Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Our Second Birth Story

Episode Date: March 2, 2018

We've been gone for a little while, but with good reason! We had another baby. To save ourselves sisterly in-fighting in their teen years, we're recounting the (slightly less eventful) birth of our second daughter this week. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines, the escalant macaque for the mouth. Wow! Hello, everybody, and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour of Miscite at Medicine. I'm your co-host, just McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. Sydney, welcome back to the saddle. Thank you, Justin. The podcasting saddle. Also, I'm gonna tell you, I had saddles installed in this room right of all the chairs. I wondered why the seat was so uncomfortable and yet at the same time, I mean, I feel ready to like go head out on the trail.

The range? Yes, I guess. I have ridden a horse once in my life. I have no, I have very little reference for what a saddle is like. Yeah. Oh, you know, it's for a horse. It's for a horse.

Well, I know it's for a horse, but you know what I mean? Like, I don't have like a great knowledge of horses or saddles or riding. Luckily, this episode will require none of that. This episode is, we did after Charlie was born, we had a rough experience, I would say, a difficult experience, and we wanted to share that because we had talked about pregnancy a lot

leading up to it. And we thought it would be, we had such a different experience this time. I would say overall, easier, I would say, but different and interesting. Definitely easier. And different ways. And people responded to the last episode so much.

And I think that these are stories that a lot of people don't share. And I think that because of that, you have less of an idea of what to expect when you're expecting. Yeah. Or what, I don't want to say what's normal because there's no normal. But what is average, what tends to happen, and what can happen, what can happen, what the

extremes are and some of the things that maybe we don't talk about because they don't seem as important, but are going to seem really important to you in the moment. And also, if we did a whole episode on Charlie's first story and we didn't on Cooper's, it's a whole thing. I feel like someday they're going to be old enough that Cooper's really going to be traumatized by that. And also folks, this one doesn't require research. And it's been a bit of a couple of weeks.

So let's get into it. I didn't talk to you about this before, but I feel like maybe we structure it like, moment leading up to the birth. First half adds and then after birth. After birth. After birth. Yeah. That's not good. By the way, can I just say, when people say the word after birth, they mean the placenta.

Okay. Could we all call it placenta? Because after births, there's something about that. That's very yucky. Yucky, but placenta doesn't. And either way, I agree to disagree. Either way, it's not yucky, but for some reason, the term after birth sounds, I don't know. So Sid, how did we get pregnant?

Well, do you want to ask, Charlie can inform you as she did in the car the other day? Yes, that the mommy has an egg and the daddy has nerves. The nerve in the egg have to meet in the right place. And then boom. And we've heard it all this four times. Boom is always part of the story. Then boom, boom, boom. There's a baby. And the doctor takes it out. So we won't tell you how babies are made. No. You're going to have to go ask a trusted adult, not me. But this was a very different leading up to the having

Cooper than it was with Charlie, I would say, because with Charlie, I had very much planned on, well, first of all, I had expected a vaginal delivery, because that's what you expect. I mean, that's generally what most people think is going to happen unless they know for some specific reason they have to have a C-section. And I had kind of a birth plan and it none of it happened the way that I wanted it to. Do you think that you were less inclined to focus on a birth plan? Yes. For this one, because we...

Very intentionally, I went in with zero expectations on that end, because I knew one, I knew that because Charlie was so big and she was not able to fit in terms of a vaginal delivery. I knew that one, Cooper was probably gonna be big and two, I probably wasn't gonna be able to have a vaginal birth after Cicerian or V-Back, as you'll hear a lot of people call it. Even though it was an option that was given to me by our doctor.

This is doctors. By our doctors. Yes. Yeah, I could touch on that here a second. But it was an option. It was not, you know, a lot of people say, well, doctors don't even offer that. No, we were offered that for sure. It was no one told me I had to have a repeat cesarean, but it was definitely suggested that it was pro whatever we decided to do, it was likely to end in a cesarean. And I wouldn't necessarily advise people for their first time to not have a plan.

Like I'm not saying that it's a better way. No, I don't think so at all. It's just, I think we sort of saw like that it wasn't going to be exactly what we had sort of initially hoped for. And we were sort of more focused on some of the stuff that came afterwards. Sure. And I think it's really important to know, in my case, for like a repeat C-section, why did you have a C-section the first time? If there was some sort of emergency where, you know, the baby was on the monitor and the

heart rate dropped and so they had to do a C-section really quickly because they were worried about the baby, you may be a great candidate to be back, to have a trial of labor and to, you know, vaginal for vaginal delivery the next time around. But if it is for the reasons that I had a C-section the first time around, if it's that your pelvis is shaped differently or smaller, or the baby is just especially large, and it never progresses, you never progress in labor, it never descends, then you may end up having another C-section. So people can get an idea of where we're coming from. Can you give a very quick summary of what happened with Charlie?

