Prenatally Yours

Towards the end of my first pregnancy, I figured out that being pregnant wasn't actually that bad, per se. It was all the other people that made pregnancy an unbearable bore.

Since we were able to successfully produce a competent, physically abled child the first time around despite our unhealthy lack of respect for doulas, midwives, pregnancy myths, childbirth classes, other people's perceptions and breastfeeding, we've decided to do it all over again, one more time, you know, just for fun.

This time, though, we've got an even more unhealthy lack of respect for the above mentioned items, and added to that we've already been through the whole entire process once before, so we're even less impressed when, say, during the first routine pee-in-a-cup routine, we get a panicked call from one of the hospital midwives sputtering that we have group b strep in our urine.

Oh my god!! Bacteria!! We're all gonna DIE! Quick! Go on antibiotics now! she screamed in my ear.

Turns out that group b strep bacteria is common and entirely harmless, except during the actual act of natural child birth, which occurs (perhaps you, like the midwife, are unaware of this) at the end of a pregnancy, approximately 9 months from when you first started. So not only is it unproductive to go on antibiotics for such an issue when you are only 3 weeks along, it turns out that in my case it is entirely unneccesary, since this time I am opting to trust modern medicine and go with a repeat c-section.

I explained this to the midwife, who listened politely and then informed me that was all very true but what if I went into labor early?

I asked her if she thought that a little group b strep bacteria would be my biggest worry if I happened to "go into labor" or, as we lay-people call it when we're in the first trimester, "miscarry," when I was only three weeks along.

Midwives, you see, tend not to be very logical.

A few weeks later, I saw the obstetrician, who confirmed that a) urinary tract infections, if I even had one which was unlikely, generally resolve themselves within 10 days, and b) that the group b strep antibiotic scenario was only effective at the time of labor. We left it at that. Things were going swimmingly until he tried to find the heartbeat, at which point concern furrowed his brow.

"At thirteen weeks we should be able to detect a heartbeat," he said, "I want to do an ultrasound."

"I'm only ten weeks, " I informed him, which went over his head. He's the doctor, right? If he says it's thirteen weeks, it's thirteen, even though you have to bend and warp the space-time continuum to do it. Whatever; I scheduled the ultrasound for the following week and went back to my full time job.

Two hours later, I get a frantic phone call from another nurse. "I can fit you in tomorrow!" she exclaimed.

"I didn't get a sense there was any urgency," I responded. "Anyway, I'm at work. I can't just slip out here and there for a quick ultrasound."

"But! He didn't detect a heartbeat!!" she said anxiously, unwilling, I guess, to tell me what this might actually mean.

"I see. So if I go in tomorrow as opposed to next week, there's a chance you can do CPR on it or something?" I asked.

She was horrified. Nurses, you see, have no sense of humor.

The ultrasound, by the way, turned up a fetus with a fully functional heart and a spot on date of 11 weeks, 0 days (in a rare generous move on my part, I resisted the urge to ask them to put that in big red letters so they'd stop asking me when the date of my last period was). Aside from my run-ins with the pre-natal medical community, things have been fine. No nausea, some fatigue, the usual. For the most part, life goes on as it always has. Until I have to tell everyone else, I'll be a happy, pregnant, camper.