Week 18
~ Ultrasound
This week was pretty eventful - I had my first ultrasound! The ultrasound clinic here, which is a branch of the hospital, requests that you show up early for your appointment. I’m glad that we did, because after the technician completed the exam, which took about half an hour, she invited Spencer in and turned the screen so that we could see. It was so amazing! We could see it wiggling and moving around in there. My favourite parts to see were the little hand opening and closing, and the front view of the nose and mouth.
Oh, it’s so weird, but literally as I was typing this, my midwife called to say that she received the results from the ultrasound, and that everything’s great and the baby looked healthy. My placenta is at the top/front of my uterus, and my cervix is nice and tightly closed.
Then on the evening of the ultrasound, my friend Teneille and I attended the first session of the prenatal classes offered by the Health Authority here. We knew we weren’t going to learn much, as it was a basic class on nutrition and health during pregnancy, etc. It was really disappointing, though, much more than we thought it would be. The instructor had some sort of public-speaking problem, and every few words would utter, "Uuuuummm," and it got to be really aggravating towards the end. She didn’t provide accurate or complete information on many topics. For instance, she didn’t explain why fetuses need to store iron in their liver while they’re in utero, which is because breast milk isn’t a strong source of iron, and they need the iron for the first six months of life while they are exclusively breast-fed. The video they showed us to warn us of the dangers of drinking, smoking, and drugs was extremely out-dated and silly. The actors in it were terrible, and no one took it seriously. In fact, one of the pregnant women, who was smoking when Teneille and I arrived, could be heard whispering to her partner throughout the video, telling him how untrue the facts in the video were. The video stated that the babies of pregnant women who smoke often have low birth weights, and she said that couldn’t be true, because her first son was over eight pounds when he was born. It made me so angry that the one person in that class who really could have learned something, didn’t come away with any new information, because it was so poorly presented. Two women in the class were both reading the horrible "What to Expect When You’re Expecting," and wouldn’t stop making references to it, like it was some sort of medical textbook. I think that maybe I’ll look into teaching prenatal classes, because the ignorance of the participants was so mind-boggling to me, it’s been driving me crazy ever since! The only thing Teneille and I learned was that you can get the fire department here to install your car seat for you.
Well, there’s my rant for this week, glad I got that off my chest!
P.S. to "Angie" who wrote me an email the other day, I'm sorry but I accidentally deleted it. :( Could you re-send it if you still have it? Thanks, and sorry. ~C
Chelsea
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