Ultrasound Unsensored

When my husband & I decided to get a midwife this time around, it was with the greatest desire to be free from medical interventions and the pressuring fear mongering that's associated with it, not just during labor & delivery, but throughout the pregnancy too.  It really has been a fairly ideal experience thus far with our chosen midwife. She is very non-invasive when it comes to exams. She hasn't even touched my privates yet, and the pregnancy is half over. That's more than I can say about my first pregnancy prenatal exams. In fact, she didn't even require me to prove my pregnancy when I first saw her, with any such urine or blood test. I could've just pretended, and she would've never known...until the next couple appointments when she would've tried to listen for a heartbeat, of course.  She did eventually do a blood test to check my nutrient levels and a rule out possible viruses, as is her standard procedure. My results came back fine, with only a slight vitamin D deficiency, which is actually not a surprising find considering we live in the cloudy northwest, and it's the middle of winter. I tacked on a D3 supplement to my daily prenatal vitamins.

There are a few procedures that providers are required to offer their patients, and those include a couple of genetic tests for cystic fibrosis as well as down syndrome. As with my first pregnancy, we already knew we would opt out of these tests. Reason being, I don't need the stress of worrying about freaky test results concerning my baby's health.  And we also both agree that we didn't want to do any invasive or risky tests like the amniocentesis that pricks a hole in your uterus to test amniotic fluid for signs of down syndrome. We said no to all of these, most specifically because we were told our insurance might not cover those types of tests, and besides, if we were getting the recommended 20 week ultrasound, most of these things would be detected then.

Sabina's 20 Week Ultrasound

We didn't have to do the ultrasound.  It was up to us, our midwife said, but we wanted to for a number of reasons. One, we just wanted reassurance that everything with our baby was developing fine, and two, we wanted to make sure of the number of babies I'm carrying, and of course the most popular reason, to find out the gender. We wanted to be able to prepare, and part of that preparation is being motivated by discovering just who is in there. It's where I felt my connection and relationship with Sabina began to blossom, when I found out she was a girl and saw her beautiful profile. That was by far one of the top most exciting days of my pregnancy with her, along with the baby shower and her birthday.  We left happy, unable to wipe the grins off our faces as we imagined our precious little girl, and saw a clear vision of our future for the first time.

It's a Boy!

The one thing about our midwife is that she doesn't perform her own ultrasounds. She sent us out to another facility to have ours done. Little did I know, it was actually at a hospital in a neighboring city. It started out really pleasant with the preparation and such.  I was happy they let my daughter in with my husband so she could see the baby too.  And the ultrasound tech who did my whole ultrasound was really nice, telling me all the things she was doing, and keeping the conversation light and positive. We were asked if we wanted to know the sex beforehand, to which we said yes, and surprisingly only a couple minutes into the exam, she rolls over the baby's bum and says "and you're definitely having a little boy!" Oh my god. I cannot tell you how thrilled that made me feel. We both gasped and I reached out and grabbed Mike's hand. We were perfectly keen on the idea that another girl would be fun for Sabina to have a little sister, and we could reuse all her pink girlie baby stuff again, but both of us wanted a boy. I mean, naturally, since we already have a girl. Don't ever get me wrong. I'm so incredibly happy I have the little girl I so wanted to dress up cute in pretty dresses and watch blossom into a beautiful young lady and eventually be the mother of the bride and watch her get married, and I hope we remain close throughout her life. But there is just something different about having a boy that sends chills through me.  I knew Mike wanted a son, and I always wanted him to have one, but there was more to it for me than that. I just wanted to be able to experience that relationship that is so precious with mothers & sons. Boys love, respect and protect their moms.  I wanted that. We were in awe, on cloud nine, unable to believe our luck that we got our boy.

