I'm in a special kind of hell
[rant]
So I found out yesterday that out of 5 people in my department, 3 of them are pregnant. THREE! One goes on mat. leave at the end of next week and the other two are both about 14-15 weeks. The super pregnant one has an OB and a doula and wants a natural childbirth (er, that should read "non-medicated" -- still can't figure out how a hospital birth is natural...). Of the other two, one is going for a midwife-assisted hospital birth. I like this one generally, but even more because of the midwife. Right now, she's too scared to think about a homebirth, even though she's less than 30 min from a hospital. She tried for three years to get pregnant, did all sorts of procedures for in/fertility, and finally resigned herself to signing up on an adoption waiting list when she realised she didn't have the $10K for IVF. And then boom: pregnant. She's understandably a little freaked. Happy, to be sure, but freaked. She wants an ultrasound asap just to make sure she's "not having an alien baby" but her OB/midwife/whomever it was said it was best to hold off until she was at least 20 weeks (most are done at 24 weeks). This is happy-making to overhear.
The other one is an idiot, through and through. She's a flighty social butterfly-type from OZ -- fun but kind of annoying. Yesterday, I overheard her talking to the super pg girl about ultrasounds. She was complaining that OHIP only covers 2 per pregnancy. SPG said she's had about 11 and I SWEAR I heard OZ-girl say she's had 4 or 5. SHE'S BARELY INTO HER 2ND TRIMESTER!!! She said "I just love'em!" What a fucking nutjob! And today, she was talking about someone she knew who didn't know she was pregnant until she was 7 months -- she'd had her period the whole time and she thought she had a tumour or something. She was smoking and drinking the whole time and wouldn't you know it, she had the baby only a month and a half later. Yay for pre-term babies. Ugh. So OZ-girl was decrying the smoking and drinking, but she just LOOOOOVES ultrasounds!
I just grit my teeth and try to ignore it, since I'm only overhearing these conversations for the most part anyway... And it's not my duty to lecture people there on the dangers of standard birth procedures or whatever, especially when I only just started working there. I don't know them and they don't know me. But fuck! It's sooooo beyond frustrating to listen to all of this pregnancy talk. I can't let them know any of my own plans for the immediate future since I'm on probation and because I'm not pregnant myself or have been through a pregnancy, I don't have a leg to stand on in their eyes. Makes me want to beat things.
I'm in mainstream hell. I miss my sheltered, though unemployed, alterna-world.
And you know, it really makes me wonder whether there is a connection between the massive upsurge in childhood diagnosed ADD and the excessive use of ultrasound, electronic fetal monitoring, and dopplers.
[/rant]
So I found out yesterday that out of 5 people in my department, 3 of them are pregnant. THREE! One goes on mat. leave at the end of next week and the other two are both about 14-15 weeks. The super pregnant one has an OB and a doula and wants a natural childbirth (er, that should read "non-medicated" -- still can't figure out how a hospital birth is natural...). Of the other two, one is going for a midwife-assisted hospital birth. I like this one generally, but even more because of the midwife. Right now, she's too scared to think about a homebirth, even though she's less than 30 min from a hospital. She tried for three years to get pregnant, did all sorts of procedures for in/fertility, and finally resigned herself to signing up on an adoption waiting list when she realised she didn't have the $10K for IVF. And then boom: pregnant. She's understandably a little freaked. Happy, to be sure, but freaked. She wants an ultrasound asap just to make sure she's "not having an alien baby" but her OB/midwife/whomever it was said it was best to hold off until she was at least 20 weeks (most are done at 24 weeks). This is happy-making to overhear.
The other one is an idiot, through and through. She's a flighty social butterfly-type from OZ -- fun but kind of annoying. Yesterday, I overheard her talking to the super pg girl about ultrasounds. She was complaining that OHIP only covers 2 per pregnancy. SPG said she's had about 11 and I SWEAR I heard OZ-girl say she's had 4 or 5. SHE'S BARELY INTO HER 2ND TRIMESTER!!! She said "I just love'em!" What a fucking nutjob! And today, she was talking about someone she knew who didn't know she was pregnant until she was 7 months -- she'd had her period the whole time and she thought she had a tumour or something. She was smoking and drinking the whole time and wouldn't you know it, she had the baby only a month and a half later. Yay for pre-term babies. Ugh. So OZ-girl was decrying the smoking and drinking, but she just LOOOOOVES ultrasounds!
I just grit my teeth and try to ignore it, since I'm only overhearing these conversations for the most part anyway... And it's not my duty to lecture people there on the dangers of standard birth procedures or whatever, especially when I only just started working there. I don't know them and they don't know me. But fuck! It's sooooo beyond frustrating to listen to all of this pregnancy talk. I can't let them know any of my own plans for the immediate future since I'm on probation and because I'm not pregnant myself or have been through a pregnancy, I don't have a leg to stand on in their eyes. Makes me want to beat things.
I'm in mainstream hell. I miss my sheltered, though unemployed, alterna-world.
And you know, it really makes me wonder whether there is a connection between the massive upsurge in childhood diagnosed ADD and the excessive use of ultrasound, electronic fetal monitoring, and dopplers.
[/rant]