After a spontaneous abortion and being taken to the emergency room during pregnancy, I became a mother at the age of 35

Today is Mother's Day, come and see a mother's contribution.

Lin Min, 35, became a mother in early January this year and is usually a "senior mother". But before giving birth to her son, she experienced a spontaneous miscarriage; during pregnancy, she was sent to the emergency department for fibroid degeneration; childbirth was not smooth, and she was considered for a caesarean section; and she also developed pubic isolation and urinary retention after childbirth.

Clearly, procreation is not as easy and simple as the public thinks. It comes with a series of medical risks, and the changes to the mother's body and psychology are also obvious. Lin Min told her own experience, hoping that this would be helpful to readers who are in the same predicament and face the same kind of doubts.

Looking back on the past now, Lin Min feels that childbirth is an unprecedented life experience. The birth of a son is "life based on the most instinctive desire to come into the world." This sense of inconceivability "goes far beyond the meager praise of 'motherly love is so great'".

I never wanted to be "Dink," but since I got married in 2012, it took me eight years to build up the psychology of being a mom. Now that your mind is ready, let's sit back and wait for the baby to come. But the development of things taught me a good lesson, from pregnancy preparation to postpartum, one after another encountered a series of less common problems.

So that in countless late nights of feeding, looking at the son who sucked with his eyes closed like a small beast in his arms, his heart surged with both gratitude and happiness and awe of surrender to fate. I wrote this article in the hope of being helpful to readers facing the same dilemma, and to say Hi to all women who have become or want to become mothers.

Pregnancy: Is there even a "natural" miscarriage?

For the first 34 years of my life, my understanding of pregnancy came from film and television dramas. A night of wind and current must be a dark knot, otherwise how can there be a "Daming Lakeside" stem? In addition, I have always had a habit of exercising, and my diet has been less oil, less salt and no sugar for more than ten years, and I am almost determined to get pregnant.

It did start out very well. To prevent fetal neural tube defects, doctors recommend starting folic acid supplementation three months before pregnancy. It was the third month of eating folic acid, and in the early morning when my hands were itchy, I saw a parallel bar on my first pregnancy test stick. But the sixth week of ultrasound gave me an ominous premonition - no yolk sac or fetal buds were found in the probed gestational sac. After waiting a week, the gestational sac even shrank. At this point, it can be determined that embryonic abortation has occurred.

In order to prevent greater harm such as heavy bleeding or adhesions caused by the suspension of embryos, it is necessary to perform an abortion as soon as possible and remove the embryo tissue. I booked the surgery in a daze and comforted myself that I was a female classmate with a story.

But things are once again off track. The day before the operation, a diarrhea-like pain made me jump up and rush into the toilet, and suddenly felt a foreign body falling out. Doctors have said that if an embryo is excreted on its own, the excrement must be taken to the hospital for testing to ensure that there is no tissue residue in the body. After examination, the embryos that were stopped fell off completely, so there was no need for surgery.

The mental impact of this experience on me was far greater than the physical damage. "It turns out that there are not only abortions, but also spontaneous abortions!" Natural abortion is like this!" These meaningless thoughts swirled around my mind all the time, making me hesitate to retrieve relevant information, obsessively trying to figure out why I had miscarried.

Lin Min's medical records

Image source: Courtesy of respondents

Reason tells me that occasional spontaneous abortions are mostly caused by poor embryonic quality, which is a survival of the fittest mechanism that can be simply explained by "bad luck". Later, I was surprised to find that many of the women around me who had more children had similar experiences. My grandmother had been pregnant six times in the decade since she was born at the age of 30, and she had two early miscarriages around the age of 35, but she still gave birth twice.

A friend with three children told me that she was pregnant 6 times in total, and only half of all of them eventually came to fruition. Pregnancy is never an easy task.

From the perspective of pregnancy preparation, this is actually a great blessing in misfortune. Because spontaneous abortion does not involve invasive surgical procedures, there is relatively little physical harm. Some of the more radical views even argue that a complete spontaneous abortion is the equivalent of a postponed menstrual period in which you can try to conceive again.

Of course, most doctors will recommend waiting at least until after a normal menstrual period before trying.

But I can't emotionally accept that reason. It's like everyone passes the exam, only I don't pass. What went wrong? Is it really just luck? Why am I out of luck? How do you get luckier? Will you have bad luck next time? These unanswerable questions left me depressed in all kinds of negative emotions.