Baby Boy's 20 Week Ultrasound

It couldn't have been much more than maybe fifteen minutes before the perfect image of our new baby boy came crashing down on our heads. It was when the doctor came in to analyze our ultrasound results. As soon as she asked me if I'd had any complications with my first pregnancy, I knew she was about to point out some possibly discouraging things.  I told her no, my pregnancy with Sabina was surprisingly great. At that, she gelled up my belly and began to show us several things she found wrong with our baby. One: his legs measured just slightly shorter than average.  But then she looked at my husband and wrote that off as being part of his smaller Asian genes. The second thing she found was that our baby's umbilical cord was attached in a place that made it more difficult for him to receive the appropriate amount of nutrients, and she said this could lead to him not gaining enough weight and having to be delivered early.  She proceeded to tell me I needed to eat a lot of meat and cheese (I'm vegan, so I gagged a little). The third thing was more complicated, she said. It was a condition related to the kidneys in which they didn't seem to be emptying in to the bladder efficiently or as fast as other babies at that age. She called it Mild Bilateral Pyelectasis or Hydronephrosis.  She tried to remind us that all these issues often correct themselves before birth, but the thing that came out of her mouth next was the bomb that popped my baby boy balloon and sent me spiraling south into the pit of despair.  What each of these conditions she mentioned have in common is that they're all associated with the chromosomal abnormality, Down Syndrome.

Down Syndrome. 

3D Ultrasound image of our boy kicking back in utero

That's all I could focus on thereafter. I only just found out moments earlier that we were having a little baby boy. A son. His future had already flashed through our minds, and we were ecstatic at the idea of sharing this news with friends & family. Then we are shot down with the devastating possibility that our son will spend his entire life in special needs care, and never even have a chance at the future we imagined for him. It was utterly heartbreaking. I agreed to a blood test for Down Syndrome detection, and then learned we have to wait for the results for two weeks. Still, I had to make an appointment to come back for a follow up ultrasound at 32 weeks gestation to see if these conditions improve at all. I was hurled right back into the medical world with fears and threats I never wanted to have about my pregnancy. We left the hospital with our hearts in our shoes, and remained in a depressed funk for the remainder of the day and sleepless night.  I am so crushed and completely furious that they ruined a very special day for us. I didn't feel excited anymore. I didn't want to update the baby registry with cute little boy things, as I'd previously planned to do after the ultrasound. I lost the excitement of picking out baby names. I didn't want to share the news with anyone. Neither of us did. We just weren't feeling it anymore. We decided not to utter a word about it until after we get our results in 2 weeks. The scary news completely slammed us. Now, no matter what the outcome is, I will always remember the day I found out I was having a boy as one of the most heartbreaking days of my life.

UPDATE: Test results for down syndrome negative! We have been to the 32 week followup appointment now as well, and our boy is growing fine.  His kidneys are still not functioning normally, but we are not worried about his prognosis.  I'm still on the road with a healthy pregnancy, but due to our unnecessarily stressful experience at that first ultrasound, along with a few other patients with that same type of experience, our midwife is no longer opting to send her patients to that particular clinic anymore.  Glad we could help others not experience that kind of pain, at least!!!

Hitler & The Bitter End of Facebook

Facebook claims I've been a member since 2008. Since then, it very quickly adapted to the new name I gave it: Fakebook. I never liked Facebook. All it did was show me the true colors of everybody I thought I knew, and made me realize just how much I didn't like them. People do nothing but brag about their either fantastically amazing lives or dramatically horrible ones. Or they show you pictures of their dinner, check in at every possible location on the globe, making it easy for stalkers to find and murder them. They flaunt their offspring, and brag about how smart and advanced they are in school. (That was the most difficult for me in the years before my own daughter was finally born, and I could get back at them with pictures of her. HA!) Then, if that wasn't enough, they'd proceed to post media articles or political posts all over their page, offending half the people on their friends list. All these things drove me bananas, but nothing quite like what I was to experience.

Over the last year or so, I've had a couple of pretty ugly debates erupt on my posts regarding topics of apparent sensitive nature (everyone is offended by everything under the sun on Facebook). I wrote about these previously, so I don't feel the need to rehash these stories, but just suffice it to say they brought moments of extreme contemplation over my keeping Facebook or not. On both issues, I deleted the "friends" who caused the uproar, and continued on my way. The only reason for keeping Facebook was because, like most people, I wanted to keep my connections with family and friends, most of whom were far away, and this seemed the simplest way, as well as the most acceptable form these days.

