Wackadoodle

I had a request to write about the experience of being pregnant as an OB/GYN, and I figure it's the least I can do, after freaking you out with scary stories.

I'm actually reluctant to tell you this, in a way, although it is something I have shared with many people, because I think it makes me appear to be nuts. So please remind yourselves, as you read, that the level of pathology I'm about to describe was really provoked by my pregnancy, and that elsewise, I am a high-functioning and reasonable (and fun! and completely normal!) person.

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When people asked me how being pregnant influenced my practice of medicine - and people ask a lot - the answer, at the time, was not much. What was truly monumental was the reverse relationship; the way that practicing medicine changed my experience of pregnancy.

Now, perhaps this would have happened in any case. Anyone who has had trouble conceiving tends, I think, to lose faith in their body's ability to successfully complete the process. I also felt extraordinarily unwell for most of the pregnancy, and I continued to work full time, which was about 50-70 hours a week, so that probably didn't help.

And it's fair to say that all pregnant women are anxious. As one of the midwives I work with used to say (I believe, a quote from another source): Worry is the work of pregnancy. And perhaps it is, a form of cognitive nesting that at times can be protective, and at times, well, aggressive.

And I think a large part of it was some specialized post traumatic stress disorder from doing my job. You can only counsel about miscarriage and demise and babies who won't live and other terribleness so many times before it seems as if it's the most common outcome of this particular human condition. And after you lay your hands on these things, well, they don't leave your mind for a long time.

But when I was pregnant, I had to coin a new term. Here it is: wackadoodle (noun): a sort of special type of gestational crazy. (The name is endearing, because the condition isn't.) Essentially, I was anxious out of my freaking mind.

From the first, I told my husband not to get too excited, because we were just going to have a miscarriage. I very forbiddingly referred to it as "the fetus" so as not to get emotionally attached, and then wept surprised tears when my poor husband, following my very strict orders, didn't call it "the baby".

I listened to the baby's heart often in the beginning, sneaking off at work to put the doptone on my lower belly. Later, I would ultrasound myself, especially in the middle of a hard call, when I had been running around, dehydrated and hungry, when I hadn't felt the baby move. As an aside, it's actually quite technically challenging to scan yourself - if you lie down, you can't see the screen, and if you sit up, you can't get to your belly. I finally perfected the technique, which (for future reference) is best done by leaning against the wall at a 45-degree angle. This scan is ideally performed, of course, in the dirty utility room near the operating suites, while desperately hoping no one will walk in and find you with your scrub top bunched up under your bra.

I had to leave the supermarket - more than once! - in a frenzy, in tears, because the baby hadn't moved in x minutes, and I would lie in the reclined passenger seat in the car and count the fetal movements and, well, pray. I once put myself on the fetal monitor on labor and delivery,without realizing that it was transmitting to the central monitor, only to have 3 nurses converge at the door: Who the hell is in triage room 1? Then I sheepishly had to explain that it was me, just being, you know. Wackadoodle.

I had a patient lose a 20 week pregnancy when I was 23 weeks, and I couldn't sleep for a week. I also thought about a patient whose baby had died in labor when I was a resident, years before, and started to have dreams, dreams that followed me into waking, that my baby would die, that my baby would be killed, because I hadn't saved hers.

So there you are. I think I functioned in a miasma of anxiety, and nausea and exhaustion and general discomfort. It was a pretty tough and terrible time.

I did function - I took care of patients, and took care of myself, and I knew that I was not being reasonable, and I tried, in many therapeutic ways, to keep the wackadoodle at bay. There were probably days, or even weeks, where I didn't worry quite this much, but that's not what I remember.

In case you are wondering: in the end, my delivery wasn't perfect, and it wasn't easy, but it was just fine, which was the possibility that had never really occurred to me. I have the most fantastic little boy in the world. And the wackadoodle left me - not the day he was born, or the day after that, but maybe a few weeks later. This is good, because I hated the way it made me act, and it means that I can be a (relatively) relaxed and laid-back parent, and enjoy my child the way I couldn't enjoy carrying him.

But I think remembering the wackadoodle is important, because it reminds me to be grateful for what I have. Just because that healthy child is the most common outcome of pregnancy doesn't mean it's not lucky or a blessing, or a miracle, or whatever word we use when we are just so happy to be, finally, on the other side.