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2004-09-09 - 2.18pm��previous entry��next entry
31 weeks, 6 days - ENT appointment
Still here!
I had my appointment with the ENT specialist yesterday and I am not having surgery. I was reeeeally upset and disappointed after my appointment because it seemed to have the worst possible outcome - no surgery to fix the stupid noggin, and no satisfactory solution in the meantime. And worse.
I have to go back every week to the big hospital in London and get reviewed, to see if the noggin is shrinking or growing. They don't expect it to shrink so the darn bugger is stuck in my nose till after I give birth. This is the LAST thing I wanted. The thing that bothers me most is the idea that it will be there in my nose during labour, giving me a huge risk of a massive nosebleed when I start pushing. It's a nuisance right now, but that's the thing I'm most worried about - labour. I know that after Arthur is born it is likely to disappear, because it is most likely dependent on my pregnancy hormones, and that's why they tend to completely disappear after pregnancy is over. So it's not so much that I care about the actual noggin being in my nose. But I don't want a big nosebleed in labour!!! Nobody seems to understand this, so I felt upset at the appt, because they just said oh we'll have to be on hand to pack your nose if you start bleeding when you push in labour.
WHAT?!!!
Do they not realize that it's rather inconvenient (to say the least!) to have someone fiddling around packing gauze into my nose while I'm in the throes of pushing a baby out of my body?!!! I can't believe they don't see this as an issue. Quite aside from the fact that a nosebleed during labour would seriously disrupt the flow of something natural that I am trying to let my body flow with. Does NOBODY see birth as natural these days?!!!
I said to the ENT specialist that I'm having a homebirth. He shook his head and said that was not a good idea. I could have cried :( He said if my polyp has as great a tendency to bleed as I say it does, then I should give birth in a place where someone can pack my nose if it bleeds during labour. And then he said actually I should give birth at their big London hospital (where I did my clinical placement on labour ward) even though it's huge and horrible and highly medicalized with lots of intervention, and not local to where we live at ALL, because they have an on-call ENT specialist and my local hospital doesn't. Before I knew what was happening, he was arranging with his SHO to request with my local hospital that my maternity care be transferred to Big London Hospital as soon as possible. He said I should tell my midwife at my next antenatal appointment that I was transferring to Big London Hospital for the birth. I know I should have stood up for myself more but I felt so close to tears that I thought if I opened my mouth I would cry and look stupid. So I didn't say much. I did manage to say it was really important to me that I gave birth at home, but he just kept shaking his head and making me feel small and silly.
Well we came home and I was really upset. I felt totally unsupported and like NOBODY understood how important it is to me (and to Arthur too) where I give birth. The doctors all seem to think that birth is birth, it doesn't matter where, you're gonna just pop a baby out so what does it matter where that happens? And furthermore it HAS to be preferable to be under a billion paranoid doctors' watchful eyes while I'm at it. They can't see any other viewpoint at all, and if I say otherwise then they talk to me like I'm being irresponsible. I hate people who do that. I hate doctors right now. But that's just me being angry right now.
Neil said I should talk to someone about it, since I was so upset. He said I should write my diary. I felt too crushed and depressed to even bother writing here, which is weird for me. I just wanted to stare at the floor and disappear. Weird. Neil suggested maybe I phone someone who can give me advice, like my midwife or my mum or anyone. Or that I phone Sue (lady at church) to ask her to change my prayer request for the prayer chain that I was on earlier (because it was thought that I would be having surgery, people were all praying about that). But I felt that my midwife would not be supportive. I feel like she would just get highly anxious that a doctor had told me not to have a homebirth, and cancel it immediately. I also thought my mum and Sue would get anxious and be pushy with me about being "sensible" and listening to the doctors. So I felt I had absolutely no-one to turn to. It was a horrible claustrophobic feeling, I can't really describe it. I had no idea I could feel that strongly about birth and needing support over my wishes.
Eventually I remembered there's a place called AIMS (Association for Improvement in Maternity Services - or something like that!) who are extremely supportive of women who are having a hard time getting the home/water birth they want for whatever reason. So I figured they would be a good place to start, and would at least be able to tell me if I had enough of a risk factor to be forced to abandon my homebirth plans. So I left a message for them, but that was yesterday and they still haven't got back to me. I hope they do soon because I can't bear this all hanging over me, it's horrid. I do feel much better with the mindset that somebody is out there who might be able to support me and help my case.
I also feel a lot more confident and determined about standing up for the birth I want today. I did some research online about general anaesthesia in pregnancy and it does look like it's better to avoid it because there are potential risks to the baby. I don't want anything to ever happen to Arthur, he is too precious. I will have to stick it out.
God HAS answered some of my prayers, and yesterday evening I realized I had been so busy being upset and moaning about what WASN'T answered, that I forgot to thank him for what he DID do for me. I was scared to have surgery, and it might have harmed Arthur. God made it so I don't have to have surgery. Most amazing of all, the night before my appointment (grossness warning!) I woke up in the middle of the night feeling snotty, so I went to the bathroom and shone a torch in my nose, and there was something right there in my nostril. So I carefully pulled it out. It was sooooo huge that it made me feel quite sick to think about it, so I didn't look again and went straight back to bed. In the morning I woke up with my mouth closed and breathing comfortably through my nose!!! I checked with the torch and sure enough, the majority of my noggin had come out in the night. Yuck, I know (sorry) but I had to write about it!
