I am obsessed.
I have a sick, sick obsession, and it’s time I should admit it.
I love watching the Discovery Health Channel, and specifically a show called “Babies: Special Delivery.”
Now that I’m pregnant, I’ve developed this sick thirst for these stories and diagnoses; I start to guess at their possible prognoses from the list of symptoms and clutch my own incipient belly protectively. I watch and cringe and am mesmerized just watching all the horrible things that can go wrong with a woman’s delivery, and all the things that can happen to a little newborn. I am definitely sick. Or perhaps just curious. Perhaps that’s just it. Because I also get this ever-growing murderous rage within me when I find out that people don’t know what is going on within their own bodies. And I don’t just mean being ignorant about the medical terms of all the things that could possibly go wrong with you: that would mean I’d have to probably hate myself, since I didn’t end up going to medical school after all.
I mean people who are just clueless. about. their. bodies.
Like the lady who didn’t know she was pregnant until she started feeling the pangs of delivery and (this was a couple of years ago, so the details might be a wee fuzzy) actually felt the baby crowning and realized then what was truly going down (how clever of me).
It took for a little bocce ball to peek out of her vagina to make her realize that, perhaps, it was not just a very bloated menopause after all.
Okay. I also despise people who don’t know what’s going on. There. I said it. Like people who, at 36 weeks of pregnancy, still don’t know the difference between placenta previa and placenta abruptio. Or, for that matter, placenta, period. C’mon, people! Placental mammals we are, yo! That’s important and what differentiates us from, like, kangaroos!
And yet, yes. I made the dumb mistake of asking the doctor if my yolk sac would evolve into my placenta. There, see? I may be sanctimonious, but at least I can admit my incompetence every once in a while: as it turns out, in my ultrasound-induced stupidity, I forgot that the placenta dwells outside the bag o’ waters, while the yolk sac is within the gestational sac (and therefore within the bag o’ waters). And I also admit my mild hypochondria: after a very scary episode last Tuesday –wherein we even got the Scary of Scariest diagnoses of threatened abortion (which is not as bad as it sounds), I realized that I really need to take stock and stop being such a sissy. And that sometimes, calling the doctor all the time just makes you more nervous and on edge. Sometimes you just need to let the sleeping dogs lie.
Recap: For those of you who didn’t know about last Tuesday –pretty much everyone apart from my poor Monsieur B (le husband, who turned paler than pale that day, and who kept on turning shades of paler right before my tear-swollen eyes) and Maman (la mommy, who received my very-hysterical phonecall when I couldn’t reach the hospital)– I just had some um…
..let’s just say I thought the baby was on its way out, perhaps fed up with having such a hysterical mommy. Turns out, kid had grown by (and I could have done the calculations wrong here but I think it was) 400%, from 2.1mm to a healthy 9mm, with a twinkling little heartbeat going strong! It was as snug as a bug in a rug (or as gaudeus as an embryus in uterus, to be perfectly and even dangerously cheesy). And the scare? The doctor knew not, but assured me everything was fine. And fine it has continued, which is quite good.
Which is perhaps part of the sick reason I love those Discovery Health shows: they show you the most horrible and grim of prognoses, and yet all of these women –some of whom have wantonly endangered their babies and therefore fall into my behate group of people who are clueless and reckless with their bodies– walk out of the hospital with bouncing baby boys and girls. Some processes are awful and arduous; some babies stay in the NICU for weeks and even months; but in the end, you get to see a parade of blue- and pink-bonneted plump babies and their success stories. Somehow all the horror about how they came to live is forgotten because they did live.
And I can only feel reassured in that. And in the fact that I shall nickname my little bundle of cells Baby Meow.
Isn’t that right, Baby Meow?
*intrauterine gurgles and nods*
A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm! 