35 Weeks, 3 Days

Last Thursday, George and I excitedly attended the much anticipated 34 week ultrasound in ENGLISH.  Yay!  We can finally see our baby and communicate to the technicians and doctor about any questions or concerns we have been harboring since our last 20 week French scan.  We walked into the ultrasound office confident things were most likely perfectly normal and the baby is in position ready to be birthed.  We were oh so excited to have a more enriching ultrasound experience being that we could communicate better with American docs than what we received in France this summer with the communication barrier.  Don’t get me wrong, the French ultrasound scan was good, high tech and all, but the language barrier created some uneasiness as to our individual outcome.  We were very excited to be able to communicate better this time.  Well… expectations shot… that’s not exactly how it went down.

As the scanner began making its gooey way across my swollen belly, the young and rather cold technician began by telling us the baby is in a transverse position.  WHAT?!?!? Confused, I said, really?  Well, that’s not good, right?  She continued by agreeing that this position is not good and showed us the baby’s head smashed up against my right rib cage and her little butt smashed against my left rib cage.  Her legs and arms are having a grand ‘ole time kicking and punching me with the extra room on the entire lower part of my belly.

Let me back up with a little fetal position education… in case you are not aware, most babies turn into a head down position, called the vertex position, ready to be birthed by around 30 weeks.  Some rare babies turn breech instead meaning feet down, head up, but can actually be birthed vaginally in a breech position if they stay that way until the end.  However, many c-section happy doc’s won’t allow a vaginal breech birth.  Extremely rare is the transverse baby where the head is neither down or up and instead sideways.  Babies in transverse position CAN NOT BE BORN VAGINALLY NO MATTER WHAT.  Not to mention, this position is extremely painful for the mother since there is way less room going side to side in the uterus than top to bottom.  I literally feel like my ribs are breaking constantly especially on my right side.  It is a constant dull aching pain with intermittent sharp jolts of pain when she tries to move.  And now my upper right side of my back is causing constant excruciating pain as well.  To say it bluntly, this completely sucks!  All I want is to have a normal, healthy, calm, peaceful vaginal birth.  A birth where I can connect with my baby immediately after she comes out.  A birth where we can all enjoy the benefits of delayed cord clamping and no pain medicines, pitocin or epidurals.  A birth with calm music and dim lights verses the bright and loud surgical rooms.  I want to avoid the major surgery of a c-section that includes the horridly long and painful recovery and instead experience a natural birth with little to no recovery.  I don’t want my baby to be ripped out of me and whisked away for an hour or more while they sew me up.  I JUST WANT TO HOLD MY BABY THE MINUTE SHE EXISTS MY BODY!! IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?!?!?!  But this little baby laying in transverse position is threatening any chance of a peaceful delivery and any chance of that oh so important immediate mother/child bonding.

After the initial shock and disappointment learning the baby is transverse, the technician began to look for all the relevant body parts.  One leg, two legs, one foot, two feet, one arm, where’s the other arm?…. As the technician struggled to find the other arm, instead of keeping her concerns quiet, she blurts out “did you actually see both arms in your 20 week scan in France?”  What?!?!? Again… I began to tense up and freak a bit… “Ummmmm, I am pretty sure we saw both arms and legs, right honey?”  George didn’t say a word.  He just stared at the monitor watching what the technician was doing.  She then started to look for the heart and once she found the heart, she coldly said, “how thorough was the ultrasound doc in France when he looked at the heart?”  The tone of her voice implied that she was seeing something disturbing with our baby’s heart.  We both quickly piped in and told her “the doc is France was very through to our knowledge and his ultrasound machine was better than this one you are using.”  She seemed to get a bit defensive and refused to answer any more of our questions.  She continued looking at different body parts on our baby in silence and then left the room stating the doctor will come in to talk to us.  Five minutes later, the doctor comes in and says he wants to do the scan himself before he talks to us.  As he repeated the scan, his voice was a bit nicer and more compassionate, but still hesitant.  He mentioned that he was having difficulty seeing things, but that he had no reason to believe anything was actually wrong.  He just couldn’t see much.  He said our 12 weeks scan with him looked really good.  I said to him I can show you the scan from France and he quickly replied with “I don’t look at other doctor’s pictures.”

George and I walked out of there feeling waaaay worse than before.  Forget the transverse position… most importantly is our child okay?  Does she have two arms?  Is her heart okay?  How could someone be so cold as to scare the crap out of us like this?  The second I got home I pulled out the images of her 20 week French scan and began searching for photos that included both arms and any images I could find of her little heart.  Thankfully, there were a few photos that showed two elbow and two hands, so I’m sure there must be two healthy arms connecting to them and her heart seemed to show a healthy pump with four chambers.  I’m sure the French doc would have told us if he saw anything abnormal.  What a shitty ass American technician!  What a bitch!

Since we found out a week ago about the transverse position, I’ve gone to 3 chiropractor appointments, another doctor check up, another ultrasound, had the “Webster Massage Method” done on me 3 times, I’ve been burning some weird incent thing on my little toe, I’ve done acupuncture on my other little toe, AND I’ve been standing on my head and laying inverted as much as I can all in between doing my massive amounts of work for Rybovich preparing for the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show and my two freelance jobs as well as taking care of Alexa, the house and meals while George is out of the country yet again this time playing golf in Spain!  Ahhhhhhh… ok, Big breath…. Ok, I’m glad I got that all out.

I would post the pictures from our 34 week ultrasound, but it is so not worth it.  The scan photos are shit.  I’m sure everything is fine, but I’m still praying every day.  Praying for a healthy baby, praying for a healthy delivery and hoping this little munchkin decides to turn into proper birthing position soon.