So with Charlie, one, she was huge. What did the one doctor we saw called her a moose baby? A moose. What did the one doctor we saw called her a moose baby? A moose. A moose. Uh, she was very large. She was 9 pounds 11 ounces. And my pelvis, as I have now been told by three different physicians, who've examined me. My pelvis is flat and small.

And as one doctor put it, not a 10 pound pelvis. And I love it just that way. In reference to the fact that I was 10 pounds at birth, Justin was 11 pounds at birth. We have big babies. We have large babies. I don't have a good reason why. Charlie was so large. Cooper was also large. Yeah. Um, I, that can't be associated with just station. We have a spoiler. They know I know that we had the baby. Well, yeah. The second half. We should have prefaced with everything turns out fine. We did that with Charlie. Yeah. Everything turns out fine. Yeah. And I think we were, we should have prefaced with everything turns out fine. I think we did that with Charlie. Yeah, everything turns out fine. Yeah.

And I think we were aware, okay, so you were still talking about Cooper. Oh, so anyway, so because of that, Charlie never descended into the birth canal. She stayed floating around. She was the head was what we call ballotable, meaning if you reached up and tried to, was the head engaged down in the pelvis ready to start coming out, she was floating around in there, never came down. So. And see section.

So we did a C section and then just run through the rest of, because I don't want to speak. So after the, after the C section, I had polyhydramneos, which means I had a lot of extra amniotic fluid in there. Again, I don't know why. The doctor didn't know I, not sure. We didn't have any of the things that usually predicts that. And Charlie had a lot of fluid in her lungs, aspirated some of that, and likely had some inflammation. And as a result, had trouble breathing it first.

So she spent the first week of her life in the NICU. I spent the first week of her life in the NICU with her and it was it was arduous. She came out just fine. She is absolutely fine but obviously it was not ideal. It was very scary. Yeah and I think that that I'll say two things about that with regards to Cooper. One is that I think we try to do things a little bit differently during the pregnancy. I think you were probably more active and I think we probably tried to watch what we were both eating. I did. And I don't know at the end of the day, I, all the doctors that I that I ended up seeing said that probably had nothing to do with it. But I still, I don't know. I think it's normal to kind of blame yourself if things don't go like you expect them to,

like what did I do wrong? And I'm not saying that I necessarily believe that as a scientist, but as a mom, I'm always gonna question, did I do something wrong? So I tried to be, have a healthy or pregnancy. It's also, I think very normal to look for things that you can control, because so much of this process is out of your control.

Now we've referenced multiple doctors. Can you explain that a little bit at this point? So our wonderful doctor who delivered Charlie, who actually delivered me. Delivered Travis and Griffin. Yes, and both my sisters, Taylor and Riley, who I have known obviously for a very long time, and he's just a minute.

You'll one could say you're a terror life. Yeah, my entire life. First person never lay hands on me. So he unfortunately got very sick right towards the end of our pregnancy. He's an older fella, as you may have guessed, from him delivering generations of people. And he's okay, thank goodness,

but it was significant of an illness enough that he had to take a leave of absence from work Still is on absence from work and not be available for the delivery of course, which I was a rough day It was rough, but mainly from I should say concern about him Yeah, he's I mean I I I work there too So she's a colleague as well as my doctor and I care about him a lot So thank goodness. He's he is recovering. He's doing okay, but it was scary work there too. So she's a colleague as well as my doctor. And I care about him a lot. So thank goodness he's he is recovering. He's doing okay. But it was scary. That late in

our pregnancy, we were in the 30 is 31st, 30 second week, something around there. And since in an extra weird position, where there's a handful of doctors there that had they been the ones to deliver the baby, they were doctors that Sydney like trained that were a former med students and stuff. That was one thing is so luckily it's a big practice. There are a lot of other doctors available who are willing to take me as a patient right away so I didn't have to worry about just finding a doctor. And also you, I think I have a little bit of leg up on on other people because you have a podcast. That's why they all listen to. No, but

I I was it is a little weird to be offered like they're multiple doctors and I trade I like they were my students I taught them as students and they're great and I'm sure they're great but I kind of wanted somebody I had never taught. So luckily we got switched to a different doctor in the practice who's been there a very long time who I knew as well and he was happy to take me on thank goodness. Yes. And he was great.

