Can we talk about the elephant in the room when it comes to pregnancy complications? If you’ve ever had a complication during pregnancy, you know exactly what I am about to say. It’s what all doctors say when something goes wrong in pregnancy and it’s this: You didn’t do anything to cause this.
But how do you know that, dear obstetrician? I mean, according to the laws of physics, something caused this pregnancy complication. I am not saying it was the goat cheese or the sips of wine I snuck in at dinner, but it was something. Since you can’t give me a clear cut reason as to why this happened, who are you to say it wasn’t something that I did?
Or is this just a phrase doctors use to prevent unnecessary guilt? Because, to be frank, that’s not really fair. If there’s something I did, I want to know. (Obviously. I don’t want to do it again.)
Maybe I am just venting here, but it seems like there is a contradiction in terms going on with the issue of pregnancy complications. After all, pregnant women are told that they can work out, travel, live life as normally, but as soon as something goes wrong they are told to stop these things.
Is everything really fine…until it’s not? Or are some of our actions really causing these complications? But since there is no way to tell what pregnancies they will effect, we are told everything is fine…until it is not? As someone who’s had her fair share of pregnancy complications, both major and minor, I have to wonder.
Let’s see, my first pregnancy I was 26, super fit, ready to be the healthy, power-walking, workout class attending, pregnant girl. But at 10 weeks I started spotting. It’s nothing you did, my doctor told me, but no more exercise. Huh? If exercising didn’t cause my bleeding, then why I am to stop?
My second pregnancy I probably walked 10 miles back and forth between my hotel and conference center everyday at a Las Vegas trade show I had to attend for work, not to mention I was on my feet for 12 hours or more. I miscarried soon afterward at 10 weeks. My doctor assured me it was probably just a genetic abnormality and nothing I did at the conference. (Side note: the genetic tests came back fine chromosomally.)
My fourth pregnancy I got a horrible virus during the first trimester. Like so sick that I just knew in my heart a pregnancy could never survive it. And it didn’t. That was my second miscarriage. At least that was nothing I could have helped.
I won’t even get into to my last pregnancy. Let’s just say my poor husband had to go a full 40 weeks without “intimate relations” (although I was assured it wasn’t intercourse that caused my previous pregnancy complications – go figure).
I am glad we live in a world where expecting women are encouraged to be active and healthy. Gosh I know there are scores of women who kick box and run marathons up until 40 weeks. But unfortunately I am not of them.
And I don’t think I’m alone.
I remember gazing at the long line of wheelchairs outside the sonogram room on the antepartum floor at Baylor during my third pregnancy (amniotic sac ruptured at 14 weeks – oh but nothing I did to cause it, of course). So many women, so many problems on that pitiful floor. Were all these complications really random and unavoidable as I had been told about all of mine?
I sometimes can’t shake the feeling that maybe our do-anything generation of expecting mothers might be a bit too confident. Maybe even a bit cavalier about their rapidly changing bodies. Perhaps there is something to be said for the once long held view that pregnancy should be treated with a bit of fragility. Our bodies are amazing and capable, but they aren’t perfect after all.
Or maybe it’s just me in the end. And my longing for answers when doctors could give me none, except to say: It’s nothing that you did, but don’t do this…
Photo: Unsplash; Joey Thompson
