he said, Well, your taking chances he tried to scare me. I didn’t. didn’t appreciate that. So I said thank you. I’ll think about it. And I just wanted to get out of his office because I said no to I called my obstetrician. And we were at that point on first name basis, because of the doctor community kind of thing. Yeah, he was just the warm person. And he didn’t want me to call him Dr. Stall. So he’s just call me. So I called him up. And I said, your partner, which I named, he wanted me to come in that you would do pit and just induce labor. But I didn’t want to and I said why can’t I wait and have the baby when when this you know, I didn’t know what your boy or girl there’s no way of testing that. I said I’ll wait till till I’m in labor. So he says okay, okay. But then what happened? I got pressured into the following week, because grandma said the only time she could come with the following week to take care and help me out.
P: So Grandma decided my birthday.
L: Yep. Yeah,
P: was she still a practicing doctor at that point.
So, to give a little background here, my grandmother is also a doctor, now living in NYC, and my parents have moved from the west coast to the NY suburbs to be near her. My grandmother and my father were also war refugees who came to the US in 1950…so although she’s a doctor, she had to start her life over again in the US, and had now been in NY for about twenty years…as you can hear for a variety of reasons she and my mother always have kind of a contentious relationship
L: Yeah, I wasn’t happy about that. But dad didn’t want to be left. Taking care of kids. Yeah. So he sort of pressured me to go in the follow me. Yeah. And, you know, with with all the arrangements and the baby with was fine, and you were in position, so nobody saw any problem with that. And Dr. Stall said, Look, we’ll give you pit, if it doesn’t work. You could go home and your weight of it works, then you’ll have your baby.
P: How far from the due date?
L: Pretty close to close? But I think babies gain most of their weight the last two weeks, yes, three weeks.
P: According to the american…
L: And the other doctor told me that you were smaller than than the other two users. Oh, you had only bruisers. We don’t want that. You know, that kind of, you know, attitude. So he said it’ll be easier on you and get on everybody. And he was he was always concerned about you know, problems with the umbilical cord and all that kind of thing. He was trying to scare me into certain things.
P: Yeah.
L: You know, so when I said that’s the only time she could come. What am I going to do? Yeah, I didn’t know anybody here either at a new place. Yeah. So I couldn’t get somebody else to come in and help me and I wouldn’t trust a new sitter to come and take care of the two kids. That’s how we did it. I went in. They gave me pit and, you know, I had you
P: and how was that delivery?
L: Fine, and I had the epidural, and you came out and there is no worry about the umbilical cord or whatever. But you were seven pounds six pounds. Okay. Yeah. So you were much smaller than my other two.
P: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
L: So, so by the fourth one, I lay down the law I said I’m not coming in You know what, this baby is going to tell me when it’s coming in and I’m not coming in at all. So until it until it’s it’s time, but this you know, the fourth one of course I had the amniocentesis
P: wait so let’s go go slowly. Then the fourth one because there’s a big gap between me and the next one.
L: Yes, you came out. Everything was fine. You’re beautiful. You’re healthy and and it was like three and a half hours. An hour off.
P: You’re shaving off the hours that well done.
L: Yes. Three days in the hospital that out? Yeah, that’s not too bad. Yeah, yeah. Well, I was fine. If everything is fine. You know, and how we’re
P: we’re still doing formula but now we’re doing plastic diapers is my guess.
L: Yes. Okay. Yes.
P: Okay. Yeah. And then there’s an eight year gap between me and the next one. Right. So that one is a surprise.
L: Yeah,
P: were you 35 for that one?
L: I turned 35. in December. She was born in January.
P: Yeah, so you just turned 35 But nowadays, they call the geriatric pregnancy
L: I know, but yet a lot of people have them this late.
P: No, I’m not saying they’re right. I’m just saying what was the reaction? Were you older at the time to be having another baby?
L: You know what, after the three normal births and I never had any problems or issues my obstetrician wasn’t worried.
P: Let’s talk for a second about how different it was between the first and the fourth. Okay, for the first year 21 of your child and for your 35 so
L: 3434 Because that’s my whole pregnancy. was when I was 34.
P: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s a good point. So 34 for the second one. How much has the doctor’s office changed? And do you get a home kit for this one to know that you’re pregnant?
L: Well, I went in and they did the test. Okay. I didn’t get home. They didn’t take it at home. And he he examines you so he knows right away that you’re pregnant,
P: but did you go because you felt nauseous? Or what was your
L: I had the same thing and I just, you know, I said, I’m pregnant. You know, I knew that after we were out in the motel once we got a rental and moved into the house I was looking for an obstetrician. And it was funny because we we met the obstetrician at one of the doctors parties, and he bumped into me and he spilled a drink on my dress. I got so upset because I sewed it. I made the dress and it was a pregnancy. Yeah, very elegant dress. And he says, Oh, he says I’m so sorry. He says, please send it to cleaners. I will pay for it. Don’t worry about it. And he introduced himself and they said, I see you’re pregnant. He says who you’re going to
I say don’t have an obstetrician. A pretty good one. It was very, very sweet and very, ebbullient genuine
P: I hope you looked around the party to see if he wasn’t spilling drinks on everyone and that wasn’t
L: no and I asked around and they knew there were three of them. The other guy was his brother in law. And another guy but he was cold. I didn’t care for him. He was a good technician. Like cold.