So no complaints about that. Okay. So let's see, you're pregnant for a while. How was this pregnancy? Then I wasn't. That's the whole show. How was the pregnancy different from from your last one? I like you said, I tried a lot harder to the first time around with Charlie. I think I thought, oh, I'm pregnant, I can eat anything now because I don't have to watch my weight. And that was silly. And I'm a doctor and I should know better because you still want to take care of yourself

and eat healthy and exercise. And, you know, they're, I'm not going to say like there's a right amount of weight that you have to gain and everybody who gains less or more is wrong. That's not true. But generally there's like an average range that is best. And I gained twice that with Charlie. So I tried to eat better, be healthier. I felt better this pregnancy.

I didn't have a lot of the symptoms. A lot of the problems I had the first time around. Not nearly as much swelling. I didn't get carpal tunnel. One of the big differences, I would say, that came later on is the amount of protrusion from your stomach with regards to this child was absolutely my modeling. It definitely looked like a scene from Alien.

It was wild. Yes. My stomach was very large. No, I meant like when it would poke out. When it was like poke out of your stomach. Well, I was also very large. But we found out why. Interestingly enough, this kid is in the 99th percentile of her height. It is a big

child. Yeah, I don't know how when I held her after she was out of me. I thought, how did you fit? How did you fan? How did you ever fit? Which makes sense. Why I was always feeling limbs pushing both up and down. My bladder was constantly in pain and my diaphragm. I didn't know how that was possible, but it was. We also decided to go a little bit earlier than last time. Technically at 39 weeks, you're still full-term, but so we didn't go too early. But what we did go at 39 is opposed to waiting the full 40 weeks. That's when your due date is, is it 40 weeks? And we went 39

in one day, which was just because we were full term, I was measuring large. We knew she was going to be large. And there was a concern about the fluid too, right? We were trying to avoid a repeat of that. That, that, and then just her getting any larger than she already was. And there's been some interesting studies, and I won't get into the whole thing about, and a lot of this has been done with people who are of what they call advanced maternal age, meaning you're over 35 when you're pregnant. And I'm not, but I'm close.

And so there've been some interesting studies that have suggested like maybe inducing, or doing something that's already nine weeks, in some cases is safer than going the full 40. Now again, that's very situational. It's every patient is different. I'm not saying that's true across the board.

But with all that in mind, and 39 we know being safe for the baby, we decided to go at 39 and 1. So we arrived at the hospital for our C-section. And I can only speak for my experience here here and I want to your perspective as well First off the thing that you are not ready for is There at least both the times that we've done it. There's a lot of waiting you should we showed up Probably for I guess by the time I was sitting done four hours before the actual surgery It was delayed of course all surgeries. I feel like I delayed no what time they tell you, even if you're the first of the day, everything always

gets pushed back. That's good to know. I mean, like, don't have people show up late, but do let them know that they should bring a book. Yeah. Yeah. And, well, and if for no other reason than, you're going to lay there a while and get anxious and just know you're going to lay there a while, probably, I don't know, maybe your hospital

runs on a better, maybe you're more organized, but I tend to find that most surgeries, something happens, stuff comes up, emergencies, unfortunately, occur. And thank goodness we weren't the emergency. That's what I always try to keep in mind. If I'm being bumped for somebody, that person's probably pretty sick and I just hope they're okay and I'm thankful that I'm not that emergency right now. But we waited a long time during which they pumped me full of IVV fluids.

And I had to pee many times. Oh yeah, you couldn't eat or drink anything after 6am. I woke up at 5am and ate peanut butter crackers and drank water. A bunch of water so that I would be dehydrated. So after all the waiting, which is any complaint that they were icing the kicker, we finally went in the room and the way it works, at least this is how the pen for us, they take the pregnant person into a different room where they get a, A spinal. It's the anesthesia. So I am numb and paralyzed from, you know,

just above my belly button down, essentially. And then they took you in and started the surgery, right? They... Well, I mean, I was in the OR when they did the spinal. So they take me back to the OR and get me prepped, meaning they do the anesthesia, lay me down, you know, put the catheter in, I'm naked. There's a sheet up at that point,

so I don't have to think about everything that's going on down below. I asked this if it was okay if med students were in the room and Sydney was like, yeah, that's fine. I was like, sweet, is it really fine? She's like, yeah, it's actually less fine. This is my rationale.