Because of these previous experiences with people attacking my rather alternative views on certain issues, I'm extremely selective in posting anything at all on Facebook that's more than a simple photo of my daughter or cat. But recently, something came up in my life that was really a big deal to me, and I felt compelled to spread the word so people might see more than one side of the issue. It was a bill proposing to remove our rights to vaccine exemptions in our state, so that if you don't vaccinate your child, then he/she can't attend school. Again, I've written another post entirely dedicated to this issue, so I am not going to get into it all again, because this post is reserved for a very special topic all it's own. 

In hoping to reach out to people on this issue with the focus on our civil rights to medical choice being taken away, rather than to erupt a nasty vaccine debate (of which I'm quite familiar with), I posted a thought provoking quote along with a petition against this vaccine mandate, by Adolf Hitler, which you should see to the right here. ------>

Almost immediately, I had people trying to start a vaccine debate, just as I expected, but then more surprisingly, a family member commented that she wasn't even Jewish, yet she thought my use of that quote was offensive, and not at all appropriate for the topic of the vaccine mandate, and suggested rather that my husband's quote he had posted in support of my post, of Benjamin Franklin saying, "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both", was much more suited, because he was an American president talking about our own country.  Even though I really liked my husband's choice in quotes as well, I was pretty insulted by her comment, because I had thoughtfully chosen the Hitler quote with the undeniable belief that it suited my argument perfectly, and she had just pretty harshly shot it down. Soon after, her friend followed up with a comment that she found my quote to be "highly inappropriate" for this issue. She just so happens to be Jewish, so she went on to inform me that it was offensive to her heritage that I had chosen a quote by Hitler. My jaw hit the floor. I couldn't even believe what I was reading was coming from two seasoned adults. Not having any clue how this quote was taken so far out of the context of my original point that it could have possibly been offensive, I was taken aback and tried to analyze it from their perspective, as I am accustomed to doing with things people see differently from me. Now, I am a very sensitive person, and will go great lengths to avoid offending people, so this came as quite a surprise to me. Even from a Jewish perspective, I couldn't see why it should be offensive. It's not like I admired the man or any such thing.  I view everything in history as a form of education.  As something we can all learn from.  The saying "history repeats it's self" is widely known, and there is a reason.  So, I find no reason under the sun that we should be banned from learning anything from a man like Adolf Hitler.  As one of the most popular villains of human history, it only seems natural for us to gravitate and pay attention to his life's lessons, not so we can all become villains, but rather to avoid doing so! 

I chose that quote because I am also quite a rational thinker, and it really reflected perfectly on what we are doing to our country by blindly allowing our own government to take our rights away little by little. What offense should be taken from learning a valuable lesson from a horrible historical event that no one wants repeated? If anything, it should be viewed as a highly respectful acknowledgement of what Jewish people and the rest of the German citizens experienced.  But my family member and her friend didn't see it that way at all.  They chose to view it as a total insult against Jews, of which still doesn't make sense, and they continued to post their offense and utter confusion in the comments on my post. It frustrated me that they could not let this go, even though I tried to tell them I never meant to offend anyone, and chose the quote for the words, because that's what I see happening, then tried to divert the discussion back to the actual topic so as not to turn this into an ugly Hitler debate. I thought the quote spoke for its self and didn't think it needed anymore explanation, but this just went on and on.  I soon got a personal message from my family member explaining that she and her friend had talked and still didn't understand my reasoning for choosing that quote, and what it had to do with a vaccine mandate. She went on to explain further that comparing a mandate to genocide was completely over the top offensive, and had to tell me all about how an American democracy works, in comparison to the dictatorship of Hitler's time. Then, if that wasn't enough, she went on to explain what her friend's family endured in the Holocaust, and that's why she thought my quote was so inappropriate. My frustration turned into shock, and I tried to figure out what on earth she was trying to say. Was she insulting my intelligence? Telling me I didn't know what an American democracy was, even though I was born and raised in this country? Telling me I didn't understand Jewish history? Did she think I was totally ignorant? What did she want from me? I didn't know, but it was a huge slam.

Thinking it over for a few hours, and re-reading through the confusing dialog that had occurred on the post and messages I'd gotten from my family member, I finally decided that what they were after was further explanation, since they had both expressed confusion and had actually come out and asked me what I meant by using that quote.  So I wrote a joint personal message to both her and her friend, explaining my reasoning behind using the quote in the best way that I could, because that seemed to be what they wanted. I was clearly still frustrated, and that may have reflected a bit in my tone, but I didn't allow myself to get nasty with them. I remained as civil as possible, and gave them as much detail as I could, trying to make sure to address both of their previous concerns regarding the quote and their feelings. I thought I did a considerable job, being as I had stayed up super late into the night to write it because I couldn't sleep after the long days worth of vaccine debating and ugliness that continued to ensue on my post, of which I was also dealing with at the same time.

