Saturday, May 12, 2012

Here We Go Again

The soft lullaby music plays in the background, and I cherish the moment I hold newborn baby Poppy in my arms, and stroke her soft cheek as she drinks hungrily from my breast. It's a beautiful moment, except that it hasn't happened yet. The soft piano music plays, yes, but it comes from the laptop computer on my legs, as I type a blog post with one hand and hold pumping apparatus to my chest with the other. This isn't the way I wanted it to be. I didn't want to be here again. But here I am.


Poppy was born at 33 weeks, just like her sister, Rosemary. There was no HELLP Syndrome this time, no pre-eclampsia, just a month's worth of contractions that had been slowly wearing away at my cervix. I created an excuse, any excuse, to go to the Women's Evaluation Unit (WE-U) at my hospital on Monday night and have them check me. Even though my doctor's office was happy with the results they got from my twice weekly non-stress tests (NSTs), I knew something was wrong. The contractions stopped with my Procardia medicine, yes, but they kept coming back when it was time for the next dose. They always came back. So I went to the WE-U with the concern of "unexpected weight gain." The nurses gave me incredulous looks.

"How far about were the measurements?"

"A week."

"So you're concerned that you jumped up 6 lbs in one week, using two different scales?"

"Yes."

They took me back to a room anyway and hooked me up to the NST equipment. A female doctor with dainty little hands checked my cervix and found it to be closed. She didn't know what to do except send me home. Thankfully, her shift ended, and a new doctor took over my case. This male doctor with long fingers wanted to check me again before sending us off, and he found me to be.... 3.5 cm. THREE POINT FIVE is a BIG difference from "closed." I don't blame the female doctor for her anatomical deficiency, but she was the same doctor who checked me when I went to the WE-U the month before, when the contractions had first started. What would someone else have found then instead of her? Would Poppy have stayed in my womb longer if we had known last month that my cervix was already starting to open? I don't know, but it rubs me the wrong way.



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