I don't care. I have let med students give me shots and do PPDs on me. Those are the TB tests. You have to get every so often. I will let them examine me. I let them come in and talk to me when I am going to my doctor's appointments. I have no problem.

I'm a teacher. I work at an academic institution. I have no problem with medical students being involved in my care. The thing that was different about the C section is I knew I would be completely naked and I have to lecture to these students and teach them and sometimes work with them one on one and I just once they've seen you naked I thought that would be kind of awkward. So I had no problem with residents obviously but I still teach those students and so I didn't

want them to see me naked. I didn't care if they came in afterwards to do whatever post-op checks and exams and all that stuff, but just the nudity. How long have they started the surgery before I came in? Just, I think all they'd done was open me up. Yes, they opened me up. All I can feel, all you can feel in case you've never had anything like this done, I can feel a lot of tugging and pulling and pressure, but there's no pain.

So it's a very weird sensation. So I as the non-pig and person had to put on like a hygienic garb, and then they walk you into the room and they walked me past where the surgery was happening. So I kind of did this embarrassing, like put my left hand up to shield my eyes. So I could just like focus on Cindy's face and not look at her gully works.

I'll, I'll, they don't want you to look. to look you by the way Charlie thought you look like Mike TV. I think that's a good explanation for the outfit you have to wear. And I was wrenched. I was gripped in. I didn't let it show obviously, but I was gripped in sort of mind boggling terror because of the last experience we had. And it was not how I felt the last time. Like everything we'd heard up to that point

about C-sections is like, you know, it's very safe, very predictable, you know, you go smoothly, right? And then after the last one, which turned into, I mean, like they knew something was wrong with Charlie immediately. And they were, she was whisked out of the, they were before, she was the right color. And you couldn't see what was happening with her. She was whisked out of the. Yes, she was the right color.

Yeah. And she was happening with her. She wasn't crying. I mean, like, I was, I was already in therapy, but I was in like double therapy after that. It was very, it was traumatizing. And obviously, a lot of people had a lot worse not not saying anything of that, but like that is. That is the only thing that I could think about what we were in that in the room when I was walking I was like, I just don't know how I will handle it again. And also the last time Sydney's mom was in the room with us. That was what you're not really supposed to have two people back are and I'm sure it varies place to place,

but at our institution you're only allowed to have one person back with you during the C section But against the national podcast. Well, no, it was and it wasn't even so much because I worked there It was because my doctor knew my mom because he delivered me and both my sisters and had known her for a long time And she just begged him and he said okay fine That was it. Yeah, so it wasn't my pull So I was terrified too he said, okay, fine. That was it. Yeah. So it wasn't my pull. So. So I was terrified too. And I had told everyone in the room that actually

before you came in. I told the resident and our doctor already knew that. And I would had told the nurse anesthetist and the nurse that I was working with. I told everybody what I was scared of. So they all kind of knew going in how nervous we were that I was working with, I told everybody what I was scared of. So they all kind of knew going in how nervous we were and how important it was, which they did a good job of, as soon as Cooper came out, is that okay, that I jumped to that part?

Which they had to actually use a vacuum to pull her out, which is not typical during a C-section, but she was in there and she was big. So what? I didn't know that. Yeah. I heard it horrifying. I hear a layman in that sit scenario because the people doing the surgery are chatting

to each other. And me, as a non-doctor, I'm trying to both listen and not listen because I know just enough to be panic about it. He said, like I'm ruining like tones of people's voices, you know. It doesn't help. Let me tell you, to be the doctor who's laying there, it's not necessarily more helpful. Because when I heard there are a lot of adhesions to the bladder, I thought, oh crap, because I know what that means. What does it mean?

So after any kind of surgery that you've had, you can have adhesions or places where stuff kind of sticks together, like extra fibers tissue and stuff inside the abdomen. It's not scar tissue, but think about it in that same light that can form. And it can make things stick to each other that shouldn't. My bladder was kind of stuck to my uterus. And so they had to separate them and then you risk like injuring the bladder, which is bad. They did and everything was fine.

But I heard that as they were talking about it. And then I heard the vacuum pop off of Cooper's head and I know that sound. So I said, are you using a vacuum? Because I didn't, I mean, they didn't announce they were using one. Anyway, she came out and she was screaming from the jump, which is already a good thing. I've ever heard in my entire life. And because we had, I think

Ben so nervous and I had told everybody that immediately the nurse starts going, she looks good. She looks good. And don't worry, mom. Don't worry, dad. She looks good. Appguars are nine and nine. Those are good scores. That means those are good, good scores for the baby. Everything was looking good at first. First, and then she started grunting, which like again, I didn't think anything of it. She was just grunting. Yeah. And having difficulty, I guess, getting a good breath going.

