This Post is About Babies (well, just the one)

This doesn't have much to do with our DO school journey, but it's a story of our family while in med school.  I'm very hesitant about posting this; you may not be interested (you can skip it), but I know that I've scoured the internet for real-person stories for months, and I wish I'd had some true stories and perspectives to relate to along the way.  Maybe someone will find this and it will help them.  I hope so.

Once upon a time we decided to try to have kids.  James was a little more excited about it than I was, but since we knew that it usually takes a woman a few months to ovulate again after stopping birth control, we figured I'd have a while to get used to wanting a baby before it was real.  So off the pill I came.  Against all of my personal expectations, we got pregnant immediately.  We were in Knoxville celebrating James's birthday early and I suddenly felt like I had slammed into a wall of exhaustion, so we headed home.  I joked that it was probably because I was pregnant.  The pill messes with your menstrual cycle when you come off of it, so I didn't know if I'd missed a period yet or not.

I happened to have a cheap little pregnancy test on hand (who knows why), so the next morning I checked.  Next to the control line was a little faint something on the "pregnant" line.  I spent the day googling pregnancy tests, since when you're unemployed and have no car, what else is there to do in these situations?  It turns out that any "something" line is a line, and a line equals HCG which equals pregnant.  It did not happen from my residual birth control pill hormones.  Still unsure, I bought another (better) test, and waited a couple of days to take it again.  This time both lines showed up very, very fast.

"JAMES!!" James, who was studying and didn't know what I was doing, came cautiously to the bathroom. "What is THIS, James!? You said it'd take a couple of months..."  And he snapped this picture.  Smile!  (Oh, and happy birthday, James!)

I have to be honest here and say that the pregnancy itself really has been very mild.  I don't throw up anyway, and some queasiness didn't change that.  Being tired isn't really that bad; I wasn't bedridden or anything.  I didn't show until 20 weeks; around the time I started to feel it.  I've never experienced heartburn before in my life (that I know of; reading the symptoms makes me pretty sure about that) and I still haven't with this.  Crying at random things is actually funny (at least for James).  Back pain isn't awesome, but luckily my husband's semester in his OPP manipulations lab is learning how to treat back pain.  Most of the time I forgot about it.  People must hate me.  I thought we might struggle with infertility, or with poor health.  I am so blessed to not have had those complications that so many others have to fight.  It was so mild that I kept wanting proof - what if I made it up?  What if it stopped being there? What if it was an elaborate hoax with a crazy uterus and fake ultrasounds?

The part about our journey that was hard was insurance and healthcare.  We moved to TN in July, and applied through the proper channels the day we arrived.  There were several mix-ups, and this led to delays and inquiries about delays, so I didn't get insurance until late November.  There were more mix-ups in December leading to our Great January Tennessee Insurance Fiasco, and we just finally got insurance again in early February.  Each delay or mix-up resulted in long daily phone calls on my part to get coverage.  Hormonal, ugly-cry type phone calls.  It's been a nightmare.

So there we were, about 7 weeks along, when there was some bleeding.  This is still in the "it's common to miscarry now" stage, so we didn't know what to do.  Do miscarriages need help?  Will I bleed to death?  We had no insurance.  The doctor's office said that it would cost about $800 out of pocket to do an OB visit, and we didn't have that money.  We're living on student loans, after all.  Eventually, the fear of the situation (for both my sake and baby's) drove us to see if the doctor could maybe just talk to us for under $200.  The doctor was fantastic.  He heard about our insurance situation and did a very, very quick  superficial ultrasound to make sure there was a living fetus and that I was a living mother, etc. etc., and that's all he could do, and he didn't charge us a cent.  But the office wouldn't let us come back until we had insurance, so the first time I had an actual real doctor visit was at 16 weeks.  Then more insurance trouble hit and I couldn't see a doctor again until 27 weeks.  (And now it's a different doctor because of - oh yes, insurance.)  I had no idea what the results were from all the tests and the big ultrasound they sent me for before at 16 weeks.  None. I felt it, so I assumed it was alive, and I hadn't died yet, so that's good.  But I have a family history of preeclampsia and my pulse has been crazy and what if I was on the back swing of kicking the bucket?

People can be nasty about things.  I tried calling all sorts of doctors, insurance representatives, and offices, and mostly I just got berated: "Why haven't you seen a doctor yet?  You really should have.  I can't believe you haven't tried to see a doctor yet.  Oh yes, our doctor won't see you."  That made me feel pretty awful.  People stopped believing my medical history, because if I was this irresponsible of a mother, surely I was lying about smoking/drinking/drugs.  Then there was the refreshing insurance operator man who suggested: "Just wait until you go into labor and then go to the emergency room.  They can't deny you healthcare then."  Oh, okay.  No prenatal care at all, then?  Never mind the bill for this ER visit.  Never mind that the last I heard, I had placenta previa which can be pretty darn severe if it is present at birth and and nobody knows about it.  Never mind that the emergency room he directed me to is at a hospital where they don't deliver babies, so they would have shipped me off to another one which defeats the purpose because of INSURANCE!  I felt so defeated and scared.  I was a horrible mother and both my baby and I would die because of something I couldn't fix or afford to go around.

Finally, finally, we just got insurance set up.  I got my card in the mail today.  Finally, I saw a doctor (actually, a midwife who works with a doctor.  Cool!).  Finally, someone else can look at my high pulse and tell us when to worry and how to deal with it.  No more internet forums with people telling me to just see a doctor.  Finally someone can tell me that the placenta previa is gone and that I don't have gestational diabetes.  Finally James knows his wife isn't on the brink of keeling over, and he knows that our current poverty hasn't killed our child.  Finally I can enjoy feeling it kick without also feeling anxiety. Finally I'm starting to believe it isn't a hoax and that it might not kill me after all.

Oh, and finally at 29 weeks there's an unmistakable half-globe stuck under my shirt.  And it's going to be okay!