P: Yeah,
L: that’s how I met sigh and then I you know like you fall in love with your obstetrician. He was one of those guys that so, so nice. You know so caring.
P: In this taped conversation i didn’t press to know more about the idea that someone would “fall in love with their obstetrician”, but I called her back to ask about that, and it sounds like this doctor was very solicitious when it came to my mother’s care. If she brought some fear up in her appointment, he’d call her a few days later to check on her. I’m guessing that this kind of special treatment is a reflection of the fact that she is a doctor’s wife, and when she says “fall in love” I think she means, you form a real emotional attachment to someone taking such good care of you during this vulnerable period
L: When I got pregnant the fourth time grandma just seated Him with all these What if something is wrong? What if you know, baby has such and such whatever so dad said you know we are taking a big chance we always throw the dice when we have kids.
P: Yeah.
L: You don’t know there’s no test. There’s nothing and I said you know what? Whatever happens, I will take care of it. You don’t have to do anything. You haven’t done any You haven’t changed a diaper you have the baby.
P: Good news. More of the same
L: what’s the Difference. What’s the difference? I said this is what what I’ll be doing again. I would love to have another child.
P: I’m guessing he because he was worried about the baby big do an amnio?
L: Well, that’s why I went back to Sy and I said look, Hank is up to the very upset about it. So is there anything I could have as a test to see if everything is okay with the baby. So at that time, that procedure was just coming out and insert that big long needle and draw the fluid out. And you know his story. He did it the first time with all the students around and dad was there front and center to watch him and he drew blood And everybody gasped and he took the needle out real fast dad was so white they walked him out.
P: his concern is that if you draw blood, it’s an increased chance of aborting the fetus
L: aborting Yeah. So he begged me when he could do it again. And carefully because he’s working with the monitor.
P: Yeah.
L: To see wherever it is. And he just to insert the needle again. And he said he promised it would be quick turnaround to the students and he said I don’t want to sound or else out of here. You know, yeah, I didn’t want anybody saying anything. So since I was already there, I said just do it because it would ease so much other things.
P: Yeah,
L: at home. So he did it and it worked really well smoothly. But he told Dad, to drive as fast as he can. put me to bed, put my feet up and not to move for a whole day.
P: Okay.
L: 24 hours. So once I pass that it became sort of safer, that I’m not aborting. Okay, but I would have been would have been very upset.
P: How far along were you?
L: I think it was three and a half or four months at that point and that was so hard for now. was later on? Yeah. It was wait. It wasn’t like six weeks?
P: Yeah, yeah, that’s like 16 weeks. And at this point you’re probably showing earlier because you already have three kids.
L: Right, right. Right. So and we had a wait for a month.
P: Or oh my god that’s crazy
L: I was ready to just just scream by the time it came. And at the same time dad got the Tay Sachs We never did the Tay Sachs and we should have done it for the other two because we are both European jews
P: Yeah, you mean he just got the test for it while you’re waiting for the amnio .
L: Yeah, yeah. And they said you want to do what do what tests? No, I’m having big tests. Like,
P: was he negative?
L: Yeah, if he’s negative, I’m okay.
P: So Tay Sachs is a terrible disease that causes all kinds of problems for babies who usually die by the age of five. Anyone can be a carrier for this genetic disease, but it’s much more common in Jews of European discent…about 1 in 27 people in this category are carriers, carriers don’t have symptoms, and to pass the disease on, both parents have to be carriers. if both parents have the genes, the baby has a one in four chance of having the disease–
L: yeah, yeah. So that’s that we did that that time.
P: When you get the annual results, is it a letter in the mail?
L: Oh, with the whole packet. Sy got the report, too. But he called me in because he didn’t want to say it on the phone. I was so nervous and he gave me a kiss on the cheek. He says everything is fine.
P: Oh, good. Okay, good.
L: Yeah, yeah. So until until I got the whole report. And they had the X chromosomes, you know everything. I have the whole report. I want to see that. That’s cool. And of course told the sex of the child but I never told anybody. So we made a pack. Nobody knows.
P: You and dad knew.
L: Of course it’s on the test. So that’s a secret you definitely kept from us.
P: I remember saying if it’s a boy, I’m gonna send it back.
L: I was like, sister, I remember being pan I was so excited. I was so excited that you’re going to have a sister never told her friend nothing. I was very excited. And after four months, I finally was able to enjoy the pregnancy.
P: Yeah, it sounds like you enjoyed all of them to some degree.