The only way to cure a failed pregnancy is to experience a successful pregnancy, but all my luck seems to have been spent on the first pregnancy test stick. No matter how hard I work hard to get fit, actively create people, pinch a little pregnancy test, the only thing I gain is disappointment. I was like waiting for a bus that I didn't know if it would come, and I didn't want to lose hope, and I didn't dare to let go of my vision.

I hope to define a turning point in this period and inspire people who are experiencing similar problems. But the reality is that there is no screenwriter, and every day before I get pregnant again is lackluster, and I can't imagine seeing parallel bars again.

It wasn't until a few months later, on an equally clear morning, that I stared dead at the shallow pink prints on the pregnancy test stick, and a ghost appeared before my eyes. The pregnancy preparation, which began in July 2020, turned the page 9 months later without warning.

Pregnancy: What is a "ball- and ball-carrying" pregnancy?

Since the due date of delivery was more than twenty days after my 35th birthday, I was managed as an elderly woman from the beginning.

Each pregnancy test in the early stage has some small problems, such as anemia, impaired liver function, gestational diabetes, etc. I firmly believe that I can see the tricks by following the doctor's advice, so I didn't panic too much. I ignored the doctor's reminder on only one thing, which led my husband and I to a trip to the top three emergency rooms in the early hours of August 2021 and eventually admitted to the hospital.

When I graduated from undergraduate, I was diagnosed with multiple uterine fibroids during a physical examination, with a maximum diameter of less than 2 centimeters. Fibroids have been quiet for years, and although they continue to grow slowly, they do not affect life at all.

When the card is built, the doctor pays special attention to this and says that fibroids may grow sharply or even degenerate during pregnancy. Years of peaceful coexistence with fibroids made me completely numb, plus many friends are similar situations, a friend with fibroids as big as a baby's head laughed at himself as "pregnant with a ball", and eventually they all gave birth safely. So, not only was I not reassured, but I was also a little amused by the doctor's caution.

21 weeks pregnant coincides with the husband's last birthday in a married and childless state. At dinner that day, I began to feel abdominal pain. The pain escalated before going to bed, filling the entire abdominal cavity, and a very clear lump could be felt in the right groin. I didn't dare to wait any longer, so I pulled him up and went to the hospital immediately, and he also received an unforgettable birthday with starry nights.

We went to a total of 5 well-known public hospitals, including the archival hospital. Due to the special location of the mass, the specialist hospital needs the general hospital to rule out the possibility of appendicitis or hernia, and the general hospital requires the obstetrics and gynecology department to give a plan that does not affect the fetus, and is willing to perform general surgical examination.

After countless tossing and turning, I finally arrived at a third-class hospital in the critically ill maternal emergency center the next morning. After carefully comparing the examination report and the location of the lump, the doctor said that she had a high suspicion of the inflammatory response caused by the degeneration of uterine fibroids.

Image source: IC Photo

Although the pain caused minor contractions, the fetus is relatively stable and there is no need to worry about it for the time being. Considering that I had a more acute onset and severe pain, I was likely to be hospitalized, so the doctor recommended that I go back to the hospital. So, exactly 12 hours later, I was back at the hospital and was asked to prepare for admission immediately.

There are no special memory points during hospitalization. Intravenous penicillin was given three times a day for a total of one week. The initial diffuse swelling pain gradually narrowed to a punctate sharp pain, and soon quieted down. Doctors told me that uterine fibroid degeneration is affected by hormonal changes, which usually occur in the second trimester. Fibroid degeneration is theoretically possible to occur again, but because it is unpredictable, there is no way to prevent it. For pregnant women, in addition to antibiotics to reduce inflammation, there is generally no other intervention.

Fortunately, the pain is transient, has no significant effect on the mother or fetus, and does not prevent the recovery from exercising within its capacity.

Fortunately, fibroids never brushed their presence again in the second half of pregnancy. Except for the full contour of the 5 cm fibroid in the case of pseudo-contractions in the third trimester, it neither degenerated again nor hindered vaginal delivery. Of course, this is related to the location of fibroids, and not all fibroids are free of vaginal birth.

I continued to swim with my baby and fibroids until I was eight months pregnant. At that time, everyone, including myself, thought it was easy to be born until the day of childbirth.

Childbirth: Only four fingers have been prescribed, can I still have a smooth delivery?

As a model of learning-type late childhood, I can accurately say that the indications for admission and exit, the demarcation of labor and other issues. Because of this, I am very accepting of all kinds of obstetric methods, including but not limited to: forceps, circumference, hand stripping of the placenta, etc. I understand that all this is to ensure the safety of adults and children, and all the mother has to do is to follow the instructions and relax her body. But even so, reality is slightly out of the ordinary.

