Confession

I can't sleep, and I'm alone with my thoughts. This means I have time to think about all the stuff that briefly passes through my mind during the day when I don't have the time to consider it.

Foremost on my mind: TWINS

I seem to be carrying larger than usual with this pregnancy, enough that I myself have wondered if I might be carrying multiples. It's not logical. There's no family history of multiples that I'm aware of, and I haven't undergone fertility treatments or done anything else I'm aware of that could increase my chances of having twins. But the thought is there, and it keeps coming back.

I've scheduled an ultrasound in a few weeks. I really want to confirm or rule out this thought. I don't think I'd be surprised to find I'm further along than I thought (despite my dates) or that there is more than one baby in there, simply because of the size of my belly.

Is this crazy? Maybe. I never claimed to be sane, especially during pregnancy. In fact, I believe pregnancy gives me the right to be a crazy lady. I can't seem to control it anyway.

What if I'm carrying twins?

My birth plans wouldn't change. I'd still plan a home birth. In fact, my midwife has already promised me that she'd be hands off even if I had twins. Her words, not mine. She's a very intuitive woman. Does she have some kind of inkling she hasn't told me about yet? Hmmm. I may have to ask her at some point.

What would change? Mainly, we'd need a bigger vehicle and we'd have to move. It's in our lease agreement that we can't live here with more than 6 children, so we'd have to start looking for a new place to live. We just bought a van a few months ago that has 8 seats. Yeah, we'd have to sell that and start looking for something bigger. I might end up with one of those full size vans that seats 12 or 15. Think of the space!

Am I scared? Not particularly. I'm grateful for whatever we'll be given, even if that means two babies for the price of one. I have no clue how I'd handle the logistics of 7 children under the age of 12, the youngest 2 being twins. Yeah, things would definitely be interesting, even more so than they are now, in our house. But we can handle whatever we get, whether we think we can or not. I'm stronger and more capable than I give myself credit for.

So there it is. My pregnancy confession. Now, how sheepish would I feel if we have the ultrasound and find that there's only one baby in there? Oh well. At least we could keep our van and our home, and I already know I can handle one baby at a time.

The Longest Weekend of My Life: Peace

This is the fourth post in a special bi-weekly series.  Please check back next Wednesday for Part 5.

Part 4: Peace

The ultrasound was disappointing to say the least. The technician couldn't find any evidence of an egg sac or embryo anywhere. He was very thorough, but as he searched he couldn't see anything in the uterus or the tubes. He mentioned some “cystic formations” on one of my ovaries, and at one point he phoned a colleague for confirmation of what he was seeing. They argued, which didn't help matters. He apologized and explained that it could just be too early in the pregnancy to see anything. He phoned my doctor and had her talk to me.

The doctor explained that since the ultrasound was inconclusive she wanted to do a quantitative blood test to check my hormone levels and see if the levels were right for my stage of pregnancy and if they were doubling at the appropriate rate. This meant that I needed to walk over to the hospital lab and have my blood drawn. Then I would need to return to Instacare 24 hours later, on Sunday, to have my blood drawn again. I would have an answer by Sunday evening at the latest, or so I thought.

The ultrasound technician was nice, and he very kindly told me “good luck” at least 3 times as I was leaving. At first I thought he was just being nice, but as I thought about it I wondered “Did he see something I'm not aware of?” I couldn't think about it.

I asked for directions to the lab, and was sent on what felt like a wild goose chase as I went from one end of the hospital to the other, just to be sent back virtually to where I'd been in the first place. The benefit of being at the hospital on a Saturday is that there's no crowd and no waiting. The downside is that most of the doors are locked, and you have to figure out how to get where you need to go. After driving and parking three different times I finally found the right door and got to the lab. The waiting room was empty and I was helped right away. One of the lab technicians checked me in while she and the other tech chatted away with a hospital security guard about their families.

I was taken into a room with chairs and needles and all that fun stuff, and I used my labor breathing techniques as my left arm was poked and my blood was drawn. It wasn't so bad. The technician did a good job and it was mostly painless. I had to breathe just to keep myself calm, and made sure to avert my eyes. For some reason I can watch someone else get poked and prodded, but when it's happening to me I can't watch or I tend to hyperventilate.

It was over quickly and the lab technicians gave me a card with a number to call for my results. I said “my doctor will have that” and she replied that it was still my right to access my lab results personally. I thought that sounded unnecessary and I stuffed the card into my purse thinking I wouldn't need it.

I came home to find that the kids had done surprisingly well in my absence, and my husband had even been able to get out of bed to help the baby. We had a simple dinner of sandwiches and I spent the evening reading and enjoying my family. I felt a sense of peace with me throughout the evening, and I focused on spending time with my kids and husband. I didn't worry about the messy kitchen and house, and just let myself have some down time. At one point the two youngest children were climbing on me, and my husband commented: “And you're ready for another one?” I quipped back: “I never said anything about being ready!” The pelvic pain was also gradually easing.

After the kids were in bed I was lying in my own bed finishing the book I'd been reading off and on for the past day. My husband came in and we talked about the situation. He was worried and didn't know what to think or how to feel about everything. I shared with him the peaceful feeling I had, and how I knew that whatever happened everything would be alright. As I said the words I realized the truth of them, and I realized in that moment that I was being blessed with this veil of peace. As my husband walked out of the room I prayed for him that he would be blessed with peace as well.

Part 1: Preface

Part 2: Bittersweet

Part 3: Numb

Part 5: Waiting

Part 6: Writing and Reading

Part 7: Decisions

High Tech vs High Touch

I found a really great post at the Midwife Next Door: "Thank you for touching me": the conflict between high-tech and high touch care.

I didn't realize that many prenatal care providers don't use touch anymore in the care they give to expecting women. Most care providers these days use ultrasound to check for fetal heart tones, fetal position, size, and overall well-being. Did you know that there's a technique care providers can use that's called Leopold's Maneuver that can check all of these things, and they only need to use their hands?

My obstetrician, his nurse-practitioner, and my midwife all use Leopold's Maneuver. I didn't have more than one ultrasound in each pregnancy, because my care provider was able to determine the baby's well-being with their hands. Not only was it extremely simple and helpful, but it's also comforting to have high touch care like that. I definitely prefer it over the cold jelly and hard probe of the ultrasound machine.

There is some question about the safety of ultrasounds. We don't know how safe ultrasonography is on a developing fetus, as no long-term studies have been done. Ultrasound machines are not regulated, and the wave frequency has not been tested for safety. We don't have any evidence against it, but we also have no evidence to support its routine use during pregnancy. Ultrasounds in the last trimester of pregnancy are also unreliable in determining a baby's size. The estimation can be off by a full pound, more or less. With these questions in mind, wouldn't you prefer to use a proven hands-on technique rather than an unproven technology?

I'll leave you with an excerpt from the post by the Midwife Next Door:

"Women in labor need hands-on care. It’s known that women who have a female birth companion with them during labor have fewer c-sections and faster births, with fewer epidurals needed. Why is this? I believe it’s because a machine can never replace a human, even if it is more accurate in certain assessments. A machine may be able to tell me that this woman is only 3 centimeters dilated, but my eyes and ears tell me that she looks and acts as if she’s in transition, and guess what? Most of the time, my eyes and ears don’t lie, and we have a baby within the hour.

"In our push to improve birth outcomes, we continue to move farther away from the hands-on, low-tech models of countries with exemplary birth statistics, such as the Netherlands, England, and other countries where midwife-attended births are the norm. Instead of looking for new machines to meet this goal, why not look to the example of cultures who are working within the midwifery model of care that is already meeting this goal?"