Just as I had expected would happen, friends were throwing bombs on my post about the vaccine mandate. One friend in particular, whom I knew was a pediatric nurse, came on and basically spewed several comments worth of medical propaganda all over the place, disputing each and every piece of "anti-vax" information she thought she knew, and everything I had to say on the issue. All of it was the same old bologna I'd been hearing now for years from every "pro-vax" person I've ever heard. That was irritating, of course, but what was worse was having her actually go on to say that my husband and I were unfit to be parents if we didn't vaccinate our kids, and that we shouldn't even be allowed to have pets since I don't vaccinate them either. It was pretty ugly, and I was stressed over it, but my precious husband stepped right up and stood up to her for me, all the good that did because she was relentless. It finally came to the point where I simply had to unfriend her to end the nonsense, and thus things finally calmed down on the post.

The next morning, bright and early, my family member sends me a reply that basically disregards everything I just said the night before, and rehashes all of her original offenses against my quote. I was upset because she threw in a little lesson for me on how social discourse typically works, implying that I obviously had not been following that theory. I didn't know how to respond. I had already said everything I thought I needed to say in regards to the quote, and had told them I didn't see anything at all wrong with using it, and never meant any offense to anyone. What else could I possibly say? Later that evening, her friend responded with another letter explaining to me all over again her family history and why she thinks it will never be okay for people to use Hitler quotes or Nazi rhetoric, etc, in any form, and that she doesn't expect me to understand the magnitude of that because I'm not Jewish, so it's not personal to me like it is to her. Nothing I said seemed at all to have resonated in their heads, and I was left feeling as though I hadn't written them an explanation at all. It was all either harshly disputed or totally disregarded. What. The. Hell.

It was late, I was emotionally drained, and I completely broke down. This was not only the most utterly ridiculous thing I have ever argued over, but now I was being insulted and discriminated against? I was firm, I was completely aware of my thoughts as I typed my response that night, but I was filled with anger from their seemingly passive-aggressive stoning of me, and the fact that this had gone on for 2 days already. I told my family member's friend exactly what I thought of her, because she had crossed me. I used exclamation points, I used several caps, and I used some very strong words, but over all I tried to remain straightforward and perfectly clear. I basically said that I didn't know what they wanted of me, and didn't appreciate being insulted and discriminated against, because those things are extremely sensitive issues for me. I didn't see any harm in using the quote I did, because for me it was totally relevant to my topic. I can't help that they see otherwise. What did they want me to do about that? Why was I being publicly bullied and pushed up against a wall for it? As far as I was concerned, this conversation was over. I was through being rung through the ringer for posting a damn quote and having Holocaust stories being beaten over my head. Enough was enough. 

Though my family member didn't even respond this time, her friend did, just briefly enough to tell me that I obviously had "anger issues", and my words were hurtful and disrespectful, but she was secure enough in her life to move on, and tactfully added that it was up to me to decide whether or not I wanted to apologize and move on, or not. I told her the disrespect was intentional because she had hurt and disrespected me first, and that I had every right to my anger. I left it with the last line that I didn't need to associate with people who degraded me that way. The following day, I deactivated my Facebook account. No forewarning. Nothing. I just left, and I felt no remorse. I had wanted to do that for years, and finally I had enough of it. That was absolutely and utterly the last straw. Clearly, I am not cut out for social networking.

The Hitler quote issue still unfortunately did not cease, because my family member continued to message my husband over it, and her spiteful words against me were plentiful and harsh, but I cannot bring myself to speak to her. I'm 19 weeks pregnant, and I want nothing more than peace and a stress free pregnancy. It's hard trying not to let her words get to me, but I can't continue this debate. Whatever will happen with my relationship with her in the future, I don't know at this point, but I honestly can't care right now. The only thing I truly care about at the moment is my baby's health, which is the entire reason I posted the damn petition against mandated vaccines to begin with.