My Pregnancy Journey Part 5: My Surprise Baby
In this multi-post series, I share my full pregnancy journey, from the first moment motherhood became a concrete goal, through my pregnancies and births, loss, and fertility challenges. I hope that doing so will help to challenge commonly-held misconceptions about pregnancy and birth, and foster recognition that there are a wide variety of experiences, choices, and outcomes that are possible. Ultimately, it’s about connection, to empower each other with confidence and wisdom to make our own informed decisions about what’s best for ourselves and our babies. If you have a pregnancy, loss, or birth story that you would like to share on the blog, please reach out here!
Let me begin by setting the stage: fast forward a couple years from where we left off in part 4 of my pregnancy journey; I’m about a year into an assignment in Kazakhstan, and I am miserable. I am overworked, overwhelmed, overstressed, and under-nourished. I am drowning trying to figure out how to be the mother I want to be for my kids while at the same time giving 100% to my demanding but rewarding job. I am living in an isolated place where the temperatures dip well into the -40s before winter even officially starts, where a head of imported celery costs $15 and supplies of any fresh produce dwindles drastically in winter. My health is awful: within the span of 4 months, I’ve had pneumonia, bronchitis, and what I suspect was swine flu. Needless to say, I was not at my best.
But then spring arrived. I connected with a wonderful Canada-based naturopath who helped me get back on track. I took an amazing vacation just C and I to Dubai where we sunned, swam, and ate all the good food. I started to feel a bit more like myself. And then one morning I realized my cycle was a few days late. Figuring it was likely just an echo of my stress and poor health, I decided to take a pregnancy test just to be sure. I couldn’t believe it when it was positive. We hadn’t exactly been trying to get pregnant, but we hadn’t been not trying either. And after my previous fertility challenges, pregnancy was not something I expected to happen at all.
I spent a few days feeling pretty bewildered and shocked, and then figured I should probably see my doctor. Which was when the real fun began.
I’m guessing that you probably know very little about Kazakhstan, so I’m going to share some insights about the country’s healthcare system. To put it simply: it sucks. When we first arrived there, we were warned by colleagues to avoid the local hospitals at all costs (one colleague relayed that she was required to pass a VD test before she could enter the hospital!). Shortly after our arrival, A. stuck a rock up her nose and we got to experience the private international medical clinic first-hand, where two local doctors couldn’t figure out how to get the rock out so they stupidly decided to push it all the way in (without knowing that it could have gone down her airway and into her lungs). Our later experiences with the “fancy” clinic were not much better, so we learned to take their medical advice with a grain of salt.
I went to see the sole foreign doctor working at the private clinic when I guessed I was around 7 weeks pregnant. She was smart enough to admit right away that giving birth in Kazakhstan would be a terrible idea, and so she sent me to the local hospital for a dating ultrasound so that I could be sure to get back to Canada well before my due date. With much trepidation, and accompanied by an interpreter, I went to the hospital later that day. The technician was efficient and quick; she showed me the heartbeat, mentioned something about a problem with my uterus, gave me a copy of her report to share my with my doctor, and sent me on my way.
The term she had given me indicating the problem with my uterus was in Russian and translated to something like ‘hypertonic uterus’, so I immediately started googling and came up with all sorts of things, including a likely outcome of miscarriage. I proceeded to freak out and called my doctor, who had also never heard of the term but promised to consult with a local specialist and get back to me. An hour later she called back and told us it was nothing, there was no need to worry, and everything was fine.
My pregnancy adventures in Kazakhstan didn’t end there! I remember going to see my doctor for a check-in at 17 weeks and she couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat. After many many tries with both of us close to tears, she told me I had better go back to the hospital for an ultrasound to confirm that this was still a viable pregnancy. Back to the same room, with what looked like the same technician, who quickly found the baby’s heartbeat, told us we were having a boy (a boy!), and pointed out a white spot on the baby’s body that she told us was a sign of some kind of defect. Keeping her previous track record of diagnosing imagined conditions in mind, I took this information with a grain of salt and kept my cool.
Because the healthcare system in Kazakhstan is so crappy, and because I was a lucky foreigner with private health insurance through my employer, my doctor highly recommended that I go to Europe for a comprehensive consultation and check-in at 20 weeks. I chose Frankfurt, Germany for my mini medical getaway mainly because it was the closest European city with high standards of healthcare and a direct flight. My doctor arranged for me to see a German OB-GYN there, who was super serious and all business. I spent a good two hours with her while she ran ALL the tests (including testing me for toxoplasmosis even after I insisted that I had not been in contact with a cat for years). Not surprisingly, she found zero white spots on the baby, and zero indications of any defects. All tests and exams indicated that everything was going well. I breathed a sigh of relief, and headed back to Kazakhstan.
Other than the healthcare drama, my pregnancy was overall pretty easy and enjoyable. Because this was my fourth pregnancy, I no longer felt like a confused and concerned deer in the headlights; rather, I knew what to expect and what was going on in my body. So instead of reading books like “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” I read through all of Ina May’s excellent books and enrolled myself in the Hypnobabies online course.
Planning for the birth, I knew that I once again wanted to have a midwife-assisted homebirth. And after my disempowering experience birthing A, I also knew I needed to have a doula this time around who could help me when I reached that inevitable point of losing my shit and demanding drugs during labour.
We returned to Canada when I was around 32 weeks. I met with my midwife, an older super-experienced and super-laid back women who I loved immediately. We moved into our new home just in time for my nesting instinct to kick in and with just enough time to get everything unpacked and organized. Or maybe a bit too much time: since my other babies had come at 39.5 weeks, I assumed this one would as well. But 39.5 weeks passed with no signs of labour. At 40 weeks, my midwife gently mentioned that at our next appointment we’d need to start thinking about induction.
A and I comparing bellies
Five days later, things finally started happening. Contractions started slow but steady in the late morning; by the afternoon I was cocooning in my bed and started calling my birth team. My doula arrived around dinner time and we hung out in the bedroom and watched crappy sitcoms while we waited for things to pick up. After a couple of hours, I felt restless and antsy, so she suggested we go for a walk. The cool winter air felt wonderfully refreshing, but I only made it about halfway around the block before the contractions intensified enough to stop me in my tracks. My doula gleefully declared the start of active labour and called my midwife, and we headed home.
When I think back on that night, I remember it as so joyful. Everyone was relaxed and happy and I felt both excited and calm. Things progressed quickly and got pretty intense, but with the support of my midwife and doula, I rode the waves one at a time and only lost my cool when the student midwives I’d agreed to let observe started whispering in the corner and I proceeded to tell them (ok fine, yelled at them) to get the fuck out.
Just after midnight, after just under 4 hours of active labour, I felt the urge to push. I was helped into a squatting position on the floor which felt really good. After a few pushes, my midwife checked the baby’s heartbeat and gently explained that his heart rate was dropping. She instructed the assistant midwife to get 911 on the phone and then turned to me, looked me in the eye and told me that I needed to get the baby out right now. I nodded and pushed with all the force I could muster. A few minutes later, our baby boy was born. My midwife checked his heartbeat and declared that it had returned to normal and everything was fine. She handed me my baby boy and helped us get up onto the bed where we snuggled and celebrated.
Because it was the middle of the night and because I felt pretty good, my birth team didn’t stay long. We woke up C. and A. to briefly introduce them to their baby brother, and then all settled in for some much-needed sleep.
Baby F, born winter 2017 at 40.6 weeks