Well the really horrible bit was they were very concerned that this was the beginning of labour, even though I wasn't having any contractions or - I mean I had, I was a bit uncomfortable but I wasn't in pain, but they took that that I was in pain, and I don't, would never call that pain. I was just, I think I was just very anxious about what was going on… So they wanted to give us some hormone injections, not hormone injections - what do you call them - steroid injections, to help the baby's lungs develop, which is something that they apparently standardly do with premature babies. And we were very unhappy about that, partly I think because I really didn't feel like I was going into labour and it felt very unnecessary, and it felt like quite an intervention, having had no interventions at all so far. They hadn't done anything. They'd taken a lot from me, but they hadn't sort of injected me or the baby with anything, and that felt quite serious.
But we had, I really don't feel we had any choice about having those injections. I mean we, the doctor left us to talk about it, and we talked about it and we really weren't happy with it. And she came back and she said it was our choice but, you know, by the morning baby could be on its way and if it came at any point during the next few weeks then it would need to have had this injection, and the earlier it had it the better. And that they couldn't predict whether I was going into labour or not, which I'm not sure was entirely true because I think they're, they would've known at a slightly later date. And so I really feel like that's something happened to me quite against my will really. But you get into this horrible position where you're thinking, trying to think for the first - well, not the first time, because you're eating well and not drinking and things - but, you know, they very much couch it in terms of, “You're doing something for the baby”, and you're worried that your response to it is about you and what you want, and you should be trying to think about the baby and what's good for the baby. And that's really hard, because they obviously know much more about what's right for the baby than you do. So we did have these injections. And everyone I asked about it in the hospital seemed to think it was entirely routine and fine, and my great book seems to think that it's okay, but still to me it felt like a very extreme reaction to
What were you worried about?
Well, being given two injections of steroids, twelve hours apart, what else they would be doing. I mean, her essential response was that they wouldn't harm the baby but they might not be great for me which I, is fair enough. I mean, you stop thinking about yourself in the same way. But I suppose I just don't trust them that it might not do something else to the baby…
I still think about the steroids thing because I still feel fairly unhappy about having, having had the injection because I don't really feel like I made a, that we made a choice. I feel we were made to have a choice. I mean the doctor said to us at one point, "You're not taking this seriously enough," and and, you know this, and actually of course you're taking it seriously [laughs] but sometimes you just, you know, you don't, your gut reaction is not to trust something, you know, not to feel something is the right thing to do, and that it's happening very fast. So I still, I don't feel as bad about that as I did at the time, but it still preys on my mind a bit that it was quite a big thing to do. |
