Childbirth Lesson at the Dentist’s

Day: 27 28+2

This week hasn’t been easy, yesterday Michael and I went for the ultrasound appointment with the specialist just to be told that the Dr. would be out of office all week. What’s interesting is this was the second time they changed my appointment failing to notify me. A few months ago, we were in Costa Rica so they wanted to move around my appointment to facilitate another patient (this has never happened to me by the way), and of course they couldn’t reach us so according to their policy, they moved my appointment for “not being able to reach me and get my confirmation” of an already scheduled appointment. So I was upset when I got there and made sure that they got my new cell phone number. So apparently this time around, they still had the old cell number on file and said I never gave them the new cell number – yes the incompetence has to be turned into my fault somehow – although finally they apologized. I guess what I can do is to never go back again.

So today Michael and I went to see the dentist for the filling of a tiny cavity – I don’t think I absolutely need to get mine done but I figured I should take care if it before it gets worse. I’ve had them done before so didn’t think much about the procedure, when the nurse gave me the gel (topical anesthesia) I still didn’t put it together, thinking that’s all I needed for the filling. Then the dentist walked in, and the next thing I knew I was injected with anesthesia, of course I couldn’t tell what equipment he was holding. I felt so stupid, as soon as the needle was out, I told him I didn’t want it since I could have waited till after the babies are born, and for such a small filling, there’s no need to use anesthesia at all, if I had known that’s what they were going to do! He was quiet for a while, then said, “oh we’ve been using anesthesia on pregnant women for 20 something years”, and “we won’t do anything to hurt your baby”!

What was done was totally not necessary, the nurse said if he didn’t use the anesthesia, I would feel the sensation – big deal – and my previous filling on two teeth the anesthesia wasn’t used! All I can say is while he was giving me the anesthesia, one baby was kicking really hard, followed by a 10-minute Braxton Hicks while I was laying there and waiting. I am positive they got some of it, and it can’t be good for them even though no one can tell for sure how they felt.

While typing this blog, half of my mouth is still numb and I haven’t been eating other than drinking some fluids – it’s been 2.5 hours since the initial injection and it has passed my intervals between meal time. This will be a lesson for us to remember, I don’t feel too terrible because it’s already done, and probably it was very little anesthesia that got into the blood but it’s a good lesson to know the doctors or dentists routinely do things without informing the patients, if you don’t ask for every bit of details.

Michael in the same time was talking to his nurse. Another Cesarean story that’s shockingly similar to the one we heard over the weekend. She had a baby 11 years ago and it’s a vaginal birth, and she went in the hospital being only 2cm dilated for the second child a year ago, apparently the nurses think it would take forever for her to reach 10cm and gave her Pitocin, then at 3cm she had excruciating pain and begged for epidural, finally ended up with a C-section. She said before the Pitocin, the pain was not bad at all but she probably still hasn’t realized that the hospital is not going to give her 24 hours to go with her pace.  This is convincing to us, that having a midwife to make the judgment of when to go into the hospital, is crucial.