There's a lot of mucus. I get a lot of fluid. A lot of fluid. Yeah, just which can happen. She was big. So as I mentioned, she was nine pounds one ounce. She was 21 inches long. Her head was 38 centimeters, which can happen. She was big. So as I mentioned, she was nine pounds one ounce. She was 21 inches long. Her head was 38 centimeters, which is 99 percentile.

So she's a big baby. And sometimes with these big babies who are C section, they don't get squeezed through the birth canal. And so they have extra fluids still in their lungs. The birth thing process can squeeze that out of them when she didn't get that. So she had some fluid in her lungs and she was having some trouble getting it up. So she was grunting and they were about to call the NICU when our nurse anesthetist, Cheryl. I will never forget this woman.

I almost tried to pivot on the name. Like, let's just call her Cheryl. Yeah, Cheryl. She was amazing and she said, I got this and she suctioned her out, did a deep suction, which not all the nurses can do, but she's a nurse anesthetist, so she's allowed to. And then when she's still granting a little bit, instead of calling the NICU, that she said, let's do skin to skin, meaning they uncovered the top part of me and strip Cooper down and wrapped her to my chest and covered us both in blankets.

And within a minute, she was fine. It was amazing. I've never seen anything like in my entire life. I know. It's just a magic I've ever seen in my entire life. I know it happens. I mean, academically, I know that, but I've never witnessed it like that. And it was amazing.

We have a lot more to talk about in this experience, but we are going very long, so let's take a quick break to head to the building department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that I skilled at my car before the mountain. So, things were looking pretty good for us. We were able to take Cooper back to the room. So, things were looking pretty good for us. We were able to take Cooper back to the room, and specifically we were able to take her back to the room, and keep her there, which is kind of a new policy for y'all.

That's right. So, our hospital has been slow to adopt the rooming in, or what is also known as baby friendly hospital status. You would think if there was a known as baby friendly hospital status. You would think if there was a status called baby friendly, the hospital will want to go for it. So that might be some marketing in there. And there's a lot of controversy with that term,

as you may imagine, because exactly what you just said, it sounds like any hospital that doesn't adopt all these policies is baby unfriendly. And that sounds really bad. But as a result of the new policies, they encourage skin to skin, which means, and this is a good thing, by the way, skin to skin, there's a lot of evidence that says,

taking a baby and putting it directly on the person who's just given birth's chest, skin to skin, can help stabilize their temperature and their glucose faster. Obviously, we saw some improvement with the breathing rate right away. And there's also a lot of good bacteria that you're putting on the baby. I know that sounds weird, but we also delay the bath now. We don't bait. We used to take them and scrub them

down right away. And now we don't do that. We take them and put them on on the person who's just delivered chest. And that's good. And I got to keep Cooper there for a long time. And then we just were wheeled to our post delivery room over on the other unit together, which was great. And essentially Cooper did not leave our room after that with the exception of like to get weighed and do the hearing screen only because the scale is they said too heavy to move from room to room. So so that was basically it as opposed to previously at our hospital and at a lot of hospitals what would generally

happen is the the nurses would come in to like give you a break was the thought. So we'll take baby and put it in the nursery for a few hours and let you take a break, or like every morning routinely they would come get all the babies and put them in the nursery so that the doctors who are examining the babies can come and check out the babies all in one place. And now, as you know, the doctors who check out babies, they just come to your room and they will not take your baby to the nursery unless you specifically ask for it. And there's a lot of controversy over this.

Yeah. So it's, and please, if I speak out of turn, it was really difficult, I think, for some, like, and I was someone who kind of had a different experience because I Wasn't a lot of stay in the Nick you so I couldn't sleep there. We had the room You had a hospital room for the first couple of nights that I was able to hang out in with you, right? but the but once I was discharged and moved up to the Nick you with Charlie you had to leave and Charlie wasn't in there with us and moved up to the NICU with Charlie, you had to leave. And Charlie wasn't in there with us. So when we, those first couple nights were like, it was rough, because it's not just,

I mean, it's like you're in a hospital, we were in a room where there was like a little bit of light coming, like our window was out to the interior of the hospital. Yeah. So there was like always, yeah, there's always like a little bit of light and you're in a hospital, so you're not gonna sleep well anyway. I'm, you know, I'm on like always. Yeah, there's always like a little bit of light. And you're in a hospital. So you're not going to sleep well anyway. Um, I'm, I, you know, I'm on like

a fold out, whatever, which is great. I mean, I was like, I thought I was going to sleep on the couch, so I'm not going to play in there. But like, it was wake, you know, she was waking up pretty much constantly. And you were recovering from surgery. And like, I was there. And luckily, like, we're fortunate enough that I enough that I have a job that gives me paternal leave and I could take the time to stay with you there. And we're also fortunate enough to have someone to watch our other child that she could stay with. So we were able to do that.

