I WAS SHOCKED

 May 5, 2012

I WAS SHOCKED

I was shocked that people would actually consider  putting someone who had just been told that she was likely going to lose her child on the same ward—in the same room-- with newly delivered mothers who had their babies in the room with them.  I simply sat down on my suitcase and said to the clerk, “absolutely not. This will not do”. The clerk tried to reason with me. She patiently explained to me that this was the only room available.  But, I had already left my rational self far behind. Not at all calmly or patiently, I explained to her that if that were the case I would go home and await a suitable room.  With a much-distressed Jane, the clerk tried to insist. She would lose this one. I called my new OB and told him I simply could not stay on the postpartum unit—he agreed immediately. I do not know if he was reacting more to medical reasoning or to my irritated state but the empathetic tone was much appreciated.

 I returned the following morning with John and was admitted to the antepartum unit. My initial reaction was delight and relief. It was a private room in the new wing of the hospital. The kids were at home and well cared for. It felt like a vacation. In a sense, it was and the last time I would have to myself for quite a while. I spent the time cross-stitching, reading, and waiting for updates from the doctor and for John to visit. I spoke to Marnie and Eileen, who I call Lou, on the phone, but it felt like they were in another world--separate and somehow safe from the craziness.

 Days of tests and scans and more ultra sounds confirmed extreme fetal distress and the doctors told me there was a 99% chance that Andrew, who we had not named yet, would not make it. I said "what about a Caesarian?"  “No, his lungs are still too immature”.  He would not survive. We did not know yet that he was a boy. Even with multiple amniocentesis and ultrasounds, they either could not or did not determine the sex. At least they did not give us that information. The resolution of ultra sound images had relatively poor definition at the time. I believe that gender could be determined by amniocentesis but that it was generally not done. At least I do not remember being given the opportunity of knowing the baby’s sex.

I stayed in the hospital for 4-5 days for testing and observation. One test they did was a fetal echo-cardiogram to determine if Andrew had a cardiac defect that might be causing congestive heart failure—which could also cause fetal edema. His heart was strong and healthy. He would always have a great heart, in every sense of the word.

They also performed tests on me to try to rule out any maternal disorders like renal failure that might be affecting Andrew. Every test came back normal.   The only abnormal finding was slightly elevated blood sugar—gestational diabetes. This did not surprise me because my mother also had gestational diabetes during seven of her 11 full term pregnancies. She delivered nine healthy but large infants, and lost her last two. The eleventh was stillborn and the twelfth had a major cardiac anomaly and died after 5 days. Had that baby, named Patrick, been born today, he would have had a repair and most likely would have lived. The perinatologist did not feel that the gestational diabetes alone could account for the seriousness of Andrews’s edema. He did put me on a very low carbohydrate diet though, which I followed religiously.

More tomorrow