What is left in there is now quite small, and I can breathe okay through that nostril now. What we have to wait on is whether it grows again or not. I am thinking that if it does grow and fill out my nostril again, I will ask them to reduce the size again, even if that means another session of extremely painful cauterizing. I haven't had any bleeding from it since Sunday but I have been soooooo careful with it, so maybe that's the only reason why? I haven't even been leaning forward. So I am going to try being less careful now, and see if it bleeds. I need to get a picture of how risky it will be during labour.
Other than that I am just going to have to put up with the risk in labour, and maybe attempt to control the pushing stage a bit more than I expected to. It might end up being necessary for me to avoid (not sure how this is humanly possible yet!) pushing very hard in my face. I do know that it's possible to push during the 2nd stage of labour without all the blood forcing into your head, and my body is perfectly able to push Arthur out without me bearing down forcibly too. I just don't know how to suppress the urge to push. In fact I don't think it's possible, but hmmm, somehow I might have to let my body do most of the work without heavy pushing, if I want to avoid a heavy and disruptive nosebleed.
I have my 32 week antenatal appointment tomorrow at the local hospital, where I am supposed to tell them about my care being transferred to Big London Hospital. That's why I am so desperate for AIMS to hurry up and call me back so I know where I stand. I hope I don't have to even mention it tomorrow because I will have found out that I have no reason to give up on my homebirth and I will be sticking to my guns over it.
One thing I am SURE of today, regardless of what the advice will be, is that I will be 100% refusing point blank to transfer my maternity care to Big London Hospital. And I will not deliver my baby there under any circumstances. My local hospital is perfectly adequate if I absolutely MUST go into hospital to deliver, and so what if they don't have an on-call ENT specialist?! Is there no such thing as a normal doctor who can pack a bleeding nose?!! Not that I intend to have my nose packed while pushing. In fact, bugger it, I have no intention of leaving my house to give birth. I just hope that AIMS will confirm that I'm right on this and offer me their full support incase I should come up against difficult doctors while I try to assert my rights!
Urgh.
So that is the update on the evil buggery stupid noggin. I really really hope this is a freak occurance and that I will not have a tendency to develop these polyps during all my pregnancies! Everyone on the prayer chain is now praying that it will somehow shrink further and completely disappear before the birth, so that the bleeding risk isn't even there and I can have my homebirth. In fact I didn't actually tell Sue about the place-of-birth issue, because I didn't want an earful about how I should be sensible and listen to the doctor - Sue is already iffy about my plans to give birth at home. She shouldn't be, it's not really her place, but she is, so I thought it best not to mention it till I have some good support behind me.
My mum really surprised me by being really supportive of my feelings and my desire to give birth at home still. So that was lovely. She's normally quite anxious about birth I think.
I am sleeping a bit better now that I am not afraid that I'm about to have surgery (!) and also now that I can breathe a bit better at night. I'm also really glad that we won't have to miss the antenatal class tonight. We missed the one on Tuesday because I felt ill and exhausted. I felt awful missing that one because it was about positions and pain relief in labour and I think that was probably a really important one :( But Neil went along to tell the lady I wasn't feeling well so I wouldn't be there, and she gave him all the handouts and said maybe she could go over some of the practical stuff with us at a later session - so that's good.
Tonight is the one I've been looking forward to the most - two whole hours on breastfeeding, run by the lactation specialist!!! I can't wait! I am so excited about breastfeeding. I should warn my readers that I will undoubtedly be raving on about the wonders of breastfeeding as a result of getting excited about it and learning lots of wonderful things in tonight's session. Yes, it may come across as me being super pro-breastfeeding, and I may be so bowled over by how fabulous the benefits are that I may EVEN seem like I can't fathom the choice for formula feeding. NOT that I'm anti-people who choose to bottle feed. But I warn you in advance (and will probably do so again at the beginning of the next entry) so that if you are likely to find an entry like that irritating, personally challenging, offensive, or plain annoying, then for goodness sake DO NOT READ IT!!! I would much rather you didn't read and therefore didn't get annoyed by my point of view than read and get piddled off, and find it necessary to leave me an angry message. I hope that's all clear! :)
There's not a lot else to report really. Arthur is precious. He is still hiccuping at least 3 times a day, and they are getting so strong now. He seems to find them quite annoying when they are very violent, and I stroke and pat him gently and use a soothing tone of voice, telling him they'll go in just a few minutes and he's such a good boy, etc. I love him so much!
I have been setting up a new email account, although I'm keeping my AOL one open for a few more months. I'll email my change of address to people on my address list when I switch permanently. But I'm so excited about just a new email account because my username is going to be arthursmummy!!! Yay!! I love that I'm Arthur's mummy. Every time I see an account with that as my name I get so excited! My diaryland email is now being forwarded to my arthursmummy email address, and I've changed my email at various online places today. I don't know why I feel so excited about changing my email address! But it's probably because it's to do with Arthur :) I'm also going to need a new layout for my regular diary here at Diaryland, for when Arthur is here. It just isn't "me" anymore the way it is now.
Well I will update with more normal stuff and a 32 week update (wow!) tomorrow! And it's belly pic day tomorrow AGAIN, it's passing so fast these days! But I love it. I love being pregnant. I love my little boy.
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