But for a lot of people, it's probably not an option. It's really, I think that's the problem with it and and let me say let me preface with I'm in favor of encouraging rooming in as much as possible. I wanted that and even if our hospital had not moved to that I would have demanded it anyway. So that that is where I'm coming from. So that probably that probably is a bias. So I just want to get that out there. That being said, the problem is that I had a partner who was with me from the jump. And so when, for instance, I first got back to my room, I still couldn't move my legs. So if I had had to get up and down to get Charlie out of her, or I mean Cooper out of her bass and up by myself, I don't know how I would have, I don't know what I would have

done. And I think that that can lead to a lot of problems with, we worry about like, I'm breastfeeding and we worry about people falling asleep while they're breastfeeding and holding their babies. Well, how are you not going to do that if you're exhausted, you're coming out of a-section and you don't have anybody to help you get the baby back and forth into the bass and that and you physically, you cannot walk yet because you're still paralyzed. I think those are issues that we haven't figured out how to address. And I mean, the nurse will tell you, you can call them every time to come put your baby back in and out and help you out. But they also have other patients to take care of. You know they're not going to be able to come running at your back and call. And you also feel like a burden saying, hey, can you help me again?

Hey, can you help me again? Because you have no idea. I mean, sometimes breastfed babies want to feed every 30, 45 minutes. It feels like, and you can't, it's not feasible to call the nurse every time you need to get your baby back out. Yeah. And we're not, a lot of this stuff with medicine, we come at pretty hard from a perspective like, I don't know the right answer, it's complicated.

It is because it really, in order to do rooming in, it assumes that you have a partner who can be with you 24-7. Now, we are very lucky because we're in a position where Justin was able to stay with me the whole time. The only times he left, I had someone else there, my mom, or my dad would come. Yeah, like if Cindy needed to use the bathroom, for example, like their options are one, leave the baby unattended, not good. Well, and then what they tell you to do is just leave the bathroom door open and pull the

bass and head as close to the bathroom door as possible. Which, I mean, that's fine. I'm not saying like, that's bad. It's just, there are moments where you'd like to just go to the bathroom and shut the door behind you and have five minutes to do that. And you can't, if you don't have someone else in the room with you, or you can call the nurse and say, I have to go pee when you take my baby. Right. And they really, they make it sound like the nursery is really for like, dire situations. You're not supposed to send them to the nursery because you want a break. Right.

I mean, they don't, they don't explicitly say that, but that's kind of the underlying message. And so, and so I think it would be very hard if you didn't have a partner or if you did, but they couldn't stay with you. Like, we have family support. Charlie was able to stay with my parents while we were in the hospital. If you don't have family in town

or you don't have anybody who can watch, if you have other kids, Justin was able to take time off work. What if he couldn't have, you know? Not everybody is as lucky, you know, as privileged as we were in this situation. We did have, we were not completely out of the woods though. We did have kind of a nerfing situation regarding Cooper's glucose levels.

Can you talk about that? I mean, I could explain it extremely well, but I want to give you some time. So this would be a normal protocol for a baby that was as large as Cooper was or for if I had had gestational diabetes, meaning diabetes during pregnancy. The worry is that these big babies are going to drop their glucose levels because while they were in utero, while they were inside, they were getting all this excess insulin from mom. And so once they're delivered, they still have those higher, they're also circulating higher levels of insulin themselves. And so they're lowering their sugar more than they need to

because they're not getting all this excess glucose from their parent anymore. So as a result, their glucose drops. And the, the, Cooper's did, sort of, they come in and check it every couple hours for a while. And it's very stressful because what we discovered is that when they came in and checked it and it looked kind of low, two things happen. One, they're doing it with this little heel stick so they're getting like a capillary glucose

level. It's like, welcome to Earth. Yeah. But then they have to send it down to the lab to actually get a plasma glucose, like an official lab, which is more accurate. And while they do that, they tell you you have to give your baby formula. The first time they gave me the option of breastfeeding her again, which I did, but then the second time they told me the protocol is I have to give a formula.

