Even as I arrived at Labor & Delivery with fear in my heart, I told the triage nurse that I was probably overreacting. To try to make me feel better, she told me that she had come to L&D for her own concerns about decreased fetal movement twice during each of her own two pregnancies. When she attached the monitoring belts to my belly, the room was immediately filled with the sounds of a fast fetal heart beat in the 150s. “Feel better?” she inquired reassuringly. I supposed I should, but then she added, “We still need to watch the tracings for a while.” A short time later, she asked me to lie on my left side. Then she mentioned casually, “I’ll need to call your doctor to ask her to look at your tracings from her office, because I’m not seeing any variability in the heart rate like I normally do” (she would later confess to me that in 13 years of obetetrical nursing, she had never seen a flat fetal heart tracing like mine). She explained that because I didn’t pass the fetal heart rate variability assessment, I would be getting an ultrasound for a biophysical profile.
As I was waiting for the ultrasound tech, my doctor showed up unexpectedly at my bedside herself with a concerned look on her face. She asked me to tell her about my concerns, so I gave her the details about the baby’s decreased movement. I confessed that I was scared to go home after hearing about the fetal heart tracings, but acknowledged that I’m a worrier and didn’t want to overreact. She mentioned the physician’s mantra, “First, do no harm” in reference to taking a baby by c-section prematurely, and I could sense some hesitation on her part.
By this point, she had already ordered a stat ultrasound, but she quickly became impatient and went to get an ultrasound machine so that she could do the biophysical profile herself. The baby took two practice breathing movements during the first 15 minutes (and only two are required in 30 minutes), but he only moved one limb once, and she assessed his tone (the third part of the profile) as being poor before terminating the biophysical profile early (it was supposed to last a half an hour). Quickly, anesthesiologists and nurses swarmed to my bedside to ask me medical questions, draw stat labs, put an IV in and have me sign consent forms. I never saw her leave to call them and later learned that she had already reserved an OR and asked anesthesiology to prepare before she even started the ultrasound. And still I wondered if I was overreacting, because the baby had displayed two practice breathing movements and at least moved his arm once during the 15 minute biophysical profile. Was I bringing him into this world too early simply because I was letting my anxieties get the best of me?
My Mighty Miscarriage Foe 