Birth Stories (Part Four): You look a lot like your sister
This is Part Four in a series of stories about my pregnancies. Here are Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
After two pregnancy losses, I was nervous about getting pregnant again. When my first pregnancy went (relatively) well, I just assumed that’s how all my pregnancies would be. After two losses, the successful pregnancy now felt like the fluke, the outlier. And even if I ended up having another successful pregnancy, I was sure I was also in for more losses.
So, we didn’t try to get pregnant right away again. We waited a month. Because despite my nervousness, I could still feel that age gap between my kids growing every month.
And then, for the first time, I didn’t get pregnant immediately. Of course, I thought something must be wrong. Intellectually, I understood that most people don’t get pregnant immediately when they start trying. But I had told myself this story that I always get pregnant right away. So when I didn’t for the first time, right after two losses in a row, it seemed to *mean* something.
And then I didn’t get pregnant again. And again. And again.
I had also been having some abdominal pain. Sharp, cramp-like pains, but not while I was on my period. They weren’t persistent, so I wrote them off. But after not getting pregnant for four months, I was worried. My doctor wasn’t. But she ordered an ultrasound just in case.
The ultrasound showed adenomyosis. Adenomyosis is related to the more well-known endometriosis. Endometriosis occurs when endometrial cells (which make ups the tissue that lines the uterus and then is released during a woman’s period) grow outside of the uterus. Adenomyosis occurs when endometrial cells grow into the uterine walls.
My doctor assured me this would not prevent me from conceiving, but I was skeptical. I was doing a classic correlation-equals-causation logical fallacy, and I knew it. But I couldn’t shake myself out of it either.
What did shake me out of it was getting pregnant the very next month. So, that was the end of that concern.
But the beginning of other concerns.
Of course, after two losses in a row, I was stressed about another loss. My doctor had me come in at eight weeks again. The baby was there, growing, and everything was going fine.
I won’t repeat too much of what I’ve already said about how horrible I felt. This time was no different. I lost weight, I hardly ate. It wasn’t a fun time.
But once I got past my 17 week appointment, it was like the clouds parted. I feeling better physically and getting an energy boost. But I was also past the point where I had lost the previous pregnancies, so I was able to relax a little and think of the future. Most of my second trimester was lovely.
Until the glucose test.
I skipped over this part in my first pregnancy, so allow me to describe this in horrifying detail for you.
The test for gestational diabetes happens around 26 weeks. It requires drinking a syrupy, sugary drink. It’s like drinking a thick, flat orange pop. And you have to drink the whole thing in 5 minutes. I almost never think something is too sweet, but this drink is like thick, syrupy, flat orange pop (or soda for the non-Midwestern folks). I could have chosen red or yellow, but orange seemed like the least offensive option.
An hour later, they test your blood sugar to see how efficiently your body is metabolizing the sugar. If you fail this test (which I did), you have to take a second one, which is even worse.
For the second test, you have to come in first thing in the morning, before you’ve eaten. They take your fasting blood sugar. Then, glug, glug, glug, down goes the syrupy glucose drink again. And this time, they test your blood sugar after one hour, two hours, and three hours.
During my first pregnancy, I failed the first test by a point or two and passed the second — I didn’t even ask by how much.
So, this was my second time taking the three-hour test. I had my blood drawn, drank the drink, and then had to go wait in a little room down the hall for awhile. I read my book and waited. After an hour, they did a blood draw again, then it was back to the waiting room room. It was dark and quiet, and I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, so I fell asleep. I remember vaguely wondering if falling asleep could impact the test results, but I was too tired to dwell on it. After an hour, they did a blood draw again, then it was back to the room. And another blood draw an hour later.
Each of the blood draws is supposed to fall within a certain range. If it is outside of the range for only one of the four blood draws, you won’t get a gestational diabetes diagnosis. But if it is outside of the range for two, then you will. I believe the targets were: <100 (fasting), <170 (after one hour), <140 (after two hours), and <120 (after three hours).
My numbers were: 90, 144, 141, 122. So I failed. By a total of three points. Probably because I fell asleep.
It was a borderline case, to say the least, but once I got that diagnosis, it was a different situation. First I had to have an information session with a nutritionist. Lots of interesting little tidbits about a morning spike in blood sugar and why eating a protein and fat heavy breakfast is better for your blood sugar than cereal and milk. (Also, milk counts as carbs, which I didn’t know).
Also, I had to take my blood sugar four times a day. Fasting and one hour after each meal. I had to record the numbers and send them to a nurse weekly.
And another thing is that I had extra appointments and ultrasounds at a Maternal Fetal Medicine office, which is for high risk or complicated pregnancies. I still also had my appointments with my OB-GYN, but I had to meet with a specialist as well.
And of course I had to watch my diet and exercise.