And so you air on the side of caution better safe than sorry You don't want to hypoglycemia can be deadly. You don't want to mess around that but the What you're risking is what happened to us, which is once the plasma glucose level came back. It was actually normal So she wasn't ever hypoglycemic So I mean we were bummed about, but it was really, I mean, like, this is not, it, like, it doesn't, it's mainly for the be able to say, like, that's all she's had.

You know what I mean? Like, it's not gonna hurt her. It doesn't hurt. There's nothing wrong with, nothing wrong with formula. There's nothing wrong with formula. It didn't hurt her to have those 20 ml's of formula. I think the only thing that frustrated me is,

I am, I breastfed Charlie. I feel very comfortable doing it. I feel very knowledgeable about it. And I was not worried about breastfeeding Cooper. And I really don't think there's anything anyone there could have said to sway me to do anything else. So when we started, I luckily, again, I've been very lucky. I've had an easy time breastfeeding both my children so far. It has been not a problem for me. I haven't had any of the difficulties some people face. That means said, I think if you were struggling a little bit

or you didn't have a lot of support for it or you didn't know a lot about it and there isn't a tradition of it in this country very well established and somebody comes in and tells you, you're not giving your baby enough sugar. You've got to give him formula right now. I think you would be very inclined to say, oh, forget this. I'm just giving him bottles. So I think that that kind of policy is hard if you're trying to breastfeed and you're not sure if you're doing it right and you're

scared and you're new at it. For me, it was easy to say, okay, well, I'm just going to wake her up and make her breastfeed more, because I feel confident that I can do that. I think I am a rare person in that regard though. And I think that we probably could have pushed hard or the second time, but honestly, this is me speaking for myself, we were still kind of gunshot after the last time.

That we were, I think on some level, we were paranoid that if we made too much of a fuss, they would take her away. I mean, I don't, I, I was scared about that. I mean, and that, some of, some of that's irrational. Sure, of course. Yeah, they had a no question. But, but I, I was scared after the first,

after the first go round of that. And I, obviously, you know, my doctor brain and my mom brain don't always communicate well. And so I err on the side of just listening to what other people are telling me when it comes to my children, because I get nervous about trying to use my own doctor brain, because it doesn't work as well. You could have leaned on my doctor brain a little bit more. Do you have one?

I've heard a good portion of this podcast. It was hard and the no harm was done. So what? She got some formula. No big deal. She was fine. That's the most important thing. But it was, I don't know, that's part of what we talk about baby-friendly hospitals.

Part of that initiative is like more support for breastfeeding for people who want to and to not just automatically. They used to just put formula in all the rooms. You had your baby, here's your complimentary package of formula, and they've stopped doing that, which is again, double edged sword. I don't need it. I don't, you know, there are a lot of people who might benefit from not having formula pushed on them, but on the flip side, sure and I said, if you've already made the decision, you're not gonna breastfeed.

Sure. It was probably nice to get that formula right away. So there's pros and cons. In general, I would want my kid with me the whole time no matter what. I mean, but again, if you hadn't been there, I don't know, especially in that first like five or six hours after surgery, I don't know what I would have done. I think what we're hitting on though is, and it's not me who I'm wrong on this, but I think

what we're hitting on is a lot of these things we're saying like, there isn't a right or wrong or a one size fits all solution for some of these issues. No, it's got to be individualized. It's got to be individualized, but the problem with the system that we have currently is it's all dictated by, there's very little room for sharrows in the system that we have now. Yeah. You were able to use their own judgment and say, I am familiar with the situation. Here's what I think would work for this exact scenario.

Yeah. It is literally so dictated by one size fits all, like these are the policies that we have in place that there's not a lot of room for individualization. And I think that like, so that's good. There's a lot, I've met a lot of people and some of them I wouldn't necessarily trust to be making big decisions like that. Sorry, I don't gonna undercutting myself here,

but like, I think that that's what we're kind of bumping up against is that it is a system. And like because of that, there are going to be things that fall through the cracks. Like, and I mean, this is obviously again, not a deal, but like giving your baby formula that it didn't need, you know, that kind of thing. Which again, I don't want this to sound like

we're knocking on formula, because thank goodness formula was created for situations where breastfeeding can't or isn't desired or whatever. But thank goodness we have for this right? Like thank goodness there is a Nicky even though we didn't want to go there. Yeah. I'm not like well, I just don't eat that's such I mean it's such a it's such a tricky topic because you know, I'm not doing anything except like Allowing daylight in the system for common sense and good

rational and you know instinct and Parent parenting instinct, you know like you knew that Cooper was eating fine. Like you knew she was, but again, like that's a pretty serious thing to be messing around with. Right, which is, yeah. No, it's hard. And I think that's the key to it is you have to be able to assess each situation and do its best and protocols don't allow for that. And when you're dealing with a newborn,

there's so much that you'd better safe than sorry. You know, you're so much that you'd rather air on the side of, well, just do the safer thing. Especially because you're not going to have physicians who are trained in this sitting in every room all night long. No. It's just not going to happen. You know, like, that's not the world we live in.