On the day of my january 2022 due date, I received medication to induce labor. It started very smoothly, from 0.5 to 2 1/2 fingers in three hours, and I didn't feel particular pain. But everything changed after the painless beating. On the one hand, it is indeed not painful, on the other hand, the uterine expansion is also fixed at 4 fingers. To make matters worse, the painless effect lasted only twenty minutes, and just after eating a box of instant noodles to replenish the strength, the pain returned and intensified.

Many people refer to the painless childbirth technique as the "light of mankind", and most of the painless friends around me have a positive opinion of it. But any medical approach has its limitations, and for people like me, who are less sensitive to anesthesia, the painless effect is not ideal. During the postpartum examination, the doctor also said that there will indeed be a clinical situation where the uterine orifice stops expanding without pain.

I still believe that painless childbirth technology can help many women get rid of the pain of meaningless childbirth, but I also hope that latecomers will understand its possible problems, do not put all their hopes for easy childbirth on painlessness, and the psychological preparation should not be less.

The opening of the finger remained stagnant for the next 6 hours, and the midwife turned to the doctor to discuss the need for a metasection. In the end, five or six doctors and midwives agreed that the fetal and birth canal conditions were suitable, and it was a pity that the birth was not smooth.

After asking me to try harder, the midwife patted me happily, "It's a lot of strength, it's good, go on." In this way, I began to produce twice every five minutes. The midwife was very encouraging, constantly giving me a feeling of "the baby will come out again", and I naturally divided my efforts, gritting my teeth and trying hard.

After two hours of busyness, she told me with joy, "The palace is fully open!" We're going to be born!" Originally, I was still holding the hope of immediate relief, and when I heard this, my eyes suddenly glazed over Venus: It turned out that I had just entered the second stage of labor? Turns out I'm opening my own mouth? Instead, this shattered all my beliefs, and I suddenly lost the confidence to continue to persevere.

The collapse of the subjective will made me no longer concerned with how to end production. No matter how the midwife yelled at me to push me hard, my brain was no longer able to mobilize any muscles. When my consciousness was on the verge of disappearing, I heard the midwife shouting", "See the head", but the extreme physical exhaustion made me completely numb, without the slightest excitement of sprinting, all supported by instinct.

Finally, as the midwife cut sideways, my body suddenly relaxed, and the world fell silent.

I didn't have any impression of the crying when the baby was born, and when I was shaken up hard to confirm the gender, I didn't feel the happiness or excitement of meeting the baby for the first time, because I was so tired that I couldn't even open my eyelids. The sound in the delivery room sounded distant and vague, and I seemed to have had many dreams, but I didn't remember anything.

Despite being woken up several times by stitching up the wound and crushing my stomach, this did not prevent me from falling into a coma again. In the mist, I asked myself, "Is it over?"

Postpartum: pubic isolation, urinary retention?

After being pushed back to the ward, my hips vaguely felt something strange. At that time, I guessed that the labor process was too long, and it would be better to rest for two days. Another reason I didn't get too tangled up was that my attention was completely distracted by urinary retention.

Urinary retention is when the bladder is filled with urine and cannot be excreted normally. Before giving birth, I underwent a catheterization because I didn't feel the urge to urinate. A few hours after giving birth, I still couldn't urinate spontaneously and had to hang up my urine bag.

Nurses reassured me that urinary retention was more common after childbirth, and that urinary catheters were inserted to allow the bladder to rest, which usually recovered within 24 hours. But it turned out that I was once again in a minority group, and because I still didn't feel urinating after 96 hours, I was asked to hang my urine bag for a week.

Unfortunately, the hip joint began to be completely unable to move. Not only do walking and sitting up need to be supported, but every step is accompanied by unexplained severe pain. So, 4 days after giving birth, I took an X-ray in a wheelchair with a urinary catheter in my mouth. The results showed that I had postpartum pubic union separation.

In this way, I began the darkest period of my life. I have learned about pubic joint separation in various sciences, thinking that only the third trimester will happen, but I did not expect to encounter it after childbirth, and I did not expect that it would make me completely incapacitated.

Walking, turning over, and bending and extending your legs have become impossible. Many frail women choose to lie on their sides to breastfeed to reduce the burden on their bodies, but I can't turn over so that it is difficult to even breastfeed. Urinary retention makes all this worse. The foreign body sensation caused by the catheter makes it necessary to be very careful in any movement, and lochia will flow down the catheter, so even if you wear adult diapers, you will still frequently stain your dress.