Because I was a borderline case, I realized pretty quickly that as long as I didn’t just eat a huge bowl of pasta and then lie down, I would be fine. If I ate a meal heavy in carbs, I would just walk some laps or do something active to bring my blood sugar down. There was a huge difference in the blood sugar an hour after eating if I spent that hour sleeping, laying down, sitting, standing or walking. I would work standing up for the hour after breakfast to make sure my numbers dropped.
Meanwhile, we also needed to keep an eye on the baby’s heart. My husband and I were both born with atrial septal defects. It’s a fairly common heart defect, estimated to be present in about 100 out of every thousand live births (that’s 10% of the time, for anyone keeping track). Mine was very small and closed on its own, but my husband’s required open-heart surgery when he was a child.
So, even with our first pregnancy, we had a Maternal Fetal Medicine clinic take a look at our daughter’s heart to check for any signs of a defect, but she was clear. With my son, since we were already at the Maternal Fetal Medicine Clinic for monitoring my gestational diabetes, which brings risks like low blood sugar for baby after birth and larger babies, they were looking at everything in detail anyway.
So, we had a lot of ultrasounds. A lot of chances to see how the baby was developing. A minor scare when one of his kidneys looked larger than the other, but on the next scan, everything looked fine.
And so, we moved toward the birth.
Because I had pitocin with my first birth, I had it in my head that I would try again for a birth with no pain medications. I just thought that since my pitocin contractions had been extra painful, maybe I’d be fine with just “regular” contractions. I mean, they couldn’t be that bad, right? I’d been through worse. I could handle it.
We had made plans for friends to watch our oldest daughter while we were in the hospital, and I started feeling what I thought were contractions around 10pm. But I wasn’t sure and I’d had some Braxton Hicks contractions for several weeks, so I waited awhile.
Around midnight, I was sure. I definitely was in labor. I knew it would be awhile before we headed to the hospital, though. My contractions were fifteen minutes apart and weren’t very strong. I tried to sleep a little bit. I didn’t wake my husband. I emailed my boss to let her know I wouldn’t be available the next day and tried to distract myself.
Around 3 a.m., things were getting serious. I hadn’t experienced natural contractions with my first delivery, so even though this was my second delivery, it all felt new. My contractions were seven minutes apart, but they were serious — I knew that much. I remembered from my birthing class (at that point almost three years past) that I wasn’t supposed to go to the hospital until my contractions were five minutes apart, but these felt like the real deal. So, I called the doctor.
The on-call doctor from my practice was a man I hadn’t met before. And he didn’t sound very happy about me calling at 4 a.m. with a question he thought I should already know the answer to.
We also were having trouble reaching our friends who were on call to watch our daughter while we were at the hospital. So, we called another amazing friend who came over at 4:30 a.m. on short notice to hang out with a three-year-old.
And then, in the span of two contractions, they went from seven minutes apart to four minutes apart. I recall falling to all fours in the living room and yelling during a contraction while my husband was trying to quickly give our friend the rundown on watching out daughter.
I also remember that my husband fed the pets before we left for the hospital.
We were very lucky that we lived only six minutes from the hospital, but even so, I had two contractions on the way, and by the time we arrived, they were coming every two minutes. I think I terrified the poor guy working at the security booth. He ran into the hospital and had them bring me a wheelchair while my husband parked the car. By the time they had wheeled me to triage, my husband had parked and joined me. I was very, very worried that I was too late for an epidural. The nurses asked if I wanted one and I said yes, absolutely.
They moved me up to delivery very quickly, and my contractions were very close together. I really thought I was going to deliver this baby before the doctor got there. I also realized that I had forgotten how to breathe properly. Luckily a nurse was there to remind me.
And then I got the epidural. Getting the epidural was not as traumatic as the first time because there were breaks between the contractions. It turns out that when you aren’t convulsing in pain, getting an epidural isn’t all that bad.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Epidurals are delightful. I was so happy. The baby didn’t come right away, it was about twenty minutes later. And it was wonderful. I was able to feel enough to push when I needed to push, but wasn’t in any pain. And then, I had a little boy. The doctor placed him immediately on my chest and we snuggled for a few minutes before he was taken to be measured and weighed.
My brother and I don’t look very much alike. And my husband doesn’t look much like his siblings. So, I just sort of assumed my kids would look different. Every baby is unique and all that. But one of the first things I said to my son was, “You look a lot like your sister.” I felt like I was living in a time loop. I had already given birth to this baby and raised it to be a three-year old. If you saw them today, they still have a lot of similarities, but they aren’t identical clones the way it seemed when he was first born.
In Part Two, I mentioned that after my loss, I had put away material I had purchased to make a quilt for my daughter. About a year after my son was born, I finished that quilt, which my daughter still sleeps under every night.
