I imagine that most soon-to-be-moms run through all sorts of scenarios of what could go wrong, or fear the unknown. There is something about the second time you do something that seems to make a person a bit cocky. Think of sophomores in high school. They are the epitome, from their name to their actions. Sopho means wise in Greek, and more means, well moron or idiot. Put them together and you have wise idiots. And well, sometimes that explains most of their actions from about October through March. As a sophomore mom, I think I too had some overly cocky pieces to my pregnancy. And sometimes I think my second child has attempted to also live in similar fashion.
First off, he was a planned unplanned baby. We knew we wanted another child, we weren’t trying, but we were good with another one whenever that happened. I use to have a theory that pregnancy tests brought on periods. You think you’re late, you buy the test, it comes up negative and menstruation will begin fairly promptly, sometimes when you sit down to take the test. In similar fashion that late January day I bought the test, and before I could button my pants it had given me results. I told my husband, and we rolled with it.
With my first pregnancy, the doctor attempted to tell me the gender of my baby at 16 weeks. His words were “It looks like a boy, but don’t paint the room yet. But, it looks like a boy, well, I can’t really, It looks like a boy, yeah, we’ll look again.” First time mom, and you kind of roll with it looks like a boy. The words could be a girl never came out of his mouth. At 32 weeks we tried again, and the baby was doing the one thing that I should have known meant she was a girl, covering the junk. So when little baby boy was delivered there was a gasp in the room, and the doc said “It’s a girl,” with a voice of confusion. With this experience under my belt I just planned on not asking the second time around. Surprise pregnancy, surprise gender. But no, during my 16 week ultrasound my doctor joyously proclaimed “Wow, that’s a boy!” Then asked “Oops, did you want to know?” Let me side step and say I love my ob, I seriously love him to death, I am sorry to his wife, but she must know she has a great husband. I have cried in that little room with him more than once. He has gone through some scary times with me, and let me cry about the passing of both my mom and my step-mom, both deaths having taken a huge toll on me. But I did set the man straight in this moment. I told him “Well, since you got it wrong last time, I wasn’t going to ask you this time.”
The rest of the pregnancy was easy going. Yes, we found that the umbilical cord only had two arteries instead of the regular three arteries, but nothing seemed to be amiss because of it. Baby was growing, and everything seemed to be smooth going. However, the doctor commented a few times about how laid back the baby was, maybe too laid back. I would push at him when I realized that he hadn’t moved in an hour, and then he would still take about 20 minutes to respond, usually with a kick to the kidney, bladder, or punch in the lungs. When the doctor would listen for his heart beat, it often seemed like the baby was sleeping. In fact, in my final two weeks we had to wake the baby up. Which if you have never had the buzzer placed on your pregnant belly, let me just say be grateful. My first child had collected her umbilical cord like a pillow, so when we did the stress test and baby acted like he was chill the whole time, my doctor kind of gave me no other option than, you are having this baby tomorrow.
I was induced with my first child, so induction wasn’t scary the second time around. I knew what was going to happen. What I didn’t like was the hospital I had to go to. Literally the last hospital I ever wanted to step foot in after two bad diagnosis in their ER. But, insurance says there, and you are not birthing in the car, I had to go to that hospital. I told the nurses that I was planning on no epidural, they laughed and told me they would keep al the stuff on the side table for when I changed my mind. At this point, that sophomore mom thing came in handy. I was bull headed and strong, and it was going to go my way (and it did, I had that 9 lb. baby without any pain medication…bull headed and strong).
I won’t give you all the gory details, but I will say that around the 8.5 month mark my doctor told me that if my water broke to not mess around and get to a hospital ASAP. It was the sac and the water that was holding that baby in, my body was ready to be done with the pregnancy. With that said, the doctor came in and broke my waters, and it took about 20 minutes for my baby to be ready to be born. That is also measured by the amount of time it took my doctor to walk back to his office and turn around and come back. Apparently, he was also having a sophomore pregnancy brain.
Now, I had done all this before. I have the baby, you hand baby to me, I cuddle baby, we pass baby around to dad and other family members, we try to get baby to feed, baby had tests done, like hearing…This is where I had my maybe I don’t know anything moment. I was all cocky and sure until my baby had to be taken to a secondary room because he didn’t pass his hearing test. I remember asking questions because, how do you know if the baby heard you. Its not like he can raise his little arm up and say “right side.” The tech attempted to explain they are checking for brain waves that show the baby registered a noise. When they tested my baby boy, he was asleep. I can tell you that even today he could sleep through an explosion and not hear it. I still question part of this test. I will say that I have read many articles since then, and there is purpose, and it does not diagnose, but rather identifies if early interventions will be needed (Please read this article if you would like more info, I know I read it Purpose of Newborn Hearing Screening).
I am not sure why hospitals ask such quiet and unsocial people to do these tests. The hearing screener looked at me and said "I have to take your baby to another room to do the test again." This was not in the plan! And the words were…cryptic, like a code for don’t stay calm. This man may have been gone with my baby for all of five minutes, but it seemed like 15 to 30 minutes, time I spent worried about what information was going to come back. I had no idea what would happen if he failed the test in the other room. Or what the other room was. I will say that I feel for every mom that goes through this. And for those who this is only the first step of all the next steps, you are super heroes; at a time when your body is hormonally and emotionally chaotic to have to take in news that your perfect baby is not perfect and then make decisions about what happens with your child.
Ultimately, my baby passed his second test. However, this does seem to be a trend in his test taking. The tech said some mumbo jumbo about an air vent in my room causing excess noise. I didn’t hear this air vent. Every time my son says “What?” when we tell him something, I quickly assess if he is failing his hearing test again. When he refused to speak until he was almost three, you can bet I was in his pediatrician’s office. Our pediatrician would calm me down and give me time lines to watch for. I couldn’t handle his not talking, so I taught the boy sign language. And then one day, I picked him up after two weeks of nursery school, and he busted out with a sentence.
I will say, he is probably the only eight year old boy whose mom still stands behind him and claps to see if he hears it. This year when he kept adding Ls to words with O sounds, I flashed back to the failed hearing test. Thinking back to me being too cocky and self-assured. Yet, he passed his hearing assessment at school, and for his annual physicals. But maybe my sophomore baby is just trying to keep me on my toes. He loves to tell me he can’t hear me when I tell him to do chores, or pick something up, or do something boring. But if I were to whisper from the other room that he can get on the X-box, he can hear that and be on the game couch in like half a second.