Image source: IC Photo

The emotional outburst comes when the bearded husband is constantly caring for the baby and packing up his belongings in the early morning of the discharge. When I tried to put on my trouser legs and try to stand up on the table, I found that after several days of rest, the arm that was supporting my body during childbirth had been swollen so sorely that it could not be lifted because of excessive force. So not only could I not move my lower limbs, but I couldn't even use my upper limbs to prop myself up.

I couldn't comfort myself any longer, so I fell on the table and cried bitterly, "How did I become a waster?" Is this the life of the future?"

When I got home, I forced myself to focus on recuperating and not to waste emotions in facts that couldn't be changed. A week later, I managed to remove the catheter and get rid of the adult diaper, but pubic recovery was still far away. Doctors say that resting with pelvic belt can accelerate recovery, but it is not recommended to wear it throughout the day, which will affect blood circulation and organ reduction, and the specific recovery time varies from person to person.

The impact of incapacity is enormous. Physiologically, it increases the risk of postpartum thrombosis, which necessitates daily leg massage. The psychological blow was even greater, so that the common postpartum problems such as nipple cracking and bleeding, pain in lateral incision wounds, and hemorrhoids, although I encountered one by one, I had no time to feel troubled.

In addition to being able to look up at the ceiling autonomously, the reality that even drinking water under the guise of human hands made me hate everything around me for no reason. This lasted for three weeks, and as I was able to sit up and get down to the ground, I slowly came out of the negative emotions.

Procreation: More like a self-cultivation

I wrote about this experience with the hope that as a first-hand witness, I would give first-hand information and help people facing the same problems. None of these encounters are difficult, but they appear relatively infrequently in the media, causing me to suffer for a time because I could not retrieve enough information.

When I was not in a good pregnancy, I attributed it to my age and made myself more depressed; when the uterine fibroids degenerated during pregnancy, I searched all kinds of information all night to find out whether antibiotics really did not affect the fetus; when pubic separation occurred after childbirth, the screen was full of general "lie more and rest more", but no one told me how long I could recover and whether there would be sequelae.

I have always been disgusted with "motherhood is rigid", and this argument inevitably makes women too weak, as if only having a baby can hold up half the sky. I don't think there's anything special about stumbling along the way, just like to take the college entrance examination, you always have to brush up on the "three-year college entrance examination five-year simulation". In the end, the safety of mother and child is the best result I can think of.

But this in no way means that I am indifferent to the pain of childbirth. On the contrary, I hope that both men and women can objectively understand the medical risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth. When men face the uneasiness of their partners during pregnancy and childbirth, they can help to avoid family conflicts with less confusion and more help.

For women with birth plans, we must make psychological and physiological preparations as soon as possible. Postpartum negative emotions are the result of multiple factors and are almost inevitable.

Physiologically, while the secretion of various hormones after childbirth rapidly declines, the mother needs to start breastfeeding with the baby immediately; psychologically, the expectations of the surrounding people for the mother quickly changed from "taking care of the body" during pregnancy to "feeding the newborn". All of this will catch new mothers off guard.

If you want to adapt to the new life model, you must know how to ask for help and let go appropriately. For the whole society, more care for the maternal group is the embodiment of the degree of social civilization. Whether it is extending paternity leave or increasing childcare institutions, the change is significant.

Lin Min with her son and husband

Image source: Courtesy of respondents

Go back to the starting point and ask yourself, if I could do it all over again, would I still choose to have children?

As a straight woman of steel, I have not yet felt the motherly love that gushes out of the legend. Dolls do have a cute side, but that's not what drives me. The companionship between parents is a process of mutual nourishment, and it can even be said that parents get more. The growth of children constantly breaks through the inherent cognition of adults, prompting us to reflect on the shackles that domesticate ourselves without thinking.

After I reached the end of my life, I gradually recognized and accepted my limitations, admitting that many things I could not accomplish. And within my means, all the landscapes have become ripe, and as life becomes more and more stable, curiosity and passion fade. Raising a child from scratch seems to be the best way to cure a midlife crisis.

For me, procreation is more like a self-cultivation. On the broader timeline, everything experienced for childbirth will dissipate at a stunned speed, leaving not only a soft and ignorant young child, but also an unprecedented life experience.

Life comes into the world based on the most instinctive desire, and it brings far more incredible than the thin praise of "motherly love is so great." Be able to participate in his growth and have honor.

(In order to protect privacy, Lin Min is a pseudonym in the text)

Author: Lin Min

Producer: Pan Wenbo

First image source: IC Photo

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