These past two weeks have been intense with many appointments at the Perinatal Medical Center (the hospital where the baby will be born). In Russia you switch to the hospital for the last 4 weeks of pregnancy and get assigned a doctor from the hospital. I have been assigned to Dr.Sergei who was recommended to me by a friend from the neighborhood.
If you can believe this, I have made the Russians very nervous. My kids make people nervous because they are a bit nuts. Jesy makes people nervous in business situations. I have seen this- Jesy's pretty darn good at what he does and he can be a bit intimidating (quite attractive also but that's a story for another time). But me- I don't make people nervous. I am very non-threatening and nice. But I have made the Russians nervous.
Russian women typically have 1-2 children, so Russian doctors are used to performing one or 2 c-sections on a woman. This is my fourth and they are a little taken aback. Just so everyone knows a fourth section in the US is not that big of a deal. I had talked to my Iowa doctor before we got pregnant and he gave me the go-ahead. And I know other women who have had 4+ sections. Anyways, I have become a teaching case for this hospital. (I am at a private hospital, but there is a state-run teaching hospital right next door and they are very interested in me also).
So, last week my English liason and Dr. Sergei told me that we would meet this Monday with the head of the hospital and whoever else was available to go over my case and decide if the baby will come at 38 or 39 weeks.
Whoever else was available? Thank goodness Jesy was with me. They called us into the room and I kid you not- there were 15 people in the room besides Jesy and I and the two doctors. Scary and intimidating are not strong enough words to describe what I was feeling. Dr. Sergei started presenting my case in Russian. Dr.Sergei is a pretty confident guy, but I could tell that he was really nervous. That's when I knew that the head Dr. in the room was a pretty powerful guy. After a few minutes of Russian the head Dr. asked me what language I speak. He said he speaks some English so we switched to my native tongue. They asked me various questions, mostly having to do with why I had the original section with Colin and what years and places the previous sections were done. It was pretty amusing to hear them pronounce Louisiana and they didn't even touch Thibodaux. The head doctor told me that everything looks ok and that the placenta is not in the way. He then told me he was going to speak in Russian to everyone else in the room. He did not raise his voice once and you could have heard a pin drop in the room. Pretty impressive. I was later told that he is the leading gyno in Russia and a very famous man in the medical field. Pretty nice service for this stay-at-home mom from Iowa.
After this they wanted to check my scar. I had to get up on the examination table, pull down my pants in front of about 20 people and lay there while they observed my scar. Not my finest moment, but all seems ok except for some water retention. So, the final verdict- baby will arrive at 38 weeks, which puts us sometime before Halloween.
You can see why I have not blogged in awhile- I have been very busy having hospital adventures.
Some funny stuff:
Mothers of other little boys may be able to relate to this. Colin hates to brush his teeth- we fight about it every morning and night. On Monday night he got very angry and told me "why can't we just be like sharks and lose our teeth and then have other ones grow back. I would be so much happier with shark teeth". Well, alrighty then.
Amalie is really thrilled to become a big sister again. She found the baby spoons the other day and is always telling Jesy and I how she is going to feed the baby and change him. The best was what I overheard her telling Kathleen the other day. "Kathleen, when you and I get bigger we are going to have babies in our tummies also". You should have seen Kathleen's mouth gaping open. Amalie then went on- "But first we have to go to college, get jobs, get married, and then we can have our babies". Bravo Amalie, you must have a very excellent mother who is teaching you these things.
Kathleen has become good friends with a little Russian boy in her class, Gosa. She came to me almost crying last week because another girl from school had declared she was going to marry Gosa. "Who am I going to marry, mommy? There is no-one left", she said to me. It was so sad and so cute at the same time. I tried to explain that she had plenty of time to decide that, and she comforted herself with the idea that perhaps she could marry Colin.
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