But it's, I mean, definitely, it's not necessarily the most marriage of a physician, not in this early world I want to live in. I like having you know, but I think this whole situation with rooming in, I think that it's a good idea moving in that direction because the hospitalization of birth, there was a lot of negative stuff that came with it, which is this idea that the baby does not need to really be with the person who just gave birth to them for a while. Like that's fine, we'll just separate them

and go do a bunch of stuff to the baby and you can chill somewhere else. I mean, the reintroduction of skin to skin and encouragement of breastfeeding, these are great things. These are important, wonderful things. But full-time rooming in, I mean, one decision I made after this delivery was not to take any pain medication, other than I be pro-fun. I didn't want anything that would affect my

thinking, affect my mental status, because... HQ, Sydney plays twice a day, she has to be fast and looser. After Charlie was born, I was talked into taking one of the pain medications which is the standard after surgery I mean and I felt very fuzzy and foggy and I couldn't think straight and I blamed myself after for her stuff happening in the NICU that I wasn't aware of not being like me being behind I kept coming up and finding out that things had happened as opposed to knowing what the next step was. And I blamed me being kind of fuzzy on the pain medication that first 24 hours is for that.

And whether or not that's fair or true, I'd already made the decision I'm not taking it this time around. And I didn't, and I'm not saying that's right for everybody. But I do think that it was a lot easier for me to one, be up all night feeding my child and not fall asleep and not have to worry about, you know, the dangers of falling asleep while you're breastfeeding your kid in the middle of the night, which is a huge problem and happens a lot. We're hearing more often happen in hospitals where they're roaming in because I didn't have any pain medication in my system.

Now the flip side was, oh, I mean, it hurts. I mean, I had surgery and it hurts and I be prepping is good, but it's not everything. So I'm not saying you need to do that, but I think that my decision to do that facilitated this and not everybody's gonna be able to, you know. But in the end We got home to go. Yes

All as well except she doesn't sleep No, she does like she's actually not slept. Oh, no, which is weird I think that she would need to as a human she would need to immensely in the day She love I'm power. She's asleep right now. She's asleep right this time. Yeah, but but at night She doesn't like to sleep so much. So that's unfortunate, but that part of you know that's that's normal. You know, full of just babies. That's not a medical issue. We're fine. Charlie loves her little sister. Yep. She is she adores her. Charlie by the way wore little pink hot pink scrubs that said big sister. So cute. It's so cute on the on the delivery on the delivery day, but they're getting along well. Trying to assassinate her occasionally.

She tries to hug her and then smush her. And we've had to work on that. She told me that she might cut her hair, but she wouldn't commit to saying she wouldn't cut her hair. Yeah. Cooper's full name, by the way, is Cooper Renee. I don't know if that's. Yeah. And she's named for, well, Renee is my Cooper's full name, by the way, is Cooper Renee. I don't know if that's, yeah.

And she's name for, uh, well, Renee is my mom's middle name, right? Yeah. But the Cooper comes from both Betty and Dale. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Equal parts. And also just because we like the name.

Um, Jimmy Buffett asked me if it was for DB Cooper, which I think we should get work in there somewhere. Who's that? It was a name, a guy that hijacked Boeing 727 back in the 70s. Oh. I remember, never got him. Wow. Yeah, it was wild.

That story. No, not for. Not for TV. And also not for Cooper from the trolls movie as Charlie keeps insisting. Yes, that's not the exciting. Folks, that is going to do it for us. Thank you for indulging us and letting us share this story with you. And we hope you got something out of it.

We will be back to our usual grind in the future, assuming we can at some point sleep. We will. We're going to get back on it. I want to say thank you to the taxpayers for letting us use their song medicines as the intro and outro program. Thanks to Max Fun Network for having us as part of their extended podcasting family. And thank you to you for listening and indulging us also in the hiatus that we had to breathe new life into this world.

But we will return to you again next week. So until then, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture Artistone Listener Supported