L: Well, the first first three months were Yeah. And I’d had every, every one of them exactly the same. Nope, nothing changed about one and four. So once after that, it was it was very, very nice.
P: But now it seems like you’re wading into technology in that you have an end of this time you have a definitive blood test to find out that you are pregnant, and did not have ultrasound or you did no,
L: we still didn’t have ultrasound, we still didn’t have
P: so what’s the scan that the OB uses to do the amnio?
L: He’s connected to a screen and everything at that point. But in the doctor’s office, we don’t have that
P: so that they have ultrasound there just for this test.
L: Yes. Just to see where he’s putting the needle and
P: it’s not regularly available so people aren’t getting this.
L: No, no, this is all new. This was all new. That’s why all the students were there. Learning. We were right on the foreground with this test.
P: That’s amazing. And then I remember I remember going to the hospital so you must have started started having contractions
L: on the 16th of January.
P: Yeah,
L: he said on the 16th of January. I woke up with
P: Wow.
L: Go figure
P: nowadays, if you have contractions they say don’t come to the hospital until two minutes apart. Where they tell you
L: Yeah, well the thing is, I went to the office first. Perfect. And he says yes, you’re in labor. But he said you can’t go to the hospital yet. But you have to, you know, wait till till they’re closer. But there was a blizzard coming,
P: I remember that.
L: When I went further along, went to the hospital because his partner was there. So he said to you and he said you better hurry up because ready
P: Wow.
L: So Sy had to zip out and go to the delivery and he broke the water. Okay, just was the final thing and boy that was it. Was a very hard labor. It really came on very, very strong, much stronger than then with you. Or Teddy.
P: How long were you labor for?
L: three hours
P: Oh, okay, so still is almost the same length as mine. Yeah, and no Pitocin I’m assuming
L: no, no. Pitocin and the thing is, by the time he gave me the epidural on the delivery table, yeah, not in the unit. You know when you check in, but um, delivery table, and then she was born and I don’t think the epidural even took effect.
P: Yeah, yeah, it’s too late. Yeah,
L: I felt everything. But everything was was nice. And so I was so happy because the umbilical cord was so short. Which was good because I worry about wrapped up in everything. And he kissed his babies when they were delivered. If it always gets the babies, and he had he had students there. this time? Not the last time but it was great. What’s good.
P: So, so two questions. One is dad is never in the delivery room.
L: No, he didn’t want to go in. He went in with Dr. Cheek with Josh. Okay. And I was in such pain with the contractions and he gave me the laughing gas because the epidural had worn off hours before and when he gave me laughing guess, Dr. Cheek said. You’re not helping at all leave. And he kicked him out
P: It wasn’t common to have the husband in the delivery room or was not. No, it
L: it wasn’t common. The fathers so we sat outside but since he was a doctor, they let him in. Yeah, yeah. But each time after that when they said you want to come in. That’s it? No. Wait outside.
P: Yeah, that’s helpful. Okay. Yeah. And then no female gynecologist were to be seen
L: at that point. No. No, all of them were men. Yeah. All of them were men.
P: so I was curious about this and looked it up: according to the LA times, in the 1970s roughly 7% of gynecologists were women…now its 59%, so what my mom was saying is true, pretty much all of them were men
P: so you seem like you have changed a lot over the course of those four births in that you were such a like deer in the headlights for the first one.
L: oh definitely, are you kidding
P: Right and you just didn’t know how any of it was gonna go right. You know how what pregnancy would be like and what were 50 like and
L: and they didn’t have those classes to come into the hospital. expecting parents to come in and be take you on a tour. This is where the delivery this is whatever. And you certainly didn’t have any lamaze classes. Let’s put it that way. Yeah,
P: yeah. By the time the last one was born, there were like breathing glasses and stuff, right?
L: Yeah, yes. Yeah.
P: You didn’t want to go
L: you know, was my fourth one. You know, I knew what to expect.
P: Yeah. Yeah.
L: And I felt very comfortable in my obstetrician.
P: Yeah, God, you’ve had quite a ride.
L: Yeah, yeah. I got stronger and more confident of telling them what I want. Like, like the last one.
P: It more assertive yah, yah,
Thanks again to my mother for sharing her story and for hanging out with me on Thanksgiving. Women of her generation seem very strong to me, to deal with the massive uncertainty of this process with much less than future generations would enjoy. One thing we didn’t talk much about was the postpartum period, and when I called my mom back to see if I’d missed anything, she said, that there were no lactation specialists…the nurse helped you with breastfeeding in the hospital and then if everything seemed okay, you were sent on your way and the doctor didn’t check you out again until six weeks later…although so much has changed around pregnancy and birth, not enough has changed around postpartum care, since it looks very similar today to what it looked like 50 years ago…that’s a frontier to work on for sure.
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We’ll be back next week with another inspiring story
Episode 36: Stroke in Pregnancy, A Postpartum Tale: Lauren’s Story
